United Kingdom in the Spring

According to Mail Online, Street View for Great Britain is planned to be released in Spring of 2009.

Google Street View vehicles have been spotted on roads in every section of Great Britain. When Street View is released for the United Kingdom, it will most likely have coverage all over the country like Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.

Street View for Germany has also been scheduled for Spring 2009, but there have been some very serious legal issues that will probably prevent this from happening in Germany and in Switzerland.

Română Drumuri

According to CTI97, a Google Street View van has been spotted in Bucureşti, Romania.

Jittery Japanese

According to Reuters, an educated Japanese group, the Campaign Against Surveillance Society, wants all of Google's Japanese Street View imagery to be completely removed.

Their reasoning, said by Yasuhiko Tajima:

We strongly suspect that what Google has been doing deeply violates a basic right that humans have.

In other words:

We [believe] that [taking pictures] deeply violates [our privacy].

Doesn't this sound familiar? They have nothing to worry about; Google has been working hard to espect people's privacy. ;-)

Upper Down Under

Sorry for the lateness, but the northern part of Australia has been updated in Street View. This was last week, so you can read more about it at the Official Google Australia Blog.

All Over America

After the latest "Update Tuesday", which was enormous, some news websites all over America are kind of, well, freaking out. Here are some articles from all over the Land of the Brave (or not so brave).

• Birmingham, Alabama - Google adds Alabama to online street view mapping
• Great Falls, Montana - Google's Street View now covers Montana
• North Carolina - What does YOUR street look like?
• Charleston, South Carolina - Google Street View finally comes to Chaleston
• Texas - Google's Street View is Here!

Google Circuit View

According to StreetViewFun, a Google Street View car has taken imagery for a future Street View on Thunderhill Speedway in Northern California. These views will probably be published in January 2009.

Do More (and More, and More...) with Your Phone

Street View has now been released on the Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile, according to the Official Google Mobile Blog.

This brings the number of Street View-compatible phones to 5.

New Marking Method

Since Google Street View has so much coverage now, they have removed the camera icons and replaced them with a little picture of Pegman. Although this is good for de-cluttering Google Maps, it's bad for counting how much imagery is currently available. So a new way must now be devised to count the data.

Here is the new way the blog will be arranging it: First the continent, then the country, then the divisions of the country.

Commonwealth of Australia: 8 divisions

French Republic: 21 divisions

Italian Republic: 20 divisions

Japan: 47 divisions

New Zealand: 16 divisions

Kingdom of Spain: 17 divisions

United States of America: 51 divisions

When every major street (on Google Maps, shown in yellow or orange at zoom level 6 [7 in Japan]) in a division is covered, then the division is counted in green as fully covered. If most of them are covered, then the divison is counted in indigo as mostly covered. If less than half of them are covered, then the divison is counted in red as partly covered. If none are covered, then the division is not counted at all.

This new method will be used on this blog's sidebar.

Whoa!

Go to Google Maps and you'll see what I mean by, "Whoa!".

Hey guys, Northern California's finally covered! Heheh.

Google Stunt Car?

This Seattle error was reported by an anonymous commenter here on Street View Stuff. Check out this view, and then move forward.


View Larger Map

It seems that the Google Street View car jumped off the bridge for a little while, and then jumped back on. How in the world did this happen?

Chrome Bug Zapped

According to Download.com, a Street View bug has now been fixed in the new Google Chrome web browser. Google Chrome is an excellent browser; in fact, I'm using it right now to blog this post.

However, the new updated version of Chrome with the Street View bug fixed is a developers-only release, it seems.

Read more here.

Panorama Paranoia IV

Check out this EPR press release. I think I've summarized this privacy stuff enough in previous posts. ;-)

• Panorama Paranoia
• Panorama Paranoia II
• Panorama Paranoia III

SMAPs is over.

SMAPs, a website providing geographical information from New Zealand, has permanently closed, according to its website. Google Maps New Zealand has been listed as an alternative website.

SMAPs has therefore been replaced wth a new Google Maps feature in New Zealand's top real estate website TradeMe, and like so many other real estate websites, a Street View mode has been added, since Street View now has imagery all over New Zealand.

This was done, according to Stuff.co.nz, because SMAPs could not update as quickly as Google does. TradeMe probably wants to be as efficient as possible, so it seems obvious that Street View has been added.

Aotearoa

Most of the streets on the islands of New Zealand have been added to Street View today. You can see the official Google Maps New Zealand page here, or you can go straight to Google Maps or Google Earth and check it out!

View Larger Map

This is the first Street View update without a list of locations, so Street View Stuff predictions will not include lists of locations. This also means that it will be harder to list the current locations, so any suggestions for formatting this data are welcome to the email address at the bottom of the page, or on the comments of a blog post.

Here is a map from Google Maps of what has been covered:

Ae!