Staring Down on Stilts

As they say in Australia. That’s round the other side of the Earth from me right now. Hello from space stilts!

You could send a satellited message like the one above with geoGreeting. It peers down from Google Maps to spell things out with letter-shaped buildings.

Neat, huh?

But there’s a blinking frost about the astro cyclops. We want more freedom to play, less unsolicited surveillance.

Melanie Coles ran free and got drawing on the Earth over in Vancouver. Now we can do find and seek with the satellites instead. Suddenly they seem more friendly.

(via Neil Perkin . Thanks, Neil. I hope you don’t mind this friendly reference.)

The Canadian art student challenges you to Where’s Waldo using a rooftop and Google Maps. Puts a whole different perspective on geotagging. Paint your tag on buildings instead.

But you’re reading this online. I expect you won’t go square-eyed and anti-social working with pixels.

So let me ask you – do you upload pictures to Flickr? Flickr does geotagging. There’s been geotagging for years – and on a lot of photos. Put those photos together and we’re getting something approaching an Earth-sized 3D digital map.

If this is beginning to sound like alienspeak, I refer you to a far brighter earthling.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas gave the world a glimpse of Photosynth last year at TED. I had to rub my eyes.

Hold tight to to your stilts. Then be sure you watch this. We’re gazing into a distant future. But it’s not light years away, my friend.

« Le Cool Book Launch

Mystery on Isle of Dogs »