Currently in discussion on slashdot : "Two and a half years ago, the Borings sued Google for invading their privacy by driving onto their private driveway and taking pictures of their house to display on Google Street View. Now, the case has finally come to a close with the judge ruling in favor of the Borings and awarding them the princely sum of $1. While the judge found the Borings to be in the right, she awarded them only nominal damages, as the fact that they had already made images of their home available on a real estate site and didn't bother to seal the lawsuit to minimize publicity indicated the Borings neither valued their privacy nor had it been affected in any great way by Google's actions."

The Friday geonews in batch mode, including anything pertinent that we haven't shared yet.

On the Google front:

• Google announced single-click StreetView navigation
• Last March was announced that Google Mapplets were on their way out, their annihilation plan begun
• The GEB shares an entry on animated 3D models in Google Earth
• There will soon be bike directions for many Canadian cities in Google Maps

On the ESRI front:

• An entry on a mosaic image finder addin for ArcMap

In the miscellaneous category:

• MDA released a National Urban Change Indicator for the U.S.
• Here's an interesting entry (it must be since its involves Slartibartfast ;-) on removing complexities of complex polygons
• Here's an entry showing us what happens when you compute circular buffers in geographic coordinates
• If you're looking for geobooks to give at Christmas, The Map Room shares lists of geospatial-related books released this year
• There's also a new book named Preservation in Digital Cartography, co-authored by Tracey P. Lauriault, Peter L. Pulsifer and D.R. Fraser Taylor
• This entry explains why location privacy is different from privacy

In the maps category:

• From numerous sources, here's a one-minute video of the last 88 years of presidential election results in the U.S.
• The Map Room offers a long review the ninth edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World
• The Economist shares an informative and scary interactive map of the global public debt
• In the same vein, GeoCurrents shares an entry named the So-Called Happy Planet Index, which includes a map
• The Strange Maps blog shares a Map of the World's Countries Rearranged by Population

Yesterday Slashdot discussed a story named FCC Investigating Google Street View Wi-Fi Data Collection. Their summary: "The Federal Communications Commission is looking into whether Google's Street View Wi-Fi data collection violated the Communications Act. At issue is a May admission from Google that equipment attached to its Street View cars collected data that was traveling over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, known as payload data. At first Google said it did not know if that data included personally identifiable information, but the company admitted last month that it did include entire e-mail addresses, URLs, and passwords. Google has pledged to work with the FCC."

Cnet news has two articles up updating us on Google's streetview woes, and nearly 3% of Germans opting out of it. First is a summary of the home blurring process. The second provides an update on Google's latest decision not to use wifi scanning at all in their streetview cars but rather rely on user handsets (thinking Android).

Here's recent Google-related geonews:

• The Official blog has an entry on 3D views in Google Earth and the first year anniversary of Google Building Maker.
• And another one on the 'Slooh Space Camera layer' has been added to Goggle Earth's Sky view.
• Styled Maps is now available in the Maps API for Flash
• The GEB shares an entry on Getting started with Google Earth
• The GEB also has an entry named Three decades of watching life recover at Mt. St. Helens
• And another one named Sea Ice Extent Animation updated for and yes, it's scary
• The last GEB entry starts with travel fly throughs and focuses on how to make videos with Google Earth
• Slashdot discusses a story named Google Maps Adds Drone Imagery
• V1 has an entry named Mapping – Privacy: Google Shifts Communication Strategy in Europe