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The All Absorbing Pegman

Traveling At Home During The Pandemic

· Richard Schneller,Remote Working,Pegman,Crime Mapping,Pandemic

In 2020 we spent our lockdown time expanding our product line which of course involves mountains of testing.

One feature which we have had for a very long time is the capability to view incidents on maps. This is based on the coordinates of the incident location or more likely just the address. Mapping crime scenes can provide to security staff, important information to visualize where incidents congregate.

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In these times, when travel is restricted, some of us really miss it. So how nice to be able to travel virtually. Enter "Pegman..." The little icon on the online mapping tool that switches you to a street view of the location. I am not sure how valuable this is to investigations because the view is usually an old snapshot, but it’s certainly fun!

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Look at this map and see if you know where in the world it is. Probably the most famous tourist location in Prague, The Czech Republic, the mechanical clock tower is always on the tourist agenda. Enter "Pegman" and drop him on the location and we see a wonderfully pristine view of the forecourt in front of the tower in Prague Old Town Square. I suspect this is a recent snap, because in my experience there was always a flock of tourists at this location, yet this day it was empty, presumably pandemic-style empty.

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So instead of testing it’s much more exciting to look at interesting places one knows ... especially when there is not much chance of seeing them again any time soon.