Looking at Daybreak, Utah In a New Way

At about this time last year I wrote a post about the Streetview technology that Google integrated into their popular maps interface. Another useful web application that has been developed by Microsoft allows the user a "bird's eye" view of any area in the Salt Lake Valley, including Daybreak. This has been integrated into their maps application so to access it you just need to go to maps.live.com. Once you are in the maps section you need to zoom in on the area that you want to look at with bird's eye. Once you are zoomed in close enough the bird's eye option will be available in the navigation bar in the top left of your map screen.
You can zoom in fairly close too.

One of the best features of this web application is that you can view the same spot from four different angles: North, South, East and West.

Daybreak on YouTube

Youtube has been one of those technologies that has taken the internet by storm. The idea for Youtube started in 2005 and by July 2006 the company announced that 65,000 new videos were being uploaded daily. It is now the third most popular website on the internet behind google and yahoo and has had a total of 5 billion videos viewed as of July 2008. In 2007 Youtube consumed as much bandwitdth as the intire internet in the year 2000. With all of these videos uploaded to this site, it did not suprise me to find videos that featured areas of Daybreak.

Of course, many of these videos are not by residents. In fact, most of them seem to have been made by Liberty Homes or other real estate agents. These videos take you on tours of the interiors of homes that are on the market. Not a bad idea considering you can now take a tour of a home without having to leave yours.

Other videos that come up if you input "Daybreak Utah" in the search field include a tour of Daybreak by a couple that drove around during the North Shore exibition. Another features a family fishing at Oquirrh lake. The video was posted by metallica mom if that tells you anything. The final video that I found features teenagers skating the "skatable art" in the new Eastlake park. The skater carries the camera with him as he goes over the humps of the "monster."

Who knows, maybe we will see more videos posted in the future as more people start carrying video cameras everywhere. If you have a video that you would like to mention, just leave the link in the comments section of this post.

Google - Going Too Far?

I found in the news today that the street view feature of google maps and google earth is now active along the Wasatch Front. This feature shows street level photographs along all of the public roads in our area. You can look at photographs of every house in Daybreak with this feature. I can definitely see this as being a useful resource for those who might live in another state and are thinking of moving to Daybreak. A great way to preview the neighborhood. You can see anything that a person might see during a casual walk down the street. However, I feel this presents some danger. What if someone uses this new tool for purposes that are not benign in nature? Could this tool be used to preview a house before it is burglarized? The answer is that it can be. Just like any other tool we have created, this too can be abused. As for privacy and the law, Google has not broken any laws by integrating these photographs into Google Earth and Google Maps. The law provides that as long as a person is on public property, they can photograph anything within sight. Of course there are some exceptions to the rule, but I could not find any that would apply here.

The pictures were taken by a camera mounted on a Chevrolet Cobalt. Google had hundreds of them deployed to cities across America to accomplish this task. If you pan down in the pictures you will see part of the car. The pictures were taken before Halloween as many of them feature pumpkins and other Halloween decorations. Many of them feature Daybreak residents and kids. However, the pictures are of such a quality that faces, license plates, house numbers, etc. are difficult if not impossible to make out. Part of the picture is obscured by the exhaust of the vehicle as well. I recommend that you go to Google Maps and take a look for yourself. You might be surprised at what you see.