The camera behind Google's Street View
If you've been playing with Google's new Street View feature--that $25 billion time suck--you may well have wondered how the heck they took those 360-degree images while driving down the street.
The camera used by Immersive Media for Google's Street View images.
(Credit: Immersive Media)Well, wonder no more. Thanks to our good friend Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, we now know that many of the images, at least those shot outside the San Francisco Bay Area--were shot using this fairly disco-ball-esque device by the outside contractor, Immersive Media.
What's not clear just yet is if Google used the same kind of camera in the Bay Area, where the company shot its own, higher-resolution images. But it must have been something similar, though we know from this image that Google used a van, while Immersive Media seems to have used a Volkswagen New Beetle.
Enjoy. Oh, and did I say $25 billion time suck? By now, it's up to $26 billion. And counting.
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel. 
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steve benz;-) no plates;-)