Don't kick Google StreetView to the curb

Jonathan Bowers, July 18th 2008, 5:02PM

Last week Google made front page news with the revelation that its StreetView mapping cars had hit the roads of UK cities.

For those of you who don’t know what Google StreetView is, it is the 360 degree photographing of urban layouts to produce a complete online photographic record of any given point within the StreetView map network.

Currently, a host of cities in the US and France have been photo-mapped and uploaded to the Google Maps website, allowing any internet user to view any street included in the network at any time.

With the arrival of the mapping cars in the UK, the same visual access to our streets is imminent and this has resulted in the previously mentioned front page headlines. Privacy campaigners are appalled by the StreetView concept and they argue that it is a massive invasion of people’s privacy.

However, Google has responded by saying it will blur the faces of anyone captured on film and that it will abide by all relevant UK laws.

So are the privacy issues really a concern?

I don’t believe so. Our identities will not really be betrayed by StreetView and while the opponents do have some valid points, I strongly believe that the positives significantly outweigh the negatives.

One quick test of the new application and the fantastic potential of StreetView leaps out at you. I found myself looking at US cities to get a flavour of whether they would be interesting to visit in person. So this technology is a great way to research potential holiday destinations or even to research home purchases. It can also be used to locate sites or to visualise journey routes.

And of course the potential going forward is immense. An interactive feature could expand the possibilities vastly, while StreetView could even become a totally new concept in communication.

As long as the understandable privacy issues are fully respected then I believe StreetView will be an exciting addition to the ever expanding potential of the internet.

One more thought. Whatever happens with the development of this technology, what is sure is that companies employing it will have to ensure that they have the server power to support it.

Increasingly companies are turning to dedicated server solutions to meet increased processing requirements. As a global leader Google will undoubtedly be running its StreetView technology on dedicated servers, so those looking to capitalise on the exciting new potential should definitely consider a dedicated server solution.

Tags: google, hosting, internet
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Is video grinding the internet to a halt?

Jonathan Bowers, July 14th 2008, 2:04PM

It is a familiar scenario: we need more space, so we will add more space, then we expand our habits to fill it and once again we need more space. This is a problematic circle that can be attributed to a number of different areas of life, consider home buying or motorway construction, but for our purposes we are referring to the capacity of the internet super highway.

There was a time when telephone purpose cables and dial-up internet connections were all that were needed to get us speeding along the super highway. But then, when the internet’s popularity took off and its massive potential started to be fully realised, we needed more capacity.

Along came broadband (the cyberspace equivalent to expanding the M6 from 6 lanes to 66 lanes). We could once again speed along the highway but this time in huge trucks full of wonderful cargo such as music and film downloads, online games and other capacity greedy items. Now, however it seems as though our vast broadband super highways are once again clogging up, this time with juggernaut traffic jams.

The doomsday advocates say that our insatiable appetite for online video watching will break the internet by about 2010. However, don’t start panicking just yet. In reality the worst case scenario is that online video streaming use will just slow the internet down to snail speeds, so essentially taking us back to the dial-up era, the metaphorical stone-age of the internet epoch.

It seems that we cannot add capacity quickly enough to deal with increasing usage demand. According to Larry Irving, co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, (from The Observer April 6, 2008) “estimates show US internet traffic increasing at more than 50% a year, with capacity expanding at only about 40% a year.”

While online video surfing has been identified as the catalyst for increased internet capacity demand, experts seem to be divided into two groups with regard to the reason for the new capacity congestion problems.

Some feel that a lack of foresight is to blame. That is to say that the rapid increase in online video usage was not anticipated. The other camp blames market forces, arguing that infrastructure providers are not willing to make the necessary investments to keep up with demand.

If the first is true then the benefit of hindsight will ensure that capacity is geared up to cope with the internet video era soon. As for the second, well it seems to always take the industry time to realise the commercial potential of internet developments. But they will eventually and when they do, the necessary investment in infrastructure will follow.

So it might look as though video is grinding the internet to a halt, but in reality the internet will adapt as it has always done – until the next big thing that is!

Tags: accessibility, broadband, internet, video, websites
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Viacom/YouTube battle threatens to trample web user's privacy

Jonathan Bowers, July 4th 2008, 2:05PM

This week a US court delivered a landmark ruling that raises questions about internet users’ rights to privacy. The ruling comes from the high-profile and very bitter legal dispute between YouTube and Viacom.

In case you are not familiar with the case here is the background.

US broadcasting company Viacom alleges that YouTube infringes its copyright law by allowing parts of its programmes (such as the Late Show with Jon Stewart) to be shown on the YouTube website.

To prove its case Viacom had asked the US courts to grant it access to YouTube’s data. In response YouTube’s owner Google argued that granting this request would compromise end-user’s privacy.

So which got its way? Both and neither it seems!

This week Judge Louis Stanton from the New York district court ruled that Viacom can have “full access” to the YouTube logs. However he rejected Viacom’s request to see the YouTube source code.

So limited access has been granted. Does this represent a well balanced decision? Google, not surprisingly, is not happy and to be fair I think it has a point. Although the US courts have denied access to certain data it is not clear what end user information will be exposed.

The logs to be divulged include information on when each video gets played. However, attached to each entry is each viewer's unique login ID and the Internet Protocol address for that viewer's computer.

Viacom says it will not see this information but as Google is still petitioning to mask the personal data, this aspect of the situation is clearly not yet fully resolved.

The key point is not whether Viacom wants to see this data or not. It is that it may be afforded access to it anyway by the US courts and that sets a troubling precedent.

Upholding user privacy is vital for the continued viability of the internet. If users think that their personal data may be accessed either directly or as a by-product of lawsuits and alike then confidence in the internet will take a hit and that would be a hugely detrimental development.

Tags: viacom, google, internet, video, youtube
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