Oakland - The most famous cat on the web right now

First, try to spot the cat... (Click on the image to load it in Google Maps.)

Last Tuesday, May 29, Google launched Street View to the world. The next day, a concerned reader of the immensely popular blog BoingBoing wrote in about her cat:

The new Google Maps zoom feature zooms all the way into my living room window. See cat on cat perch.

I'm all for mapping, but this feature literally gives me the shakes. I feel like I need to close all my curtains now. I'm going to look into whether it's possible for a person to have pictures of their home removed from Google Maps. Meanwhile, I'm happy to show bb readers the photo in the interest of illustrating creepy privacy violations. Heck, the whole world can see him anyway. (source)

Fast forward to today: The New York Times picked up the scoop in an article titled Google Zooms In Too Close for Some:

"The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives," Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. "The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged."

..."People’s jobs are pretty public," she said. "But that doesn’t mean they want a shot of their sofa on Google."

From the picture of her and the kitty in the NYT article...

:)