Not an update of the current nasty geopolitical situation, but something from The Google CityBlock Project [found via ChrisDodo’s del.icio.us]
This aims to produce a visual search of the urban environment. In one of their presentations they have an estimate of how long it would take to acquire images of the US’s entire commercial streetscape:
- “~2.4 million miles of paved road in the U.S.
- We estimate that about ~1% are commercial
- With a high speed camera (~250 fps), we can capture driving at about 10 mph
- It would take approximately 100 days worth of driving time to capture the entire commercial U.S.
- Spread among 20 vehicles and allowing 6 hours of capture time per day, it would require approximately 20 days of acquisition”
So, very impressive in capturing images of the city; but what about the Image Of The City that we actually perceive? Schyuler and Rich’s excellent tutorial at EtCon made this distinction plain.
However I guess – as ever with Google – worth keeping a close eye on.
Petafloptimism 
RealStreets have been doing a similar thing in Brighton, with mad artistic tangents. They’ve got a couple of giant prints up behind the tills in Habitat and M&S.
Oh, did my hyperlink get eaten?
http://www.realstreets.info/rspreview_1s
t_page/rspreview_1st_page.html
Ideas about how we perceive, imagine and conceptualise the geography of urban areas are fascinating me at the moment. The reason is probably Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital, which is a travelogue of a walk around the M25, with reference to numerous aspects of psychogeography, a theme that runs through his work. Great interview here: http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/147_iainsinclair.shtml
Hi Matt –
The Roadworks crew down in New Zealand have been doing these “Street Scroll” interactive panoramas for a while now as well :
http://www.streetscroll.com
Enjoy!
Olli
They did this in Madrid a few years ago, a photo every 10 meters in every direction:
http://fotos.qdq.com/x/home_madrid.htm
-Russ
Hail Bluetooth, Flash Pix, CityBlock, and iChat Location
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CityBlock
Blackbelt Jones has a short piece on The Google CityBlock Project, which has looked at the possibility of creating a “visual search of the urban environment.” They estimate that it would be possible to photograph the entire commercial environment– i.e…
CityBlock
Blackbelt Jones has a short piece on The Google CityBlock Project, which has looked at the possibility of creating a “visual search of the urban environment.” They estimate that it would be possible to photograph the entire commercial environment– i.e…
Google through the Keyhole
Memories of Google’s CityBlock Project (Matt Jones: ‘I guess – as ever with Google – worth keeping a close eye on’ â 14 April, 2004): Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) today announced it acquired Keyhole Corp., a Mountain View, Calif.-based digital