You admired the photos. They jogged memories — or, if you’re a newcomer (or just young), you tried to imagine the Westport of yore.
If you were Mark Potts though, you headed straight to Google Street View.
Mark — a 1974 Staples grad who co-founded WashingtonPost.com, served as editor of Philly.com, and is a consultant with clients like the Los Angeles Times, Variety and Silicon Valley startups — now lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
But his heart is still here. And one of his many hobbies is taking creating “then and now” images with “06880” photos. (Click here for last October’s shots.)
Today’s batch was tough, he says. A few unusual photo angles could not be duplicated (the Merritt Parkway shot, for example, was taken from the side of the road). And Mark couldn’t figure out where the Post Road import car shop was.
But the rest worked out fairly well. Enjoy his trip back in time — and back to the present.
Last week, Google pulled out of China. Human rights activists around the globe applauded the news.
But one former Westporter found another of the search giant’s actions a little creepy. Rather than affecting 1.3 billion Chinese, this impacted only 1 family. Still…
The other day Charles Gallant — now a self-described New York-based “web nerd, musician, artist and thinker” — was doing what such people (and the rest of us) often do: fooling around on Google Maps. He clicked on his home town, zoomed in on his Crooked Mile Road neighborhood, then chose Street View.
He navigated to his house — and found a shot of his father, mowing the lawn.
To me, that’s a lot scarier than Chinese agents hacking into the computers of over 30 Silicon Valley companies.
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