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Instead of driving a car all over the place, Google should get a fleet of boats and make a street view equivalent of every coastline.
This would obviously be a long and daunting task, but this is the halfbakery, and just think of the results. Once complete, the shipwrecked splendor of The Skeleton
Coast would be as accessible as the harbour of Rotterdam, the Fjords of Norway, the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, or the icy inlets of Greenland.
I imagine certain countries would be more problematic than others. North Korea, to name just one of many, but that's a mere detail to be overcome.
California Coastline
http://www.californiacoastline.org/
A start... [csea, Oct 15 2010]
Washington State Coastline
http://apps.ecy.wa.gov/shorephotos/
And another... [csea, Oct 15 2010]
Google Riverview
http://unconfirmeds...es.com/?itemid=3917
Recent April Fool's joke. Looks like fun, actually. [jutta, Oct 16 2010]
[link]
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As a snorkeler, freediver, and spearfisher I regret that I can only offer one pastry. |
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Stage 2 would also cover navigable rivers and canals. |
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Problem; coastlines are fractal entities, and therefore of infinite length ... |
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Not at the scale of a boat they're not. And not at the level of human eye resolution either. |
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Who said the eyes would be human? |
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Coastal charts used to have sketches and headings on them. This would be much nicer. |
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Shirley it exists? It damn well should. [+] |
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// the Cliffs of Moher // sp. Cliffs of Insanity |
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Yep THE. It got transposed in the action of rapid typing. |
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Ah, you must be stereo typing. |
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Actually, nothing in this universe can have infinite length without being infinitely big as no features below a plank length exist in practice. |
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//no features below a plank length exist// - it depends how long the plank is, unless the plank is as long as the Planck length, but that would be silly wouldn't it? - I mean, who would want a plank that short? |
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//Problem; coastlines are fractal entities, and therefore of infinite length// So are hedges I imagine, but cameras have no problem photographing them any more than they would coast lines. |
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the
Now look where it's turned up. |
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[xenzag]: You might be underestimating the power of this: Accessible, schmaccessible. Searchable - now that's something.
Looking for a good beach view?
Looking for a natural harbour or lagoon?
Looking for a links golf course? |
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... Now I am pondering. You are more likely to search for streets by their name or some other location datum - rather than search for "wide cobbled street". Coastlines might be different - you would search for them by characteristic as well as name or location(?).
Is Streetview just a visualisation of the Google database as a whole (linked by location)? If so then Google Coast Line is a good extension. If the Coast Line had meta data ("sandy beach" etc.), then would it be more powerful - or would it still only be a visualiser built on top of a more rich and detailed Google database? |
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Can we change the name to "Coast View"? |
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You know, like Street View. |
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With girls in bikinis instead of winos. |
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And take the photos at several different distances from shore--two-mile, half-mile, and hundred yard, say--depending on the nature and uses of different shores (a mangrove swamp and a cliff don't need much imaging). The photo-location track could be shown from above just like in Street View. |
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That would take care of the fracticality. |
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"We've got your fracticality, right here." |
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[+] anybody else want to go underwater with this ? |
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SCUBA = Showing Coastlines- Underwater, Beaches & Aerial |
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This could only lead to a higher concentration of topless sunbathers than Google street view, so [+]. |
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If you're able to reach him on the Other Side, please let us
know. |
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Be patient [IT], he will answer after an infinite number of rings. |
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I'm with you [norm] - that's hours and hours of scouting taken care of. |
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Also when doing boat-camping, this could be used for scouting beaching locations, camping spots etc. Seems like it would be fairly expensive though - I'd expect light aircraft would be far more efficient than a boat for scouting the coastline. |
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// Seems like it would be fairly expensive though-//...But merely a fraction of what has been spent by Google and others to provide street level views of every avenue in every town on every continent from every angle. This idea is only taking a view of the equivalent of one side of a "street" which happens to run from Terra del Fuego to the Bering Straits, or perhaps the Cape of Good Hope to Vladivostok. In fact, if it was available for public consumption, I would wager that there is something very like this already existent by all of the major naval powers of the world with images taken from both periscope depth and coastal fly-over vantages. |
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Seriously I don't think it would be all that difficult, or expensive in comparison to street view. |
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So, according to the ever-useful Wikipedia, apparently the world has ~1.6Mkm of coastline. The flown distance would be somewhat less than this, especially given the resolution used to gather that figure (a different figure proffered is 356000km). So, using the much higher figure, If you use aircraft that can do 1000km in a day, that's 1600 flights. 16 aircraft, 100 days. |
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I'm just saying it's quite doable. |
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...and the sea level is rising, so if they do the waterline and the next 20 metres up, then they won't have to keep coming back. Shades of The Kraken Wakes, but we're doing it ourselves.. |
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