November
2006
gEarth missing 2006 Brum
Strangely it has taken over a year for people to catch onto the fact that if you are looking at Birmingham on Google Earth you are seeing images which are at least three years out of date. According to gEarth we still have a brown car and a fish pond you know.
“WHERE’S the Bullring? That’s the question on the lips of many proud Brummies logging on the Google Earth to find the new cityscape strangely missing. Elsewhere, Masshouse Circus roundabout is still standing and the Forward statue, which was destroyed by fire in April 2003, can still be seen in Centenary Square.” Source
I’ve often commented about putting a massive “G” on the roof of our house, the ultimate “hello world” but thought maybe the satelite will never return to remap us. Personally I like the old version, I can remember when the area was a massive hole in the ground and I like to see the walkways which took us over the construction sites, the transformation is a massive part of our city and people are too quick to forget what it was like back then. However what is missing from this article is the fact that lower resolution images showing the glass bullring complete were available but they seem to have been over written by even higher resolution images, which are out of date. But do Google’s suppliers have Brummies in their team? Most likely not and it’s not going to be a quick process to acquire those images. About this time last year some parts of Birmingham in gEarth were enjoying a fine summer while other parts were enjoying a bright and vibrant autumn and even now you can see areas of the city where the shadows point in different directions.
What is also missing from the article is the technical understanding of how the system works, and that always saddens me, that people aren’t prepared to understand how or why something works or even motivate people to find out. I’ve heard comments such as “is that real time? can we see people moving” …. this isn’t like the movies or an episode of Spooks there are limitations, it takes some time to map and remap the world guys and cloudy days when the satellite may be overhead make the pass useless.
What an amusing article, I just wasted 5 minutes typing about.
November
2006
I\’ve been tripping over Evening Mail stories a fair bit as part of this Brum Blog malarkey and it\’s always a distressing experience. It\’s like they know what they\’re writing is stupid but they\’re writing to some f****d up agenda or something.