A couple of years ago, the team was here mapping the main streets on Oahu with the Street View car. With the use of the Trike, the main focus is the pathways of the University of Hawaii campuses. From what I could see the image capture equipment looked similar to the system on the car. The system is mounted on a fairly large tricycle. The camera system is powered by a gasoline powered generator but the trike is purely people powered.

In an email response to a question I posed about availability of maps, Google’s public affairs office told me that:

Our Street View trikes have special cameras that take photographs as thee operator pedals along. Once the photographs have been taken, they go through computer processing to make them ready for use on Google Maps. This includes stitching the photographs into 360-degree panoramic images and cutting-edge face blurring technology, which helps make sure that passers-by in the photographs can’t be identified and blurs legible license plates.

Once we’ve collected and processed the imagery for an area, we add it to Google Maps. It goes without saying, therefore, that the imagery isn’t real-time, and usually takes several months from when the photographs are taken until the panoramics appear on Google Maps.

The Street View team is mapping all the community colleges as well as the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus. The Google car and trike then head off to the neighbor islands to map out the UH campuses there.

As I started to leave a crowd began to form around the Google Trike to snap some photos. It is an interesting time for Google. Their popularity is undeniable but places like Germany and Japan are reacting vocally against their lost of privacy resulting from the Street View images. Yesterday a Federal judge said Google could be held liable for ‘wiretapping” for collecting wifi data on Street View runs. And on top of all this is the Federal Trade Commissions investigation of Google for antitrust business practices.

Someone once told me, “you know you’re successful when everyone wants to sue you. Just take a number and stand in line.”

The next thing I did was search for applications. The Droid menu includes something called a Market launchable from an icon that looks like a little briefcase. Clicking that brings up the Android marketplace. From here you can search and select from thousands of Android apps. The big difference from the iPhone is Google is not restricting any apps from being made available for the Droid. The vetting process that Apple subjects all the apps getting into the iTunes Store is a big sore point for many developers. As will all things there is a plus side and a downside. For Google Android it is open to anyone wanting to develop for their Droid phones.  The downside is that there exists the possibility for some nefarious applications to be downloaded to your phone. In the Apple case, they control access but with the promise that it will be a user friendly environment.

Once you find an application you like in Market you just click on it and Install. The app gets downloaded directly to your phone from the Verizon 3G network. I tried a few of the popular titles like Seesmic for Twitter access, Yelp for restaurants and ShopSavvy for barcode reading. All worked fine except Yelp did not have the augmented reality feature as found on the iPhone version. I did like the Google Goggles app just announced last week. With it you can snap a picture of a book, a product, a landmark, even a face. Goggles will then scan the image and return search information based on your image. Very cool.

The Motorola Droid phone is solid, even a bit heavier than the iPhone 3GS. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the physical keyboard but people complained about the iPhone screen keyboard when it first came out. My only comment is since the Droid has a screen keyboard, it could do away with the physical keyboard and reduce some weigh and complexity. The screen for the Droid is very crisp making for clear images. I also like the Voice activation capabilities with the Droid. I must also mention, last week there was an upgrade to the Android operating system to 2.0.1. The phone automatically prompted me of the update and proceeded to download it. Quite seamless.

All in all a very nice phone. One that will be a major player in the smartphone market. Right now though IMHO, the Droid is more suited for the early geek adopter. The true test is the Mom test. Moms are more incline to get immediate benefit from the iPhone before the Droid. I’ll update this post as I get more information. Unfortunately I will have to return this phone shortly. Stay tuned to the Dec. 30 edition of Bytemarks Cafe where we will have a couple of gadget geeks on to talk about their impression of the Droid.

• Google Docs – Office suite
• Zoho – Office suite
• Evernote – Notes
• Basecamp – Project Management
• Doodle – Scheduling
• Reqall – Notes
• WhenisGood – Scheduling
• Jott – Voice notetaking and transcription
• Tokbox – Video Conferencing (listener provided)
• Google Voice – Phone aggregation and transcription

And now the news: (*All news stories contributed to by Ryan Ozawa, co-host of Bytemarks Cafe)

• Tesoro Corporation has shipped its first barrels of crude oil from the Atlantic to the Pacific Basin on a reversed Panama pipeline, the company said last week. The 81-mile pipeline, owned by Petroterminal de Panama, or “PTP,” formerly flowed from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Reversal of the pipeline establishes a new conduit for crude oil transportation and will help Tesoro to deliver a broader range of crude oils produced in Africa, the Atlantic region of South America and the North Sea, through Panama.
• Researchers from the University of Hawaii were part of an international team that detonated 80 tons of explosives in an Israeli desert last week to test methods to detect seismic activity across long distances through atmospheric acoustics. The controlled, above-ground explosion in the Negev desert was equal to an earthquake of 3.0 on the Richter scale. The test was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, and coordinated by the University of Hawaii and the Geophysical Institute of Israel.
• Hawaii Biotech, Inc., one of Hawaii’s largest biotechnology companies, announced last week that its one of its dengue vaccines has moved into a Phase 1 clinical study. The study is being conducted at Saint Louis University, and involves double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose-escalation tests on healthy subjects.
• Now that Mauna Kea has been chosen as the site for the Thirty-Meter Telescope, the search is on for the funding and other support needed to build and operate it. And last week, astronomers from China expressed interest in becoming partners. The telescope, which will become the world’s largest when completed in 2019, needs total financing of about $1 billion. Canada and Japan already signed up with the University of California and the California Institute of Technology, which conceived and leads the project.
• Finally, a quick update on a story we first brought to you in July. The Hawaii School Guide, at HawaiiSchoolGuide.com, officially launched yesterday. The website is the brainchild of local entrepreneur and parent Evan Leong. The Hawaii School Guide features a searchable database covering over 800 schools statewide, from over 300 public schools to preschools, private schools, and other education centers.