Google Street View Backpack Now Available To Volunteers

It's not just for obscure Japanese islands anymore: reader NobleSavage writes with news that "If you're a tourism board, non-profit, university, research organization or other third party who can gain access and help collect imagery of hard to reach places, you can apply to borrow the Trekker and help map the world." You can also help map the world (albeit without the very neat Trekker backpack cam) without an application process via OpenStreetMap. But if you had access to a panoramic camera like this, what places or spaces would you want to capture? I hope there will be street view imagery of Petra, but I don't see any yet.

Re:What a coincidence...

[Anonymous Coward]

You shoot someone just because they are on your property and you'll end up in jail faster than you think. Most states have defense laws against aggressive behavior but if you shoot someone who accidentally wanders into your property and your looking at charges. You have a right to defend yourself and your property not just kill someone because they touched your land.

Re:Pitcairn Islands

[Anonymous Coward]

Pitcairn islands, where the men are men, and their daughters are their wives. No, really. Isolation seems to have fucked them up.

Time and work for free

[loufoque]

So essentially Google want people to give some of their time for free in addition of taking ownership of the work they'd be doing?
I doubt volunteers want to give the IP of their work to Google so that they can monetize it.

Google is not a charity

[s7uar7]

I started using Map Maker when it was released here in the UK a couple of months ago. I stopped when I questioned why I was giving my time, knowledge and expertise to a private company for free.

Re:Time and work for free

[richlv]

this is quite different. the result is free for anybody to use, bundle, improve upon. data somebody would be contributing to gmaps stays there - you can not obtain whole google maps data in vector format and do whatever you please with it.

this is what openstreetmap offers :)

Re:Time and work for free

[jklovanc]

I doubt volunteers want to give the IP of their work to Google so that they can monetize it.

You just spent your time to write a comment on Slashdot. That comment could be considered IP. Slashdot then monetizes it through advertising revenue. Did you get paid by Slashdot? You just gave your IP to Slashdot so they can monetize it.

The reason people will do it is that it is a way of recording the things they saw in much greater detail than ever before so they can show it to their friends. The fact that millions of other people can also see it is just a bonus.