Have you been caught by Peugeot’s long lens?

Car company Peugeot has a competition on their web site at the moment, where you have to find hidden 3008s. It features some astonishing panoramic shots of London, taken sometime last summer, from the top of CentrePoint. You can zoom in, and if you go full screen, it’s pretty impressive. Here’s an overview:

Peugeot's game has amazing images of central London

One thing that struck me is the number of roof gardens and terraces in central London, with some pretty lush planting on some of the newer buildings. And another thing that struck me is that, if Google blurs number plates and faces for privacy, shouldn’t Peugeot do the same. Especially when, thanks to their viewpoint, they’re able to show far more detail than Google Streetview. Here are some examples.

Who is this man ironing in badly mismatched sports gear?

Yep, you really can zoom enough to go right in through that chap’s living room window. Just as well his head is cut off (which reminds me, as so many things seem to do, of the Duchess of Argyll).

Just asking for a cigarette, or is something more sordid going on?

Ok, so they probably are just asking for a cigarette. But that’s a pretty remarkable level of detail, isn’t it?

You do know you're supposed to have a permit to park there?

Let’s hope the driver of this van was supposed to be there. And it’s probably just as well there were no wardens around, because I bet he doesn’t have a permit – and certainly not one that covers having two wheels outside the parking bay.

I’m sure there’s lots more to find – and if you look at Oxford Street, you have a particularly good view, as there aren’t really any obstructions in the way. Yes, it’s bit of fun, but really, Pegueot, shouldn’t you have thought about privacy a little more?

Updated: by popular request, a few more images:

Outside the British Museum, it's time for a Werther's Original

In Holborn, one woman has yet to notice that her feet have been stolen

Off New Oxford Street, this block has a lot of roof planting

Just as well for Peugeot that the people outside the gay bar have their backs to the camera, eh?

Outside Foyles, either two frames are stitched together, or this woman has an identical twin following her

On location

One of the web sites that I run is, shall we say, aimed at gentlemen of a certain disposition, with particular shared interests, and a fondness for the well honed physique.

I’ve been working on a mobile version of the site, and one of the things that the desktop version has is a list of venues – bars where the members of the site will feel welcome and want to spend some time. This is a natural for adding to the mobile version of the site, and for enhancing with code to support geo-location.

That’s the means by which the web browser can determine its physical location – it works on desktop PCs too, but is obviously even more useful on a mobile device. A couple of JavaScript function calls are all that you need to do this, and then you can let the web server know where the user is, and customise the information.

So, on my site the obvious thing to do is to use this to filter the list of venues, showing those closest to the user, first, and omitting all those over a certain distance away. I’ll do a separate web page explaining how that works from a programming point of view.

There are two interesting things from a privacy and openness viewpoint that struck me, though.

Can you trust location services?

To take the latter first, I was joking to the owner of one of the venues that, for a small consideration, I could make sure that his rival always appeared to be 50km further away than it really is. Although it wasn’t a serious suggestion, it did make me wonder – how can you be sure that such information is trustworthy (beyond the actual error in determining location).

If you’re using a big open site like Google maps, then it’s probably quite reasonable to assume that if they were deliberately omitting, say, branches of Burger King that were close to branches of McDonalds, people would notice. But in a closed application, or a site dedicated to a specific topic, it’s much harder to do. And I wonder just what lengths some people will go to, in order to skew the results (and of course, it’s not just geographically, but given the task in hand, that was what sprung to mind).

Privacy issues

The other topic that I’m wrestling with is privacy. The site has a privacy policy that I think is quite clear, and we explain what persistent cookies are used, and what they’re used for.

Location, it seems to me, is something that needs to be covered in this too. So, does anyone out there have any best practise guidelines for how location data should be used on a website? Obviously this is going to vary from site to site and app to app – for example, the dating app Grindr is based around the idea of showing you who’s in your area, constantly updated, so users are aware it needs that information.

But a site like mine, where location is used in slightly different ways, and hasn’t been used before, perhaps needs to treat it differently.

This is what I’ve come up with, as the basis of a location privacy policy:

1. We will only attempt to determine your location on specific pages, and only when necessary.

2. We will always explain why we are attempting to determine your location (eg, to show you nearby venues, or to let other users know which city and country you are in).

3. We will never show other users your exact position, nor will it be stored in our database.

4. We will always allow you to view and edit any location information before deciding whether or not you want to share it with other users.

When did Facebook capture the web?

I’ve resisted signing up to Facebook; even a couple of years back, I was not convinced by their privacy policies, and tales of people finding it hard to have their information deleted.

Judging by the torrent of stories about privacy in recent months, I probably made a wise decision. It’s not that I’m not familiar with social networking – I use Twitter, and have been involved in earlier forms, like email lists and newsgroups for over twenty years.

But, frankly, the idea of Facebook never appealed. To people who say “But old school friends can find you,” I reply “They can use Google.” I’m a very Google-able person, thanks to the amount of stuff I’ve written over the years. You’ll find me, and you’ll find a photographer in the north of England with the same name.

I also tend to think that, actually, if I wanted to keep in touch with someone, I’d have done it anyway, without Facebook. My mobile number’s not changed since I got it in 1995; I’m not hard for someone to find.

I don’t want to sign up

Now though, at a time when people are encouraging others to terminate their accounts, and privacy concerns are paramount, I’m noticing an opposing pressure, with companies trying to drive people to Facebook.

The makers of my favourite cigars, Alec Bradley, post a lot on Twitter, and include links to various material which I’m sure would be very interesting, if only I could read it. I can’t. Because it’s on Facebook, and you have to sign up to be able to look at it.

(Update: 2nd June. I pestered them on Twitter and now you can see the content Alec Bradley posts on Facebook, without signing up.)

And right now, part of the Underground station at Liverpool Street are plastered with adverts for Marker’s Mark bourbon, complete with ‘London likes this’ button. The only URL? One for their page on Facebook.

Frankly, the only thing you’ll get me drinking on that front is a nice Islay single malt, but even so, I find it a little alarming that, rather than putting information on the public internet, companies are choosing to put it on Facebook. And, even worse, putting it on Facebook in a way that ensures non-members can’t even see it.

How many companies are going down this route, and how many potential customers are they ignoring by doing it?

Weren’t the days of walled gardens supposed to be over years ago? Wasn’t the failure of AOL a sign (amongst other things) that people were better off with unfettered access to the wider web, rather than locked down content that only some people could see? Are we really supposed to be happy that a single company will be responsible for at least a part of the online presence of many major brands?

It’s not so hard to set up a website, or a blog. It’s not difficult to make your information available to everyone. That’s what the internet’s about, surely?

Personally, I just don’t think it’s good marketing to put your company in a situation where customers can’t find out about your products unless they’re prepared to sign up to a web site that has a pretty dubious record when it comes to respecting privacy.