Two more incidences of sabotage discovered - see the end of this post

Many people have voiced their concerns regarding the privacy implications of Google’s Street View service - but what if there were a way to “opt-out” of having your neighbourhood displayed online?

Yes, it appears that some enterprising resident of Fairbanks, Alaska, has worked out how to completely disable the Street View car’s onboard recording device! Even better, the process doesn’t involve any technical wizardry - all you need to do is stick a plastic bag over the top of the camera.

We can be quite sure this is a plastic bag too, because it actually says “plastic bag” on it. Unfortunately we’re not familiar enough with Alaskan plastic bags to tell you exactly what shop it’s from.

(Image rotated 180°)

The saboteurs must have been extremely quick on their feet of course, as the bag appeared without any warning while the car was travelling at speed along College Road.¹

The bag remains in place for quite a long way actually - right along College Road, onto the Old Steese Highway and halfway up Minnie Street, where it finally disappears at the junction with Clara Street.

Hopefully the discovery of this exciting technique will allow privacy advocates everywhere to finally thwart Google’s endlessly evil efforts to provide us all with really useful driving directions!

Update: It seems those sneaky Alaskans are disabling Street View cameras with anything they can get their hands on - as proven by these images captured by a vehicle in Anchorage. Thanks to Alaskan in the comments.

Update 2: Again in Anchorage, commenter Barry from Alaska caught the Street View camera wearing what looks like a tin-foil hat.

Thanks to Alden.

It’s been just over a month since Google added 12 new US cities to Street View, and yesterday we got new imagery in another 13 cities, and interestingly, a US national park! Here’s some of the highlights, including links straight there:

• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Anchorage, Alaska
• Austin, Texas
• Cleveland, Ohio
• Fairbanks, Alaska
• Little Rock, Arkansas
• Madison, Wisconsin
• Nashville, Tennessee
• Rockford, Illinois
• Richmond, Virginia
• Spokane, Washington
• St. Petersburg, Florida
• Tampa, Florida

Finally, Google have also added imagery for the few roads that run through Yosemite National Park, California, which enables us to see some pretty stunning scenery.

Here’s El Capitan, a 910 metre vertical rock formation that’s a popular challenge for rock climbers, and some spectacular Giant Redwoods living up to their name!

Read the full story at the Google Lat Long Blog, read more about El Capitan and Giant Redwoods at Wikipedia.

The Google Lat Long blog has announced that Google has just added 12 more US cities to their street view coverage, bringing their total coverage to, um.. lots. The new cities added are as follows:

• Albany and Schenectady, NY
• Boise, ID
• Juneau, AK
• Kansas City, MO
• Manchester, NH
• Milwaukee, WI
• Research Triangle Park (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill), NC
• San Antonio, TX
• Salt Lake City, UT

And presumably just for today (because today is Valentine’s Day in case you’d forgotten), it seems the little Street View guy is standing on a little love heart.

Aww, puke.

On a frozen Alaskan lake…

it appears that someone’s been messing around on snowmobiles…

and here’s the culprits!

Thanks: XF

Have you ever wondered what kind of camera takes the aerial photographs Google use? Well, at least in Anchorage, Alaska, the company taking the pictures uses a Zeiss RMK TOP 15 Aerial Survey Camera System.

These are the Diomede Islands, two islands only 3km apart but one is in Russia, the other in the USA. These islands are right in the middle of the Bering Straights and the international dateline runs right in between them. Therefore, you can stand on the eastern island in Alaska and look into “tomorrow” in Russia, pretty trippy.

The Diomede Islands are often mentioned as likely intermediate stops for some kind of bridge or tunnel spanning the Bering Straits, which would be one big and expensive bridge!

Thanks: Adrian & Gut

Finally! We have proof that Google is hiding things from us in Alaska, Mexico and er… New Jersey. Hmmm. Anyway, it’s a conspiracy I tell you!

Firstly stretching over a large part of Alaska, all the way into the Yukon territory, is this gargantuan hole in the landscape. Interesting shape too…

Next we leap to the other side of the country for a very strangely-shaped hole West of El Paso. See the odd in-road of detail at the bottom-left corner of the rectangle? Weird.

While we’re down in Mexico, look at this super-cool hole which appears to be eating the surrounding landscape. Good lord!

Another country-wide leap and we’re somewhere off the coast of New Jersey, where this unsuspecting little boat is about to steer itself straight into the next episode of Lost!

However, could this incredibly exciting conspiracy theory simply be something much mre mundane..?

Muchos gracias to Eder Chiunti, Dan Karran, Lurlock, JoakimE and Ian.

This one might not be new to some of you, but this picture of a sea plane taking off in Alaska was too good not to post If you look around the edges of the port (or is it dock?) you can see hundreds of other sea planes parked (should this be anchored?), most of which are brightly coloured for some reason.

Thanks: paulio