This is Naval Air Station Sigonella, a U.S. Navy installation in Sicily, Italy, as seen in this image on Google Earth that was originally captured on June 27th, 2006.

This next image of exactly the same area is from Microsoft Live Maps, and far from simply being a much older image taken before the facility was built, this was actually captured in 2007…

Thanks to widespread coverage, many people are now familiar with the idea that “sensitive” areas of our planet are being hidden from view in the images that online mapping services display.

It’s also commonly understood that the images are usually altered by the company who originally took them (rather than Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, or any other buyer), allowing them to remain in line with their local laws and regulations.

Such areas include military installations, government buildings, and airports – but the point is usually simply to prevent people from viewing the exact details of the site, rather than attempting to deny their very existence.

Last year we saw some imagery in the Netherlands had been altered in a more dramatic way – drawing the ridicule of the Photoshop Disasters blog in the process – which in turn led to even wider recognition of the attempted cover up.

Well, it seems that the companies engaged in these activities have been paying attention, because closer examination of the supposed location of NAS Sigonella reveals that while there are clearly artificial repetitions of parts of the image, the overall result is by far the best Photoshop job we’ve seen on either MS Live or Google Maps.

Unfortunately, to the west of the site we can still see part of a runway that our inexperienced Photoshopper neglected to cover up – so there’s definitely still room for improvement.¹

So is this the start of a new trend? Will satellite and aerial photography companies now need to employ full time digital artists to hide things the governments don’t want you to see? Or is this just another example of Microsoft attempting to up the ante against Google?

Read more about NAS Sigonella at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Al Cohole.

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the launch of our first foreign language translations of Google Sightseeing, when we launched Google Sightseeing Français translated by Julien Gremillot, and Google Sightseeing Italiano translated by Alexei Popov.

Many congratulations to Julien and Alexei, who have both now translated more posts than there are days in the year!

Since then both sites have grown considerably – proving very popular with their readers, and both Julien and Alexei have started writing their own unique posts too.

In addition to French and Italian now have Google Sightseeing Deutsch translated by Jenni and Joel Fuchs, who are working really hard to bring Google Sightseeing to the German speaking world, and Google Sightseeing Nederlands which has been recently re-launched by the able team of Karel Gillissen and Willem Hage.

Recent highlights of our translators doing their own posts have been Julien’s French version of our Top 10 Rudest Place Names in Britain, entitled Top 10 des noms de villes grossiers en France, and the Jenni and Joel’s rude German version – Top 10 Unanständigste Ortsamen in Deutschland.

Of course we’re not done with our quest to bring satellite sightseeing to the world! Over at Google Sightseeing Español we’re currently looking for a new Spanish writer to continue the excellent work Eduardo Moreno began and If you’re a GSS reader who is fluent in a language other than English, perhaps you’d like to get involved? We’d love to hear from you if you think there’s a case for bringing Google Sightseeing to your mother tongue!

Here in Rome, scooters are an extremely popular way of getting around the city, and Italian drivers are generally considered to be a bit crazy.

This combination inevitably results in the occasional accident, and as the Google car approaches this corner a man can be seen getting out his car, although we can’t yet tell why.

As the Google car draws nearer we see that the inevitable has occurred – a scooter rider has been struck from behind and thrown from his bike! It seems that this is such a frequent occurrence however, that the passers-by barely care that a man has been run over.

Our Google driver is equally considerate, and drives around the fallen scooter driver like he was a misplaced traffic cone.

As the car drives on, we can rubberneck back around to see that there appears to be some disagreement taking place! Is another street fight about to kick off perhaps?

Oh dear, it seems that our unfortunate car driver may have a dent in the bumper of his Mercedes.

This is it, it’s all going to kick off now! Get ready for a pounding!

Suddenly however, things seem to have cooled off. Perhaps our scooter rider saw sense and decided it wasn’t worth it. He returns to his bike and tries to get it back up on its wheels. He doesn’t appear to be doing very well however!

Fortunately our car driver decides to put their disagreement aside, and just before the imagery changes to a different day, we can see the two men working together to get the toppled scooter back on the road.

Oh, it gives you a kind of fuzzy feeling huh?

Thanks to Edward Betts.

Update: Post corrected to say he was driving a scooter, rather than a moped, which would usually have pedals.

Despite Google’s oh-so-clever “face-blurring” technology, sometimes people’s faces don’t get recognised by the system, and make it onto the Street View imagery unaltered.

Here at the Colosseum in Rome, a couple found a perfect way to fool the camera… by engaging in a steamily passionate kiss!

This kiss was so passionate in fact, that someone at Google appears to have been charged with manually pixellating the offending image – presumably to save us the embarrassment of having to see a couple kissing.

Like no-one’s ever seen that on the Internet before…

What is interesting though, is that they bothered to pixellate the image themselves, rather than (as we’ve seen many times before) just remove the image completely. Presumably this is thanks to the fact that the Colosseum is one of Italy’s most famous tourist destinations.

The moral of the story? If you want to be seen on Google Street View doing something outrageous, make sure you’re in front of a hugely recognisable landmark.

On first glance it looks like the guy driving this www.rentandrent.it van on the outskirts of Rome has been caught red handed by the Google Street View camera, whilst engaged in the process of attempting to procure the services of a prostitute.

On closer examination however – it seems like a strange place to be trawling for sex. And what is the woman doing exactly? And what are the things at her feet? Bottles perhaps, but what for?

So Italians, is this a well known pick up spot? Or is there something more pedestrian going on?