Recently NORC released a Street View type service for several towns in Austria.  It is a nice (if basic) web app, but it is a pity for them that the Google Street release in Austria is imminent.

As always we can expect some cheap journalism around privacy issues like this one, but my local free paper Tiroler Woche have surpassed themselves with a journalistic extravaganza on NORC’s application.  The leader starts:

Luxusvillen von Mafia ausspioniert.  Ostmafia hat Innsbruck im Visier.  Per Mausklick koennen sich Ostbanden einen perfektem Ueberblick ueber Innsbruck verschaffen.

Tiroler Woche Do, 15. April 2010

Which basically translates as something like:  ”Mafia spying on luxury villas.  Eastern european mafia have Innsbruck in their sights.  With a mouse click eastern bandits can get a perfect view of Innsbruck.”

So the fear of burglaries is standard in any Street View story, but the Eastern European Mafia sounds impressive.  The link?  Well NORC is based in Bucharest so they must of course be Eastern European Mafia.

What a journalistic masterstroke, combining privacy fears, crime and Xenophobia all in one story.

The Eyjafjallajökull volcanic ash seems to have reached us here in Innsbruck too.  It has created this wonderful evening sunset scene from the web cam on Patsherkofel mountain:

Copyright Abteilung Waldschutz/Luftguete

Note: Details in this post may have been changed to protect privacy!

I’m no Google fan boy, but the one thing I seem to be always defending is Google Street View. It really is not that big an invasion of privacy compared to CCTV although you have to admire this rather more direct Austrian response to Street View.

There seem to be endless stories in the mainstream press about privacy/security violations from Street View.  However a little thought and investigation usually reveals they are nonsense.  In fact should that not be the journalists job?

So this blog post in got geoint caught my eye, it points to a cnet story, which in turn points to story in the Daily Telegraph.  In this  story someone states that their mountain bike was stolen from their garage and say this is because their open garage appeared on Street View and you could see the contents.

As the victim says:

“When you look at the photograph, my face is blacked out, the windows of my house are blacked out but because the garage door was left open, you can clearly see everything in there.

“I would argue that they should have blacked that out. It is just an invitation for any criminal to take what they like.”

He has very sensibly:

“…now removed anything of value.”

And of course I am sure he used the simple link in Street View to request removal of the image.

Reading the article more closely I noticed that he reveals the following personal data:

• Firstname
• Surname
• Age
• Profession
• The Street he lives on (and there is only one with that name in the UK)
• The county he lives in

Oooops – that is a lot more privacy gone…  So then I wondered, can I find this offending image on Google Maps?  Well it took about 3 minutes:

copyright google

All I had to do was a google search for the street name and then browse along it, using street view, until I found an open garage.  And there it was…  Oh, and I now know his house number too…

So he was so busy complaining about the evils of google he forgot to ask them to remove the image and revealed yet  more personal details in a national newspaper.  Nice one!

Before I get accused of invading his privacy further I have requested removal of the image on his behalf using this easy approach.  And I have not repeated any of the information!

So please could we just get over this privacy paranoia and start using Street View as the great dataset it is.  Remember it is almost the same debate we are having now when we first had caller id and now that is just another tool of our lives…

BTW nearby I discovered this amusing scene:

copyright google

I wonder how they ended up there?

Incidentally I have had 2 mountain bikes stolen from a garage about 12 years before anyone ever thought of street view.  My tip – keep your bikes in your house!

Update 15/4/10

Following my image removal request I have now had an email response from the Google Map Team:

Our records show that you recently reported an image within Google Maps Street View. This image has been removed from our service and will disappear within the next 24 hours.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and appreciate your patience while we dealt with this.

If you still see the image after 24 hours, your browser’s cache may cause the issue. Please clear your browser’s cache and check the image. To clear the cache, please check the link below.

A nice, simple and reasonably fast service.

Update 16/4/10

And now the image has been removed by the Google Maps Team:

I am now not sure if I have helped someone save their privacy or needlessly damaged a dataset in the public domain. I can’t decide…

So following the arrival of my TZ10 with built in GPS, here are my thoughts on it so far…

Firstly a sample image I took:

Which was located here by GPS (spot on!):

View Larger Map

The camera overall:

• I love the compact size considering it still has 12x optical zoom.  This means that I am much more likely to take it with me anywhere I go.  The first rule of getting great photos!
• One gripe is I cannot find a decent case for it.  Ideally I would like one of those silicone skins as a I will drop it on a mountain at some point!
• The ‘Intelligent Auto Mode’ seems to be remarkably simple and work very well.  I use it most of the time.
• As with the TZ7 – the mode dial is a pain and always shifts when you put it in a case, so you have to check it each time before taking a photo.  It is a pity panasonic did not fix this.
• The manual settings are pretty good for a compact camera. But a little fiddly to use (cold fingers and small buttons do not mix).  It is also a pity that there is no manual focus lock.
• The ‘Panorama Assist’ mode is very good.  It locks focus, white balance, aperture and shutter speed.  More on why this is so useful for me later…
• The Auto Bracketing of exposures feature is great and I have been having some fun trying HDR.  It is a whole other world!
• Battery life has been pretty good all considered. Although I would recommend always having a spare battery with you.  Shame on you Panasonic for doing firmware updates preventing the use of non-Panasonic batteries!

The GPS:

So this was the main reason for choosing this camera.  Panasonic call it all ‘Travel Mode‘.  Is it any good?  Is it fast enough? What about battery life?  Actually I think panasonic have done a really good job on this.  Having it all built into the camera is great and simple.  The problem of the time it takes to get a GPS signal/location before taking a photo is solved by the the GPS continuously logging locations even when the camera is turned off.  So when you turn on the camera to take a photo there is no delay as it already knows where it is.  To save on battery power it stops checking for GPS locations when the camera has not been used for a while or it has not got a GPS signal for a while (e.g. when it has been indoors overnight).  All of this seems to work pretty well.  The only issue is that if you drive to a new location with the camera having been off for a while, you a liable to still have the photo tagged with a location you were in a while ago.  The solution I have found is to turn the camera on briefly when you arrive somewhere new so that it starts search for GPS signals and knows where it is when you take your 1st photo later.

It has been great being able to come home at the end of a trip, upload all of my photos (I use Picasa) and immediately see them on a map (as the latitude/longitude is included in the EXIF for each file).  I need to do some more experimenting about the best way to share my photos on map (Picasa Web Albums are a little limiting)

I have not really explored the tagging of images by place name or Point of Interest based on the Navteq POI data in the camera.  I am not so interested in this yet…

So all in all I give it the thumbs up!

So it has been time for a new digital camera.  I have always wanted to geotag all my photos, but could never be bothered to geotag manually (who wants to waste time post-processing indoors when you could be out taking more photos… ).  However there is little point in taking photos and not showing where they are.

I have been a long-time user of a panasonic digital compact, so when panasonic announced the DMC-TZ10 (aka ZS7) with built in GPS (and the bonus of full manual control) it looked like the camera for me.

Note the GPS antenna!

So I am now the proud owner of one and checking it out. Early reviews have suggested problems with battery life, I will have to say (but I did get a spare battery with it)

A review will follow shortly and posts about another use for this camera…

I’m currently at WhereCampEU.  Here are the slides from my presentation on Social Networking…

Do you love Java and have experience with the Spring Framework? Do you have a passion for software design?  Do you want to work for an exciting Swiss based company (Axon Active) doing some cool stuff with transaction data, risk data, geospatial technologies and social networks?  If so please drop me a line (via my contact page) telling me about you and your experience.

We are a international team and working locations are flexible, but you must be prepared for some travel.

No recruiters/agencies please.

I have talked about embedded maps before, but Map Channels have released a new tool, Switch Maps, which allows you to easily embed a maps in a web page.  But the cool thing is that you can select from your map provider of choice (Google, Bing, Open Street Map, Yahoo, etc).

So for example here is one of my favourite spots at the moment with some google contour magic:

And you can embed street view images like this one (an image of the office):

Pretty cool! This kind of picking and choosing from the best web mapping provider for the location/task is perhaps the future…

This snowy image of the UK on 7th January looks amazing:

Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response.  From BBC News

And I love this little story:

Plymouth Ski Centre at Marsh Mills was forced to close on Wednesday due to the icy conditions.

(from bbc news)

What?!