Google released Street Views today. According to PC World: “The images that make up Google’s Street View feature are taken by a small army of drivers with expensive, multiple lens cameras mounted to the tops of their cars. Streets for which Street View images are available show up with blue outlines on Google Maps. Google says Street View is available for major roads in San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver. More cities will follow shortly, Google says.”
Ryan Singel for Wired writes that Google reached out to the NNEDV before releasing the product:
Google released a new mapping tool http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/where_20_google_2.html called Street View – a feature that combines street-level 360-degree photos with Google’s now well known 2-D online maps. The images, created by a special truck that has driven roads in five United States cities, are insanely detailed, especially when one double-clicks on an image to zoom in. Users can move down the road image by image, as well as pan and zoom each image 360 degrees.
Before releasing the new photo-enabled product to the world, Google reached out to the National Network to End Domestic Violence to make sure that the business listings didn’t include women’s shelters and created a way for local domestic violence groups to get photos of shelters removed if they appear on Street View. Shelter and victim advocates can request an image be taken down via the site. The image will initially be blacked out, and after two weeks, it will disappear and simply not be part of the site’s navigation, according to Cindy Southworth who heads the NNEDV’s technology efforts, known as the Safety Net Project.