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Forever on Street View

Co-workers ham it up as Google camera vehicle snaps them in the act

By: Kevin Rollason

3/12/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 23

Ryan Hill, Aaron Hildebrandt, Meghan Athavale, Valarie Borovytska, Brent Cross and Jeremy Choy (from left) posed for the Street View camera.

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Ryan Hill, Aaron Hildebrandt, Meghan Athavale, Valarie Borovytska, Brent Cross and Jeremy Choy (from left) posed for the Street View camera.

WINNIPEG - A group of Winnipeg co-workers wanted to do Y-M-C-A when the Google Street Search camera vehicle drove past, but instead just had F-U-N.

Oliver Oike, a server designer at Manlab Internet, at 2071 Portage Ave., said he was driving to work last spring when he spotted the Google car, with a large camera on top of the roof, in front of him.

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Many people in Winnipeg and around the world are worried about privacy issues because the Google Street View camera was shooting homes, businesses, vehicles and streets -- but Oike and his co-workers aren't many people.

"I'm the driver of the black SUV right behind the camera," Oike said Wednesday while chuckling.

"I saw the Google van on Portage Avenue, so I called ahead and said everybody should go outside and start jumping."

Jeremy Choy, a web master at the business, took the call and within two minutes he and his quick-witted and witty co-workers were on the sidewalk.

Seconds later, click, and Choy and five others were immortalized by Google.

They can now be seen by computer users around the world after Winnipeg on Tuesday joined cities worldwide in Google Streep Maps.

"I only had time to tell the staff to go outside," Choy said.

"We were going to do a Y-M-C-A, but then the car came so we just did our own thing."

Oike and Choy said earlier this week when Google launched its street-level photographs of Winnipeg, they looked at their address to see if they were there.

"We were curious to see if we were on it," Oike said.

"At first we didn't see us, but then we looked again and there we were," Choy said.

"And we're all blurring faces too. They (Google) take out faces and licence plates."

The photo has already been put onto Twitter and Facebook and the workers have received positive responses from family and friends.

"It's funny to see a bunch of people standing out there," Choy said.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

 

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 3, 2009 A2

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23 Commentscomment icon

Now the world can see all the eyesores and derelict buildings in Winnipeg.

City Hall should be congratulated on their perseverance in not enforcing the derelict/abandoned building By-Laws!

I've been thinking of spelling HELP or something, in ten foot "high" letters on my back lawn, so the next time Google etc update their satellite photos it can be read from "space" Might have to be 15 feet??? Anyone here good with spatial reasoning??? :-)

checked out my street, was making me wonder what day it was, my truck wasn't home and there's my womans car in the driveway and some strangers vehicle there. Now if google can unblock the plate, maybe I can figure out if there's a affair happening in my house. Now who own's a black caddy. Tiger were you at my place?

Jets_Or_Bust GET A LIFE!!! If the Jets were any good or a real and self supporting concern they would still be around today. The only things they left behind are a loosers like you!!!

my co-workers and family and freinds are having a great time with this....checking out our homes and our freinds and family and even our work to see what was happening the day the pictures were taken........from what i have seen so far and by the people i have spoken too, this is totally cool!!!!!! my son saw the google car and waved as it went by as many of you had too............and the clarity of the pictures are awesome.....

Let big brother's reign begin. Welcome to the future, welcome to the surveillance state.

SOMEONE woke up on the wrong side of the floor this morning! Yikes!

I wish I had have known before it came to my house. I would have sat outside shirtless in a lawn chair drinking beer from a cooler and put up a 30 foot "Bring Back the Jets!" sign across my house... now THAT would have been awesome!

@hereandnow

Please dry up! This it is just a fun news story that I am sure most people can appreciate. I enjoyed it and I thank the Free Press for publishing silly news like this to keep things light.

hereandnow obviously read this article, could have just scrolled by, and also decided to comment. What a miserable hypocrite, bash the story itself as not being newsworthy but then comment on it's contents. Seems to me like you are the sad story. I'm pretty sure they advertise in other ways, or did you conveniently ignore that for the sake of rudeness?

Pretty funny Manlab staff! A chance encounter and you guys were on the ball. Although, you admit to using your phone while driving, kinda becoming taboo...

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