I was chatting with a friend about Google Street View and wondered if it could be integrated with current webcams or any other public surveillance systems. I knew that Google was a big supporter of integration and had created APIs for a lot of their products so I wondered if an API had been created for Google Street View. It had, but as objects in the Google Maps API.
“What about getting permission to utilize the 1000’s of existing “live web cams” that are already in place all around the world?
Integration of existing public webcams into Google Maps would be a simple code change, HOWEVER, many of the live cams are currently bandwidth prohibitive, so inclusion into Google maps would surely render them useless. If Google subsidized the bandwidth on some of the “key” cams, it would sure take this project to the next level ;)”
This post was about the creation of Google Street View and already a commenter had the same idea I had over a year later.