If the goal is to prevent people from seeing the image, why go to the local news? Now that the story has been picked up by online media, it will go viral.
I doubt he cares about other people seeing it. I think he just wants to be able to use Google Maps in his home town without stumbling on his son's corpse.
I would post a link, but I have no idea how to do it with the new Google Maps Beta. Much like everything else they've done recently, they've hidden all the functionality with absolutely no benefit, and exposed utterly useless functionality.
They've "fixed" it so that you just copy and paste the URL to share whatever you're seeing in the map. Yes, in some ways, it's not obvious, but mainly because the "obvious" way of sharing the URL didn't work before.
Also, the new maps interface is very unintuitive. I remember there used to be an option to create a shortlink to an exact coordinate: I can't figure out where that is now. There is a 'Save' button, but I think that just saves it to my local machine. How do I share a location?
that blurry square isn't it, if you travel south for about half a block, you'll see a police car, follow that road forward a bit, and you can see a body, and north of that in the field there is a group of law enforcement.
Right click (option click on Mac?) and select 'What's here'. That gives you exact coordinates under the green arrow, with nearest street address under the pink map pin. In this case it's 37.951592,-122.36045. That may be a 14 year-old boy lying there dead and if true it is a terribly sad thing and I hope it is at least blurred out soon.
Opened these coordinates in 2 browsers, one shows old low res imagery with no body, one shows newer high res imagery with body. My guess/hope is that the older low res imagery is being pushed out and just isn't on all servers yet.
I think the main thing I got out of this story is that Rob Enderle is an ass.
The url in the address bar now reflects the current state of the map, and that can be shared. This leaves no shortening option, but it can still be done manually at <http://goo.gl/>.
Yet he's talked to CNN. I'm willing to bet the causality here went the other way. The reporter got a tip about a murder scene (or whatever it was) on google maps, did a little digging to figure out who it was, called the folks involved, and ran with the first lede that would draw links.
"Google says it will replace a Google Maps image after a California father complained it shows the body of his teen-age son, who was shot to death in 2009."
Maybe he didn't know how to reach someone in Google? I don't know, why does that matter?
"Google says it will replace a Google Maps image after a California father complained it shows the body of his teen-age son, who was shot to death in 2009."
EDIT: To remove my own snark as I realized the article was updated. Sorry!
I used to live in this area several years ago. It's really quite a rough area with plenty of shootings and stray bullets to go around. These stories cropped up all the time. I remember discovering at one point that the crime in Richmond was worse than Compton. Not sure if it's still true or not.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 1176 ms ] threadI don't think this is an unreasonable request to remove this map tile, it's a pretty clear image of a dead with cops standing nearby.
More police activity. Police activity but no body. And then back to as it was. No activity, no body.
Also, the new maps interface is very unintuitive. I remember there used to be an option to create a shortlink to an exact coordinate: I can't figure out where that is now. There is a 'Save' button, but I think that just saves it to my local machine. How do I share a location?
slightly gruesome screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/bnyNZq5.png
I think the main thing I got out of this story is that Rob Enderle is an ass.
http://i.imgur.com/VXCTQ17.png
Don't believe he's actually asked Google yet to take it down.
"Jose Barrera, of Richmond, California, said he discovered the image, visible on Google Maps' satellite view feature, last week."
[Edit] Video says learned of.
Maybe he didn't know how to reach someone in Google? I don't know, why does that matter?
So not sure what the real issue is here?
Has he actually asked for it to be removed?
"Google says it will replace a Google Maps image after a California father complained it shows the body of his teen-age son, who was shot to death in 2009."
EDIT: To remove my own snark as I realized the article was updated. Sorry!
so sad.