Google Earth gets a street view of Longford
The Google Earth team were spotted in Longford last Thursday taking panoramic street-level photographs of selected areas around the county to feature in its Google Maps and Google Earth online applications.
The arrival of the team's space age looking vehicle attracted lots of attention around the county and the Leader received several calls to report the presence of this unusual vehicle.
One man told the Leader: "I saw it just outside Longford town and I didn't know what it was. I thought it was something to do with a mobile television studio but I wasn't sure."
Another local who knew exactly what the vehicle was, followed it for a short time on Thursday afternoon last to find out exactly where the team were photographing. He informed the Leader: "I saw the black car with a foreign registration number on the Longford Bypass and I knew I recognised it so I followed it.
"It drove into Longford town next and then headed across the Black Bridge and finally out the Ardagh Road when I lost track of it."
Google Earth announced that they were beginning to collect photographs of streets and roads all over Ireland back in March of this year to feature in a 'Street View' section of Google Maps and Google Earth.
'Street View' takes Google Maps to a new level, allowing you to visually explore and navigate a neighbourhood through panoramic street-level photographs.
It enables you to view and navigate 360 degree street level images of various cities around the world, providing greater understanding of a specific location or area.
While Google Earth mapping and photography has been hailed as a wonderful way to promote tourist facilities, it has also been criticised by security experts as a virtual slide show of properties for potential burglars.
Google hopes to launch 'Street View' in Ireland in the near future however no definitive launch date is available at present.
Currently, 'Street View' covers cities and rural areas in the US, New Zealand, Japan, France, Italy, Spain and Australia.
The internet company will now work on editing the photos they took in Co Longford including cutting-edge face blurring technology, which helps to make sure that passers-by in the photographs can't be identified.
The photographs will be ready to use on Google Maps within a few months but it depends on the official launch date of 'Street View' in Ireland.
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Weather for Longford, Ireland
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 11 C to 19 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 9 C to 19 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: South
