Lawrence has been Street Viewed!

So, Google, pur­vey­ors of “what com­put­ers were sup­posed to do for us,” have this Google Maps fea­ture called Street View. Cars with cam­eras on top cruise around the coun­try, tak­ing pic­tures of… well, of every­thing. Then they load them up online, and when you visit Google Maps, you can see actual pic­tures of the loca­tion you’re look­ing for.

They started with five cities, broad­ened that to fif­teen, now they are up to some­thing like thirty (Wikipedia says 35). While Kansas City got Street Viewed a lit­tle while ago, I was resigned to never get­ting it in Lawrence, a town of only about 140,000, for good­ness sake.

I was wrong.

Look­ing for direc­tions to my tax attor­ney today, I dis­cov­ered that Lawrence had been Street Viewed. Appar­ently Lawrence was included in the KC update this past Feb­ru­ary, though I dis­tinctly remem­ber look­ing for it when I heard it came to KC, but what­ever. Take that, Topeka! And it is awe­some. Scary, but awe­some. If you know where I live, you can go look at my house! (Please don’t be creepy.) The pic­ture is from last sum­mer, judg­ing from the plant­i­ngs and the rock in the driveway.

The wife, when told of this Intar­web cool­ness, gave a lit­tle bit of a shriek (okay, it was more of a polite mur­mur) and imme­di­ately pointed out what this would do for Real Estate… not that we’re look­ing mind you. And she was right.

Has your street’s pri­vacy been invaded yet?