It was inevitable. As people became aware of the Google Street View Camera Car, people were going to use it to get their five minutes of fame – now we have the girl who will forever be known as the first person to flash her chest at the Google Street View car.

Thankfully for her, the main event was not captured, proving that even the most shameless behaviour still requires good timing!

In the past, we have had more opportunity-grabbing clowns, such as those who have been caught relieving themselves, people who attempt to perform complex bicycle stunts, and the man who made himself famous for giving the Google crew the finger. Perhaps an extension of their new face blurring technology is needed to curb these miscreants?

When we last spotted Thomas the Tank Engine he was happily entertaining children on the Isle of Wight. People said things like “Best. Sight. Ever!“, and we all reminisced about the favourite anthropomorphised train from our childhood.

Since those halcyon days, Thomas has relocated to the English seaside resort of Paignton where he has, distressingly, hit hard times.

The creaky blue locomotive now spends his days slumped in a corner at the back of the station car park, where locals report he is often seen glugging from a bottle of diesel and telling the platform attendants to “feck off”.

Thanks to Anthony Houghton.

Normally considered to be places of fun and pleasure, perhaps the last country you would expect to find the world’s largest stadium is in North Korea, one of the most isolated nations on the planet. However with the capacity to seat 150,000 people, the Rungado May Day Stadium is the biggest stadium of its kind in the world.¹

During a professional wrestling match in 1995 the stadium held 190,000 people simultaneously, with crowds sprawling in its 8-tiered seating and across its 207,000m² pitch. The lofty canopies stretch 60m into the sky at their peaks.

This being North Korea however, the stadium’s primary use is actually to celebrate the President, Kim Jong-il, who holds elaborate parades and displays of power here each May Day. Even more disturbingly, during the 1990s a number of army generals were apparently executed by being burned alive here.

The petal-shaped structure is not the only major stadium in the city, though. Just a few hundred metres away, there’s another massive presidential ego boost – Kim-Il Sung Stadium², which can seat a not unimpressive 70,000 people.

A massive amount of entertainment, don’t you think, for a country where the GDP per capita fails to reach £1000, and 1 in 4 of the country’s 23 million people are short of food?

Of course the money handling skills of the North Korean leaders are infamous, as demonstrated so clearly by the previously featured Ryugyong Hotel which would have been the world’s tallest hotel – if they could have afforded to finish it.

You can read more about the Rungado May Day Stadium at Wikipedia and on The Guardian’s website.

A recent update to the Street View images of Manhattan has added a new feature designed to protect the privacy of innocent people wandering the streets. So what is this incredible new technology? Why, it’s automatic blurry faces of course!

The new system is designed to detect faces in the street view images and blur them out, so everyone looks like they’ve been watching The Ring.

Due to the vast amount of data involved here, the system is fully automatic – which fortunately for us, appears to be prone to making mistakes! For example, it’s not just real faces that get blurred – this roadside advert featuring the face of the Dali lama has also been obscured to protect his privacy rights (although if you move up the street and look back and you’ll be able to make out his face).

It seems that the system really is very good though. Too good perhaps, as demonstrated by this completely anonymous horse in central park.

One of the reasons that Google has implemented this technology now is possibly that the privacy laws in Canada, Australia and much of Europe would not have allowed images like these to be published otherwise, so it appears that Street View will definitely be coming to a city near you soon.

In the meantime, can anyone find any other examples of incorrectly blurred faces? Or perhaps you can recognise someone despite the blurring? Let us know in the comments!

Just over a month since the last update Google have announced new imagery for Google Earth and Google Maps.

The full list of what’s new is available on Google Lat Long.

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