March 2009, Google first launched its street view and for a bit of Googley-fun-ness, they announced that they have dressed a man as Wally (or Waldo as others may know him as) with a striped red and white jumper and hat, and of course like the Where’s Wally series, is hidden somewhere in crowd of Street View.
As soon as this was announced, web users teamed up to find Wally, looking through millions of images captured by the cameras on Google’s cars.
Shortly after, Wally was located by the Google Sightseeing team, who announced their find on Twitter. “Here’s Wally! Google announced that Wally was somewhere in the UK Street View, and we found him in London.” The people from the sightseeing team had as much as an idea to his location as everyone else, they tracked him to Putney High Street in south-west London standing outside an O2 phone shop, where he can clearly be seen waving at the camera, wearing the standard Where’s Wally clothes. You may wonder why he is standing outside the O2 shop of all places? Well this is because he was obviously buying himself an iPhone!
A more recent update to Google Street View has gone live, which means 98% of the UK’s road are now mapped. So basically this means that the road your house is on is most likely covered via Street View, and you will be able to see your curtains of your own house. Let’s just hope you weren’t doing a naked pose out of the window at the time!
I was searching Street View the other day to find places I knew of and I went to look for a friend’s house, only to discover that his road was one of the 2% that isn’t covered by Street View… it’s a shame really, he lives in a pink house!
Some people have found pictures of themselves on the Street View maps, which became an identity issue as they captured photographs of people without their consent. Google simply blurred the faces of all the people to solve this issue. Also they blurred the number plates of cars to ensure individuals could not be identified.
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