Google's Street View Starts Blacking Out Parts of the U.K.

I find this somewhat humorous because London has tons of surveillance cameras all around the city, but since the launch of Google's Street View in the U.K., dozens of photos have been removed after privacy complaints (and for other reasons, like one of a man relieving himself on a street).

Street View images can be removed via a simple process, as I've indicated before, by bringing up Street View Help, click a link, and select "This image infringes on my privacy," or any of a few other reasons (see above).

And that's apparently what's happening. According to a Google spokesperson, the number of removal requests has reached the "hundreds," but it had been "less than expected."

"We take privacy very seriously which is why when we announced Street View for the UK we explained our easy to use removals process for images people found inappropriate - simply click to report a concern and report the image."

One such image which was removed is above: a man exiting a sex shop. His face is blurred, but still. Google says its software automatically blurs '99.9 per cent' of faces and car number plates.

The British cities on Street View are Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Southampton, Swansea and York.

Gmail Gets an "Undo Send" Feature

How many times have you hit "Send" on an email, only to realize you goofed. More often than you want to admit, right? Outlook has a recall feature that works on Exchange ... some of the time. But basically emails sent via the Internet, once you hit "Send," they're gone. Until Gmail's "Undo Send" feature, that is.

It's another Gmail Labs feature, so to enable it you have to go into Settings, Labs, scroll down to Undo Send and enable it.

It's the same thing as sending any other email via the Internet, though. Once it's gone, it's gone. What "Undo Send" does is hold your email for 5 seconds before sending it.

During that time, if you click the "Undo Send" link, it will not only stop the email, it will roll back the email to the point you were at in composing it before you hit "Send."

Why only 5 seconds? They didn't want to add significant lag to the emailing process. You know how people complain when they don't get something "right now." Still, they are taking feedback, and will obviously tweak it as necessary.

Will it save you? I tested it and it worked. Don't try to send yourself an email to test it, though. In that case the email still showed up. Sending an email to my wife, and hitting "Undo Send" worked great, however.

This isn't the first Gmail Labs feature set to save you from yourself. Google earlier introduced Mail Goggles which would keep you from sending an email if you were too drunk or groggy to answer a math question.

Sony, Google Throw Down the Gauntlet at the Kindle

Sony and Google announced on Thursday a deal whereby 500,000 public domain books from Google's book digitization project will now be available for free for the Sony Reader Digital Book PRS-505 and PRS-700 devices.

Owners of the older PRS-500 readers are out of luck, however.

While this is a nice add for the two devices, which compete head-to-head with Amazon's Kindle 2, it loses something in the translation, at least in the U.S. Why? The lack of a wireless connection for the Sony Readers.

Of course, since the Kindle and Kindle 2 use Sprint's CDMA service, that means that Sony has an opportunity in GSM-only regions, and it needs to take advantage of that while it can.

To use the service, you need to install the Sony eBook Library software. Search the library and when you find something, load it onto your device.

The Kindle is sort of the iPod of digital e-book readers. They don't use the open ePub format, they definitely don't want you to buy books from somewhere else, and they sure are dominant.

Makes you wonder what would happen if Apple jumped in and started offering an e-book reader of its own, linked to iTunes. Of course, Steve Jobs feels that books are more or less dead.

In fact, here's a jab at Amazon.com in the press release. Steve Haber, president of the Digital Reading Business Division at Sony Electronics said (emphasis mine):

"We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform and making it easy to find as much content as possible - from our store or others - whether that content is purchased, borrowed or free. Working with Google, we can offer book lovers another avenue for free books while still providing a seamless experience from our store."

Just remember, these are public domain books, so while you can find classics like "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," and "Black Beauty," don't expect anything new.

In conjunction with this announcement, Sony lowered the price of the PRS-700 to $350, while the PRS-505 is $300.

Google's Street View Launches in the U.K., the Netherlands

Is it time to start a pool on how long it takes for the first privacy lawsuit against Google to be filed in the U.K.? Why? Because Google's Street View has launched in 25 cities.

Street View is a feature of Google Maps and Google Earth, and provides a 360° horizontal and 290° ground level view.

Here is the list of U.K. cities covered by the new U.K. Street View service: London, Edinburgh, Leeds, Bradford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Swansea, York, Newcastle, Dundee, Southampton, Norwich and Scunthorpe.

Also launching on Thursday was a version in The Netherlands; the number of countries covered is now nine.

Street View was already in other parts of Europe (France, Italy, Spain) as well as Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Google's Street View launched in 2007, and has been the source of privacy concerns and lawsuits. It's even been banned from entering some townships. It's also been banned from U.S. military bases, and been the source of both humor and angst.

But it's also been used to foil a kidnapping.

Additionally, Google will remove images from the service if requested (see that little "Report a Concern link in the embedded map above?).

So, as it continues to roll out, what do you readers think? Cool toy, useful navigation tool, or privacy risk?