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I saw the Google street view car on my way home from work today as I was passing Kastl in northern Bavaria. So whenever street view for Germany finally launches you will be able to see my car if you go to the right stretch of road. On strasse 2166 in Landkreis Tirschenreuth in the Oberpfalz. I got excited when I saw the car, thus confirming that I am indeed a geek because both history and science interest me as well as most things technological. I am however, comfortable in my geekness because my wife is generally accepting of it.
That is geek of you. Yet fascinating at the same time. ;D Let's hope that the license plate blurrer technology that Google uses was working so that your plate isn't shown on Street View. I've actually been using Street View quite a bit recently as I am doing brief writings on the history of restaurant buildings in my city, and when I don't have photos of certain buildings I can usually find them on Google. It's a pretty valuable service, IMO.
I think Street View is one of the neatest ways to use technology. It lets you visit places vicariously. I will never get to go to all the places I want, this is one way to get a good worms eye view. Plus I don't buy all the invasion of privacy garbage.
I've also been using Google news search a lot recently since I have to research obscure buildings which don't have much written on them in books or journals. In fact, Google has been pretty invaluable here. It allows you to search news archives dating back to at least 1900, and although some of the stories come with a price tag, there's also a way to limit the search to free articles from the archives. It's nice to be able to read an article from the MSM written in 1990 or so on something I'm researching, especially when that information can't easily be found elsewhere.So Google has been a friend of mine of late. Too bad since I'm making an effort to use Bing as my default search engine because I'm not a big fan of Google as a corporation.
I've also been using Google news search a lot recently since I have to research obscure buildings which don't have much written on them in books or journals. In fact, Google has been pretty invaluable here. It allows you to search news archives dating back to at least 1900, and although some of the stories come with a price tag, there's also a way to limit the search to free articles from the archives. It's nice to be able to read an article from the MSM written in 1990 or so on something I'm researching, especially when that information can't easily be found elsewhere.
Well it appears that Google isn't done yet...Google Quietly Quadruples Its Newspaper ArchivesSee the article for a link to a paper that has been archived from 1753. What I say about not liking Google the company still stands, but as far as the actual service goes, it's turning into a historian's best friend...
