DIY street views

May 30, 2019 12:03 PM

Tawanda Kanhema put Zimbabwe on the Street View map. Then, this spring, he went to northern Ontario and added the James Bay Winter Road. Kyle Williamson added the remote Atlantic island of Saint Helena. Christophe Courcaud put Tahiti and elsewhere in French Polynesia on the map. The City of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador has taken their own street view photography and layered it on top of the Google Maps images. Bermuda's nine parishes have complete coverage, thanks to the local tourism agency's own images supplementing official imagery. Other independent automated street photographers have added images from Heredia, Costa Rica to Burma to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic to Nasiriyah, Iraq to Hanoi.
posted by afiler (13 comments total)

Previously: Sheepview in the Faroe Islands.
posted by madcaptenor at 12:30 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

Interesting, and generally a fantastic way to expand the world with existing platforms. I get a bit worried because this isn't truly open culture, because it's relying on Google's proprietary platform. It would be amazing if Open Street Map could expand to include these street views, but I imagine that would be prohibitively expensive for most non-profits or donation-reliant agencies.

Also, it seems that some of these uploaders are embedding ads into their streetviews. Speficially, Bermuda's tourism department (Google StreetView "watermarked" view straight down, with "GoToBermuda.com" in a blue circle). On one hand, they expanded Google Maps significantly, but on the other hand, it may open the door to less reliable sources watermarking their uploads. Also, if Bermuda Tourism loses GoToBermuda.com, that URL could be scooped up by a less than reliable 3rd party and used for nefarious purposes.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:43 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yeah, why would anyone pay their own money to gift something to one of the world's richest companies?

OpenStreetCam and Mapillary will happily accept your street view data and make it available under an open licence. Mapillary's a commercial company, but they have been good about licensing and open data
posted by scruss at 1:53 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

I was doing Gigapans, back when Google Earth had a layer for them. Loved putting new content where the world could see it! I quit, when they stopped the Google layer.

Funny enough, I independently invented street view when I got my first digital camera, way back about 1999. I have a lovely collection of images of city center, Düsseldorf, Germany, from the "turn of the century".
posted by Goofyy at 1:58 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yeah, why would anyone pay their own money to gift something to one of the world's richest companies?

Because it's the most widely used platform? So I'd say the best case scenario is to upload this data to Google, Mapillary and OSC, both for redundancy, and increased access and visibility.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:21 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

I love the Saint James Bay. But, I can't help but laugh at the Winter Road entry. (I suspect most of the people I've met there would laugh too.) This is all really neat!
posted by eotvos at 10:33 PM on May 30, 2019

Myanmar, not Burma
posted by hugbucket at 5:35 AM on May 31, 2019

Myanmar, not Burma

Both names refer to the same country.
posted by afiler at 12:31 PM on May 31, 2019

I suppose you prefer Peking to Beijing as well? How do you feel about Siam?
posted by hugbucket at 1:03 AM on June 1, 2019

Well, officially, the US and the UK governments still refer to the country as Burma, since the name change to Myanmar wasn't made by the country's citizens, but by a brutal dictatorship.
posted by eye of newt at 10:18 AM on June 1, 2019

Interesting.
posted by hugbucket at 11:24 AM on June 1, 2019

Speaking of far-from-urbanity Street Views, there's also a Street View walk around and through Hashima Island, which is an abandoned coal mining and industrial island off the coast of Japan. Google did this themselves rather than depend on volunteers, but I just heard about it today and figured it was at least half on-topic.
posted by ardgedee at 8:08 AM on June 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yes will be Burma forever IMO.

Unless a true democracy ever arrives and they decide to keep Myanmar, both vanishingly likely
posted by goinWhereTheClimateSuitsMyClothes at 6:19 PM on June 2, 2019