All sights in France

Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Angelina releases updated Geo-Tattoo

Posted by James Turnbull, Tuesday, 7th October 2008

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Angelina Jolie was photographed this weekend sporting version 1.1 of her geocache tattoo.

The original tattoo was four co-ordinates, each pointing to the birthplace of her existing four children, which we mapped on Google Earth last year.

The new additions are both N 43º 41′ 21″ E 07º 14′ 28″, representing the birthplace of new twins Knox and Vivienne.

The lat/long specifically pinpoints Lenval Hospital in the French coastal city of Nice, where the children were born in July of this year.

Presumably she’s going to have to stop collecting children soon, or she’ll run out of space on her arms…

Thanks to SMH

Big Keys

Posted by James Turnbull, Friday, 29th August 2008

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On display outside a French High School, there’s what is claimed to be the world’s largest key.

The key measures around 10.5 metres long, although may have lost its title earlier this year when Bethlehem claimed the crown1.

It’s still impressive, especially in the fact that it’s completely useless.

Not as large, but much more mysterious, is a 8.5m key lying around a carpark in Denver.

This key doesn’t appear on Live Search Maps2 or the Google Street View imagery, so it was either dropped by a careless giant, or isn’t a key at all. So what is it?

Thanks to Felippo & dda.


  1. Did you also notice the far too big keyhole behind the key? 

  2. Have Microsoft renamed their mapping service again? I thought it was called Live Maps last week… 

Backchannel

Posted by Alex Turnbull, Tuesday, 26th August 2008

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Sorry folks, no post today.

However, many of you may be unaware that we operate a “backchannel” of sorts over at Twitter, where as well as a feed of all the posts from the main site, we also post some interesting stuff that doesn’t make it on here. So for the many people that don’t read our Twitter page, here the best links that you missed!

If you’d like more like this, subscribe to our twitter feed!

Google Attempts Vehicular Assassination

Posted by Alex Turnbull, Wednesday, 20th August 2008

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As the Google Street View car drives down this small Parisian side street, we can see an approaching Rollerblader, glancing down the street at the oncoming car.

However the sight of the massive camera mounted to the roof must have shocked the balance out of him, as our rollerblader pirouettes to his knees right in the middle of the road, directly in the path of our oncoming vehicle!

The crash to his knees must have been quite dramatic, as the people on the pavement have heard what happened, and we can see that they’ve turned to see what’s going on. But with the Google car careering towards him, is it going to be lights out for our poorly-balanced hero?!

Fortunately for everyone involved, the Google Car must have slowed in time to save his bacon, as in the next frame our hero is safely on his way down the street – presumably hoping to hell that the Google Camera wasn’t recording when he fell on his ass right in front of it…

This isn’t the first time someone has been captured falling off their wheels in front of the watchful Google Street View eyes, but it is the first time Google has tried to flatten the unfortunate person altogether.

Presumably the evidence will be removed any second now.

Thanks to Street View Fun.

Watching Me Watching You

Posted by Rob, Wednesday, 30th July 2008

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Google is in trouble. The company now has so much money that it’s finding it increasing hard to spend it all – so as a first step has decided to employ a 2 car convoy to capture Street View images!

This means that we get a nice close up of the camera that is used, but strangely it doesn’t appear to be the same as the ones that have been caught elsewhere in either Paris or London.

As has been widely rumoured, it’s possible that this second car is separately collecting 3D imagery using a special laser camera (which bounces off nearby objects to create a 3D map, onto which the street view imagery can be laid).

The two cars rather quickly split up though, so they were probably just setting off from the same place. Of course, there’s always the possibility that new 720° imagery is just round the corner!

Thanks to streetviewfun.