Google Street Level View comes to the 'Ville

[shana-lyons.livejournal.com]

Google's Street Level View team has apparently done a really thorough job mapping the Somerville area over the last few months. Street Level view went live for the Boston area today. I looked at our house and I can see our pizza takeout boxes in our recycling. It's REALLY detailed. you guys might want to take a look at your home to see what the world can now see.

Comments

[ifotismeni]

I can see my car in my parking spot and everything. I love it! :)

[ron_newman]

Here's the Somerville Theatre marquee. From this, you can tell the picture was taken around the third week of September 2007.

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

I KNOW! I checked out my house only to find SOMEONE I DON'T KNOW, in my driveway, hovering over the drivers' side of my car door.

[shana-lyons.livejournal.com]

Holy sugar, that's scary-ish. Are all your ipods/gps's/etc there?

[sekala.livejournal.com]

this is awesome

[lonelyholiday.livejournal.com]

Fun! No people I recognize on my street, but my roommate's car is there. And my coworker's car outside our office. Shame I don't have my own car to get all excited about. heh.

[billharnois.livejournal.com]

funny, I spent 20 minutes or so today trying to determine when these pictures took place based on all of the housing/business renovations. Never thought to look at the date on the theatre display.

[ron_newman]

I got the idea from the myDedham.org blogger. And it's quite possible your street was photographed at an entirely different time from the theatre. Someone on my street narrowed it to a week or two in August, based on when s/he had moved in and a "For Sale" sign taken down.

[mraudet.livejournal.com]

i live in the square and my photograph was definitely taken over labor day weekend.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Sadly, they didn't catch anybody going into the porno shop over on Mystic Ave...

We live on a corner. . .

[shana-lyons.livejournal.com]

. . and I know that our two streets, Pearson and Kidder, got photographed on two different days or times because on the Pearson pics you can't see our recycling and on the Kidder ones, it out there.

[ron_newman]

I didn't even know we had one. Somerville or Medford?

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Whoa! I knew sightings of that nature were going to start springing up. Glad they didn't actually make off with anything (or so I'm deducing).

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Our house must have been shot on a rare day that the porch wasn't full of crap. Sweet!

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Shall we add a tag? ;-)

[theodosia.livejournal.com]

Definitely it was shot over two days at the least -- I can tell because a) all the moving trucks which must have been the Labor Day session, and b) there are two separate shots of my house, one from the cross street, where you can see masons working on my neighbors stoop, which I know took about three weeks for the concrete to cure, and the porch railing is back up and the project is finished from the regular street view.

Still, I'm all, 'whee you can see my house!'

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I can date the pictures because there was construction on the corner, so the camera trucks didn't come down my street. :(

[elements.livejournal.com]

Ok, I can see some benefit to this now that I've looked at it (checking out a neighborhood's feel before traipsing over for an apartment appointment, for example), but I can't be the only one who's creeped out, too, can I?

Here's the Boston.com article (http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/12/11/get_ready_for_your_close_up/?page=full) on StreetView coming to Boston.

I think I'd find it less creepy if we were told in advance when they'd be doing their recording. That way we'd know to be wary of not doing anything in public that we might not want recorded and distributed, interpreted /misinterpreted by the entire world.

[elements.livejournal.com]

Are you sure it's not you? I just looked and it seemed like they had the right height and haircut... just a little too blurry to tell for sure. Do you have any shirts with patches on the left arms? Otherwise the patches at first made me think of a mail carrier.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Oh sure. There are actually 2 on Mystic Ave, both in Somerville. There's an Amazing Superstore, part of the chain of well-lit, clean, places throughout the northeast, and then there's "Main St. Books" which is independent and grimy.

Uh, or so I'm told.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

If it's in public, it's in public.

[ron_newman]

Wow -- every single street in your neighborhood, except yours, has a street view.

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

I think this will be REALLY useful around these parts. So much of driving in Boston is done by landmarks. Having some visual cues will be really nice next time I have to go somewhere random in the area.

[ron_newman]

Anyone remember when Amazon's "A9.com" search engine had this feature? They called it Block View. I think it was only for major commercial streets like Boylston.

[ron_newman]

"A clean, well-lighted place" .... hmm.