Burtch And Kvetch

I really am indifferent when it comes to The Royal Family. All the money, the jewels the pomp and circumcision… I’m not too worried about it all. Now mind you, Prince Charles does wear nice suits and my wife tells me that some of The Queens’ purses are quite something.

But I’m thinking… is Charles a regular guy? I mean, does he get to sleep in most weekends or does Camilla bug him to go for a walk or accompany her shopping on Regent Street? Better yet, does he get up with this horrible feeling that he forgot to turn the barbeque off?

But the real question I need to know about Charles is this: is he cool enough to have an iPod? Do you think Camilla gave him one as a wedding gift? Worse, do you think he did get one as a wedding gift and hasn’t used it yet because he can’t figure out how it works?

So here’s my fantasy: Charles has figured out how to “sync” the laptop in the upstairs bedroom with his shiny new iPod. What would be on Prince Charles iPod?

He’s probably got an Elgar playlist for sure… and a Lloyd Webber one. And for pop, I’ll bet you pounds to crumpets that he’s got The Stones doing “Wild Horses”, Michael Murphy doing “Wildfire” and America singing “A Horse With No Name.”

And for video, I know Camilla helped him download “Seabiscuit”, “National Velvet” and a few episodes of “Mr. Ed.”

There, I figured it out!

If you haven’t tried out Google’s StreetView I think you’re really missing out on something. But that said, the product is not without controversy. I’ll get to that in a minute but first here’s your basic guide to seeing the application in action.

In your web browser go to maps.google.com. Type your address, or any address and city in the box and then click the “search maps” button to the right. A map will appear with the location you requested and a red pushpin marks the exact location you requested.

Click once on the pushpin and a small box will appear. In addition to some options you will see a small photo of the location. (NB: Not all locations are available just yet). Click on the picture or the Street View text under the picture and voila! You be shown an actual picture of the location. And you can move the picture around by dragging your mouse around the picture.

Now this is quite cool to be sure. But some people are troubled by these views. And the jury is still out on the whole “invasion of privacy” thing. I’m not touching that aspect just yet but here’s what I saw as a humourous side to all this.

I was having coffee the other night at you typical local “one on every corner” coffee store. Two thirty-something couples were seated next to me. Here’s the conversation I couldn’t help but overhear:

Guy #1 – “Google has this great application called StreetView. You can actually see a picture of your house or any other location: Here, check it out…”

He whips out his iPhone and demonstrates. All are amazed, ofcourse, except one of the women who says:

“Well, I typed in my home address and looked at the picture and honestly… I wish they would have told me that they were going to photograph the street because our driveway was full of construction material and the house just doesn’t look good.”