A Google-mobile has been spotted in Broughton.
The distinctive vehicle, vaguely resembling either a BBC Play Away presenter being skewered by a set of traffic lights attached to an anvil or a BBC Play Away presenter being mounted by an American Footballer – was first spotted by Spurtle informants early yesterday evening on Bellevue Street.
This morning it was rediscovered shortly before 10.00am, parked outside Joey D's.
The apparatus on the roof comprises 9 cameras to take 360º near-HD images of the surroundings. These images are afterwards assembled into Google Earth’s and Google Maps’ Street View service: a gross invasion of privacy bemoaned, deplored and used daily by millions across the UK since 2009.
David Sterratt – who chatted to the driver this morning – adds:
The centre of Edinburgh is filmed every two months, but not when the temperature is below 0 ºC or above 30 ºC. The driver has a monitor which shows the day's route. Today that route is pretty much the Broughton area. Some roads on the map don't actually exist due to changes in layout, and the system can be confounded by one-way traffic management. This driver works in Edinburgh and the west of Scotland. He wishes he'd been given the Islands to photograph. Some members of the public can be polite and interested, he says. Some can be aggressive, not wishing their photo to be taken. There is an option to have your image removed from Street View.
If you find yourself being filmed by the Google-mobile, your facial expression will be automatically blurred out of all recognition afterwards. Those wishing to draw attention to serious privacy issues should therefore either append messages to nearby street furniture (as in Mansfield Place, pictured below, Breaking news, 8.5.14) or strip naked and use appropriate hand signals instead.
Have you seen the Google-mobile out and about across Broughton? How did you react? Let us know by email: spurtle@hotmail.co.uk or Twitter: @theSpurtle or Facebook: Broughton Spurtle
[Photos top-right and middle by David Sterratt]
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@theSpurtle Filmed every 2 months...and yet Street View still showing images from 2012 (and 2008 in part)...
@NewTownFlaneur Bit like CEC rolling programme of road-surface upgrades: mysterious and occasionally patchy.