So a few times over the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen cars driving down the streets of San Francisco with 8 digital SLR cameras attached to the roofs, for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why they would be just taking photos of the street.

It reminded me of how they made the Matrix bullet time with multiple cameras facing in on the subject. You can find a very thorough explanation of the Bullet Time technique on YouTube

Well, I’m positing that with the cameras facing out, it’s the work of Google, digitizing the “Street Views” of The City for their Google Maps application.

It’s incredible, I just needed to look up my friend’s zip code and typed in his address, and then I was given the option to check out the street view. This is especially useful if you’re on foot and don’t have GPS, you can actually *visualize* the place you’re headed to.

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