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15 May 2013
Geoguesser A game that pops you into Google Street View anywhere around the world. You guess the location, and the closer you are, the better your score.
I actually do kind of cheat and google the street signs, etc. It's still a challenge -- hello, Gudhjem, Denmark!.
The one thing I just did not get was this sort of tropical hut with kayaks on the side of a river. You couldn't move anywhere, so it was a total crapshoot. I guessed Hawaii, but it was Guatemala.
Some people have been able to get a perfect score of 6500 points by putting the marker smack in the exact place. I have no idea how they do that, since I try to make the street view pic look exactly the same and still manage to be "0.008 km off" or some crap.
I figure this is one of those games where you can make up your own mind how you want to play it. I enjoyed exploring to find road signs or something else that seemed distinctive, and then using the power of teh Googles to figure out roughly where I am.
The country road in Russia was the hardest one. I had to look up the Cyrillic alphabet and then cut and paste characters individually to search for the road sign. Even then I only got within about 200 km that way.
The closest one was Tom Price, in Western Australia. Because it isn't a very big place and the "Tom Price Motel" that was right there kind of narrowed it down a bit. Nevertheless it looked pretty obviously Australian right from the get go. Something about the vehicles (especially some kind of emergency vehicle with a snorkel on it) just seemed like it would have to be Australia I guess. Or maybe it's how the sidewalks and everything are all red. Here's where it put me: http://goo.gl/maps/QiTe9