Volume 2, Issue 7.

Concept: Google Maps Street Views
A Look Into the Future or a Sneak Peak Behind Closed Doors

Privacy concerns have erupted since the newest addition to Google Maps was unveiled in the recent weeks. Google employees have snapped photos of San Francisco streets and various third party companies have driven through the main streets of other major city streets (Las Vegas, New York, Miami, and Denver), “Street Views” has formed a wide array of 360 degree views of every street.

Since the release of Street Views, there has been an uproar of discomfort. Images have been scrutinized as too intimate and illegal to many people living wherever the Street Views are available. Complaints have been brought up regarding the ability to view license plates, into home windows, and pictures inside Brooklyn’s Battery Tunnel, which has been illegal since September 11th .

One woman dazzled by the new Google feature, zoomed into her home and was shocked to see a perfect picture of her cat, Monty sitting in the windowsill. She told the New York Times, “The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives…The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.”

Google stands by their response that all the pictures were taken in broad daylight on public streets. They do however have a feature that allows people to report any objectionable images, which has kept people from raising voices too high.

View a demo of Google Street Views.

Recipe: .who, .what, .why, and .how of Web Suffixes

We see them everyday. What are they exactly and why do we have them?

What is a web suffix or TLD? – A web suffix or TLD (Top - Level Domain) is the abbreviations that follow after the dot of every domain name. (ex: .com, .net, .org, .biz)
How many suffixes exist? – There are approximately 254 TLDs available with nearly every country and external territory involved with their own personalized country codes.
Why were they created? – They were created with the growth of the internet in mind. Well knowing that there would need to be some separation, TLDs began with classifying types of organizations that would be provided on these websites .com (commercial), .net (network), .gov (government), .biz, .info, etc.
Interesting Trivia: .su is still active and reserved for the Soviet Union despite its fall in 1991.
Who decides and maintains all the regulations? Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) are in charge of regulating and meeting to go over requests of what will and will not be accepted.
Last month, ICANN denied the request to have the suffix .xxx created for all adult entertainment on the web for the third time.
ICANN is also in the works of discussing languages other than English and their specific characters being used in the suffixes.

Learn more about this topic.

Client: Archway Home Plans

2007 Noblestudios.com