Any of y’all using Windows 10? I am, on both of my laptops, and it’s working fairly well for me.
I have one small complaint — the lockscreen offers these wonderful photographs, and I enjoy looking at them and all, but I want to know more. What am I looking at? Where and how was it taken? And so forth…
Well, this afternoon, I outfoxed it. The lockscreen gave me the image above, and I knew that was London by the glimpse of the Tower Bridge. So I decided to find it on Google Maps, using the Streetview feature.
And it worked! Even though that’s not technically a street, but a pedestrian area.
I thought at first that it was taken from the City side of the river. I remember some building angles like that from when I walked in that area back in December 2010. But then I spotted, on the south side of the Thames, the distinctive building that’s visible just before the Tower Bridge.
That’s City Hall, as it turns out.
Anyway, once I saw that, it only took a couple of seconds to place myself virtually in almost the same spot as the photographer.
Google Maps is just awesome. We may not have flying cars, but Maps provides us with something amazing that I could not even have imagined when I was a kid.
The future has turned out to be fairly impressive after all…
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I share your enthusiasm. I’ll sometimes choose a place I’ve never been and just drive around in street view to see how the other half lives. Check out GeoGuessr, which plops you down somewhere in the world in Google Street view, and you have to figure out where you are based on context clues.
The windows 10 start button has quit working on my new computer twice in the last 45 days.
I had to reinstall windows the first time, and now seem to be heading for having to do a total reinstall again.
HP and Microsoft support were of little help (barely acknowledge the issue) even though a quick google search reveals tens of thousand shaving the same problem.
Uh-oh. I haven’t had trouble yet, but I guess I should knock on wood. Does pressboard count? I think that’s what my desk is made of….
My older laptop that runs 10 is an HP. My new one is an ASUS…
I share your enthusiasm. I’ll sometimes choose a place I’ve never been and just drive around in street view to see how the other half lives. Check out GeoGuessr, which plops you down somewhere in the world in Google Street view, and you have to figure out where you are based on context clues.
I tried GeoGuesser, and I got it, first time!
I didn’t think I would, because it plopped me down in the middle of nowhere, way out in the country on a two-lane road.
Once I saw the name on the sign, clicked ahead to a crossroads with some buildings (above), and it took less than a minute on Google Maps to find the same crossroads (below).
I feel so smart. But it’s not me, it’s Google…
The Google camera car obviously didn’t have the esthetic sense of the photographer who shot the Windows image.
That one was shot from farther back with a lens with a greater focal length, which makes the bridge look closer even though its farther from the camera.
More importantly, it was taken at dawn (we’re looking east, remember), which gives it beautiful light and color, and also does away with the pedestrians blocking the shot…
Also note the glimpse you get of the Tower of London across the river, to the left of the wedge-shaped building. That’s easy to miss, especially in the image from Google Maps.