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Google takes you inside Anne Frank's childhood home with Street View
June 12th is the 90th birthday of Anne Frank, and to mark the occasion, Google is letting you step inside the childhood home of the diarist. A virtual exhibit in the Arts & Culture app and website takes you inside Merwedeplein 37-2 in Amsterdam. You can also explore the space through an indoor version of Street View. All the 1930s-styled rooms of the home, which is now a temporary home and work space for refugee writers that's closed to the public, are viewable.
Panoskin makes it easier to post GoPro footage to Street View
Uploading your own Street View Photos -- even with a 360-degree camera -- can be a pretty laborious process. Google introduced "Street View ready" standards in 2017 to make things easier, and now things are set to become even more straightforward. Chicago-based company Panoskin is launching a desktop app that lets anyone with a GoPro Fusion 360 camera convert and publish their footage directly to Street View.
Google opens virtual version of fire-ravaged Brazil museum
A couple of years before a fire devastated the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro in September, Google's Arts and Culture team started working with the museum to digitize the collection. Just a few months after the inferno, Google has reopened the museum's doors -- albeit in a virtual form using Street View imagery and digital exhibits.
Google's Street View cars will monitor London's air quality
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has made it one of his missions to curb pollution and improve air quality in the capital. Data plays an important role, and as part of a new project, two Google Street View cars will begin pulling double duty as mobile air quality monitors next month. The vehicles have been fitted with sensors that will measure pollutant levels, as well as temperature, humidity and pressure, once every 30 meters as they wind their way around London. This data will be used to complement readings from another 100 static sensors dotted around the city. London has several veteran sensor networks and is no stranger to shorter-term monitoring projects, but this new initiative is said to be on a different scale, capable of painting a near real-time, "hyperlocal" picture of air quality across the capital.
Google adds Disney parks to Street View
Last year Google revamped its Street View cameras to help us better map the real world, now it's taken the technology to a much more magical land. From today, you'll be able to explore inside 11 Disney Parks, getting an on-the-ground glimpse of all its castles, rides and attractions, including the captivating Avatar-themed world of Pandora. It'll also definitely prove popular when the Star Wars area opens up next year. Now if only the imagery was available in real time, so we'd know whether to bother lining up for Splash Mountain or not.
Google gives Insta360 Pro the Street View stamp of approval
You no longer need a Trekker if you want to help capture Street View experiences. Google has certified the Insta360 Pro as the first "Street View auto ready" camera, allowing anybody who owns one to contribute 360-degree images to Google's immersive street-level map. You'll be able to control the camera mounted on top of your car through the Street View app and to upload your footage straight from Insta360's Stitcher software.
‘The Agoraphobic Traveller’ confronts anxiety with Google Street View
Flying is Jacqui Kenny's worst fear. Two months ago, the London-based New Zealander learned she would have to travel to New York for the first exhibition of her photography. She hadn't traveled to the city in a decade, and the mental preparation began immediately. She visualized every step of the journey: Boarding at the gate, hearing the plane engine rumble, watching passengers stuff luggage into overhead lockers, the taxi, the takeoff. "If I don't visualize the next step, it feels too surreal," she said. "I feel like it's not really happening, and that is anxiety inducing." Kenny has agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder that, for her, means an irrational fear of busy, public areas and distance from safe spaces. A condition affecting 1.8 million Americans, it leads Kenny to fear losing control, which can spiral into imagining worst-case scenarios. "On a really bad day, even walking to the back aisles of my local supermarket is really difficult," she said. "I think I'm going to have a full-blown panic attack and fall over and shelves are going to go falling. I might hurt somebody; I'll embarrass myself."
Google Earth VR gets new Street View images
Google announced today that it's adding Street View to the Google Earth VR experience. With a new update, users can check out Street View images from 85 countries provided by the Street View team as well as pictures shared by others from around the world. To get there, while in Earth VR, zoom down closer to the street level and see if your controller says there's Street View imagery available. If so, you can then view the area within a 360 degree photo.
Google's new Street View cameras help AI map the real world
Google's Street View cameras haven't changed significantly in 8 years, and that's a problem when the technology world most certainly has. How is the company supposed to fulfill its AI ambitions with 2009-era hardware? Thankfully, it won't have to. Google has revealed to Wired that it's implementing a brand new camera design that should not only produce higher quality Street View imagery, but will prove crucial to Google's use of AI to index real-world locations.
Google's virtual museum tours tell you more about the art
Google has built tools to explore art since 2011, when it began uploading gigapixel images of classic pieces. The tech titan introduced museum floor plans and walking tour info to Google Maps as well as its Art and Culture app, released last July, to dive deep into collections. Now the search giant is combining all those efforts, adding annotations to famous works seen in Street View to give users on digital tours of museums all the artistic context shown to folks walking around the actual institution.
Google Maps uses Street View to keep you on the right path
Google Maps for Android got a slight remake this week, with a couple handy new features on board. It still looks and functions basically the same as the Google Maps you know and potentially love, but Google has smartly integrated some Street View features directly into the navigation view. When you ask the app for directions, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to see the all the turn-by-turn steps as before. But now each step is accompanied by a Street View image of that exact turn.
Google is making 360-degree cameras Street View-ready
It can be a pain to upload your own Street View photos even if you have a 360-degree camera. You may have to stop to take photos every few feet, and then there's the question of getting the spherical shots from your camera to the internet. Google thinks it can help. It's working with hardware partners on "Street View ready" standards that will certify 360-degree cameras based on how easily you can post shots. Street View mobile ready devices let you post directly from an app, with no PC required; auto ready cameras, meanwhile, are designed for capturing high-accuracy shots from your car. VR ready cameras collect the geometry you need for (what else?) virtual reality and connected 360-degree shots, while workflow ready cameras come with publishing tools that upload directly to Street View. In at least some cases, uploading is just a matter of recording some footage (even on the move) and loading an app.
All Google needs to update business info is a Street View photo
Google is no stranger to using machine learning to improve its products -- or save manatees. To that end, the internet juggernaut has announced that its algorithms are capable of successfully pulling business names and phone numbers from Street View photos. In its tests, the technology was successful at "reading" French street signs over 84 percent of the time. Meaning, now a Street View car can roam the streets of a city and fill in a business' Google Maps profile automatically. It stems from Google's work using machine learning and computer vision to blur out faces and license plates.
Google Earth feeds your wanderlust with 'Voyager' stories
There are two things you should never do if you want to maintain productivity: start clicking on links in Wikipedia, or open Google Earth. There are many, many other ways to waste time on the internet but the amount of work hours lost between those two is probably enough to make most managers weep. Your boss won't be too pleased, then, to learn that Google Earth's latest update, revealed today, ratchets up its time-killing potential several notches.
Stare into an active volcano with Google Street View
Standing next to a boiling lake of molten rock the size of two football fields has got to be awe-inspiring, but it's also pretty damn dangerous. Google partnered with two explorers to capture images of one such volcano as they rappelled down the walls of the Marum crater on Ambrym, an island a thousand miles off the coast of Australia. The team carried a Street View camera during their journey to let you see this natural wonder with Google Maps.
Google's new reCAPTCHA automatically tells you're not a bot
Over the years, Google has utilised a number of methods to distinguish between human and bots on the web. Its take on the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) test, known as reCAPTCHA, has required you to transcribe distorted words, confirm Street View addresses or simply just tick a box. Soon, you won't need to do the hard work, because Google's making the system invisible.
Google adds iconic African landmarks to Street View
It's not all jungles, mud houses and wild animals in Africa: the continent has cities, art centers, monuments and other landmarks, just like everywhere else in the world. To bust myths going around about African countries and to give more people a chance to get to know what they truly look like, Google has tweaked Street View to add iconic landmarks and monuments in Ghana, Senegal and Uganda.
Google expands 'Sheep View' project with Trekker cameras
Without the presence of Google, Faroe Island residents had to rely on camera-equipped sheep to provide 360 degree "Sheep View" images of the bucolic isle. While that's adorable, digital tourists probably want to see more than just areas with the most delicious grass. Luckily, Google heard about their plight, and decided to give the burdened quadrupeds a hand with its Street View camera loan program.
Google offers 360-degree tours of US National Parks
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the US National Parks Service, Google has put together a collection of virtual tours combining 360-degree video, panoramic photos and expert narration. It's called "The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks" and is accessible right from the browser. You can choose from one of five different locales, including the Kenai Fjords in Alaska and Bryce Canyon in Utah, and get a guided "tour" from a local park ranger. Each one has a few virtual vistas to explore, with documentary-style voiceovers and extra media hidden behind clickable thumbnails.
One man is cycling the length of Britain in VR
Exercise bikes can be a little boring. Even with some music or mindless TV in the background, it's a mind-numbing workout. Pedalling, pedalling, pedalling. Not for Aaron Puzey. The Brit has developed an app for Samsung's Gear VR headset which displays Street View imagery while he's riding. Using a Bluetooth cadence sensor, which tracks how fast he's pedalling, the app knows when to manipulate and change the panoramas, giving the impression that he's travelling. His goal? To ride the length of Britain, from Land's End in Cornwall to John O'Groats in Scotland.
