Yesterday was a very exciting day for Swift City. We heard on Tuesday that Google were going to be flying over Sydney on Australia Day (Friday) to take high resolution images for Google Earth/Maps. We thought, wow, given Google Maps is such an integral part of our site, what a great opportunity to get in the photo!
We had some very intense days of planning before finally deciding that Michael and Jodie would fly down from Brisbane to meet Mike and together we would make a giant eye to look back up at the plane and show the world that Swift City ‘has its eye on the world’. Ok, so that last bit is a bit corny. 🙂
Here are some pics from the day.
We got up at 4am to peg 2500 sheets of paper into the ground so that it would be seen by Google when they flew over to take pictures for Google Earth/Maps.
“Hooray, I’m so excited to be up at 4am!” NOT
Jodie seems well adjusted at this hour. She is a corporate lawyer after all. 😉
Shoe polish, the poor man’s paint.
Hmm, it’s dark, raining and we’ve had two hours sleep, maybe this isn’t a good idea after all?
Michael starts the eye. We used skewers to stake the A4 sheets into the ground.
Oh no!
Hooray, the sun is coming out!
Almost finished!
The all important sign.
Trouble afoot. The Park Ranger wants us to pack up and go. We can’t believe it, 5 hours work and $800 in flights from Brisbane is at stake. Thankfully he’s a nice guy and turns a blind ‘eye’.
As the ants saw it.
We also run a spoof dating website “For Attractive People Only” DarwinDating. So we figured we’d create an ad for that. Jodie and Michael dresed up in their wedding outfit under a large sign which read: ” We Met on DarwinDating.com. P.S. We’re Hot”. Both statements are lies but we thought it would be fun!
A kindly homeless man helped us pack up.
We had a great day, lots of locals stopped by to see what we were up to. A friendly couple brought us coffee and another brought us sunscreen which we had forgotten! Steph and James sent through details of media agencies and we were interviewed on one of the major national radio stations, ABC Radio. Stephen Hutcheon of Sydney Morning Herald Mashup Blog fame stopped by for a chat and wrote about us that afternoon!
Microsoft were also sending a satellite over the park we were in to take photos. These should be released on Jan 30, so we’ll update the blog when those pics become available. The Google pictures are due out in mid-Feb.
The SwiftCity.com Blog 
ewwww, how tacky.
You could’ve made a statement, but instead you
just spammed google maps.
I see.. so basically you took commercialism to an extreme. Thanks. You spammed google maps.
Way to go.. are you proud of your self?
Awesome!
Way to infect another medium with advertising. God forbid i look at a map without seeing your company
I really disagree with the above … Jodie _IS_ hot!
Guys, you’re looking at this the wrong way!
Now we have pictures of some spammers we can hold up if we ever have to give an example of these kinds of lowlifes.
I for one can’t wait to meet these people and “tell” them how i feel about spam.
Cool 🙂
Thats very neat, must have taken a lot of work. I view it more of a fun thing to do – like the school pranks they pull over at MIT each year
Horrifying. You’re not both hot. You’re ugly people. Inside.
Google posted the dates of the flyovers and invited people to make signs that would be visible, I wouldn’t really call this spamming
All I have to say is thats awesome! You guys put alot of work into that, I hope the pictures come out great! Oh and don’t mind the terrible comments, they are just trolls.
What else do you expect from a lawyer, anything for a buck.
SPAM SUCKS. Using the Earth’s surface as a billboard for cheap publicity via Google Maps is reprehensible. You probably didn’t think about this before you did it, but I hope the guilt eats at you until they take new pictures and your shameless shelf promotion is wiped away.
Jodie, however, IS hot, and I would totallly bang her during the flyover. Cuz there’s nothing more natural than 2 people getting it on in the middle of an open field of swaying grass. And getting that on Google Maps would be an expression of how we need to return to our roots as humans and get over our self-centered reliance on our ‘accomplishments’ that seem to bring more woe and misery than happiness.
I think you guys need me. lol I should be your people because people are being crazy. YOU DONT SAY SPAM, leaves a bad taste in your mouth and a bubble in your belly. You could have done all the great pics and story telling, without the spam. COULD HAVE BEEN LIKE LOOK WHAT WE SNUCK INTO THE PHOTO. LOL then everyone would have been like LOL look what they got on googles picture. FREE ADVERTISEING. AND never say a girls not hot, IF she looks like a dog, not that yours does, then throw a vail over here head and be like SHES MYSTERIOUS. and then teach her the bedroom tricks that soooooooooooooooo many ugly chicks master so they can have a great life, even if they live at home with a dimmly lit enviroment thats hard on the eyes, AT LEAST THEY CAN BE UGLY… i mean HAPPY. LOL
I’m really surprised by the number of bitter, cruel posters… oh wait, no I’m not–they came here from Slashdot. Anyway, clever concept and elegant execution. Most importantly, it’s clear that you’re having fun!
Those other commenters are idiots. Google Maps IS spam. People think Google is some sort of benevolent fairy godmother. Google is in the advertising business. Period.
AND JODI, MMMM ILL GOOGLE THAT MAP JUST TO SEE YOUR FINE BOOTY
Congrats on pulling off a great publicity stunt. Anyone criticising you guys is just jealous. And for the record, Jodie is hot!!!
Sigh, a missed opportunity.
What about signs like “FREE TIBET”
“TAIWAN IS NOT CHINA” and forcing a flop? 😀
Nice idea!
i mean shamelesss SELF promotion.
Shameless SHELF promotion probably has something to do with Beanie Babies.
see now they are being nice
What a bunch of whiners! You all probably (and I do!) wish that I had thought of it (and lived in Oz). Very clever and fun – I can’t wait to see it…
I disagree with the trolls. You people are awesome! While everyone else locks themselves in their homes, sitting behind computer screens, you people are living life large. You made a plan and worked your plan. That is respectful. I hope you prosper and florish BIG time. You have my blessings.
WOW…. point at the screen and EWW and AHH and my PR ablitys… lol PEOPLE, YOU ARE RIGHT, THIS ISNT BAD, SO PUT THE NEEEEEH SAYERS IN THE BARN AND LOL ALL OVER THEIR SCREENS, AND BEFORE I GO AGAIN, JODIS SOOOO HOT I WOULD FLY AROUND THE WORLD TO SEE HER HOTNESS
Whoohoo! This news even made it to Holland!
Nice one! 😉
Well u managed 2 spam google maps & get slashdoted. Ive been becoming more & more disappointed in the actions of my countrymen of late. If u want 2 have some fun then do it, thats part of the great Aussie larrikin culture but try 2 b original & dont go around sticking commercial crap in peoples faces, thats just really lame & smacks of America.
Lets keep Australia ( and google maps ) beautiful.
Having fun on Google Maps was very inventive! you didn’t make it NOT a map (it is still a map anyway) and you enjoyed yourself and made a statement, even if it wasn’t the “meaningful”, political statements others wish they had done (but didn’t think of until criticizing yours).
I’m glad the ranger was reasonable about it– I notice that you picked it all up of course! Congratulations on your work!
This is not spam, its just a stunt to do a onetime promotion of a blog site. If the banner was so terrible, Google will simply GIMP it out.
To Jodie and Mike: definately a slick idea. Hope it turns out well for the site.
DK
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I admire the ingenuity of the first people to do this. On the other hand I fear how many people are going to do this in the future. Will I be unable to look at a park in Google Earth without seeing hundreds of corporate logos? What happens if someone decides to write F*** You? What if the local municipality decides that certain messages are not acceptable. Few people would defend “F*** You”, but what about “This City Sucks”? What if they decide to rent off the park space to the highest bidder? And what if, after they have done all this, Google delay the flight for a couple of days?
Paul.
Google could always replace unwanted ‘spam’ photos with photos taken on another occasion. Then again, this is not necessarily new. Haven’t places near aerodromes already done this?
Everybody is blaming these people for spamming but if you were in their shoes you’d do the same damn thing.. The only thing I totally agree with is that Jodie is hot.. Other then that give em a break it’s tough to get your name out there when your a small company.. HOPEFULLY they will consider a different approach next time.. BUT the ultimate one to blame is Google.. Why announce that your taking pictures of a area, people have done this before so just keep your lip shut and you get spam free map photos.
Well, sorry about all the nasty people. Of course there are too many ads in the world… but this is a creative endeavor that obviously was done with some love. I think it’s pretty cool.
Ok I’m going back to slashdot now to scold them.
http://www.darwindating.com/about/refer.php
the authors of the site plainly state that they hate spam, so this stunt clearly isn’t spam. right?
ps – guys, you act like you’ve never seen a woman before.
Yeah, to the people who were critising them, get off your freaking high horses. They were obviously just messing around. For one thing, the thing they advertised (therefore ruining your lives) was a joke website, its not like they live off of it. And they advertised for another site, this one. That’s because this is where it was going to be posted.
If it bothers you that much there’s an easy solution: don’t look at that part of google earth! *Gasp!* missing an opportunity to piss and whine about something that doesn’t actually mean anything! How will you survive?!
How annoying that so many people don’t know what spam is. It’s bulk EMAIL. Putting up big pictures to be seen by the sky gods is an ancient human tradition. Not spam.
If only a Google Maps fly over would get the aliens to stay put while they were making crop circles, abducting people etc. But I guess aliens don’t worry about publicity. Creative idea and it looks like you had some fun even if you were up at 4am.
Yeah, to the people who were criticizing them, get off your freaking high horses. They were obviously just messing around. For one thing, the thing they advertised (therefore ruining your lives) was a joke website, its not like they live off of it. And they advertised for another site, this one. That’s because this is where it was going to be posted.
If it bothers you that much there’s an easy solution: don’t look at that part of google earth! *Gasp!* missing an opportunity to piss and whine about something that doesn’t actually mean anything! How will you survive?!
Maps is the opposite of Spam.
HTF can you accuse somebody of spamming GoogleMaps?
GoogleMaps is designed to make money for google, they didn’t organize the scan of the area out of some altruistic love of our criminal-cousins.
Hope it works out for you and looking forward to checking to see if you made it in.
Great job! I hope you will get sued for that!
To those like Conflicted, if you want to get back to your “roots” get rid of the silicon horse you’re riding and all of the plastic, vinyl and anything else that isn’t 100% organic.
I don’t like spam but I love creative advertising and this qualifies.
What really annoys me are tree huggers with ipods, not that’s sick.
Red Cleric
It makes me very sad when I read all the nasty posts. If you haven’t got anything nice or interesting to state, then why bother? You obviously had a good time and took a lot of care making that display. I’d call it a work of art. It’s blogging that I don’t like 🙂
Well i think KFC did it first with their massive mosaic of the colonel (god bless that man) that is seen from space.
Hey, at least it was just meaningless commercial spam, not meaningful nationalist warmongering political spam about which territory belongs to which state. It’s just annoying, not actually harmful.
This is very nice. Don’t mind the whiners about it being spam, you just had a lot of fun in the park, that’s all. Spam by gaining a toehold on map from an advertising company?
But the next time, you could try to get on the roof of your building and paint that. That lasts a lot longer, so the chances of it appearing in the aerials are a lot bigger. Just don’t forget to paint the roof when you leave.
awesome pawsome 😀 is this the first time google let ppl know where they taking images or wot ???
i wanna be in it too 😛 😛 😛
This is capitalism at its finest. Very creative, you guys! I can’t wait to see the end result.
Sheesh, you’ll let any kind of moron post comments here! That’s why my blog doesn’t have comments. Keeps the whiners at bay.
dont spam my planet fooker!
Don’t you think theres more then enough annoying spam/ads out there? Lets all pitch in like these guys and make this world filled with more unattractive, unwanted, annoying lameness, yeah!
It really isn’t as bad as Coca-Cola putting a moon shaped disc into the sky above us so we can’t not see them at night.
Good for you !!!
Hey Red-Cleric,
Obviously you’re too dense to figure out why I put my name down as Conflicted.
Idiot.
Give the guys a break. If Target can paint huge bulls-eye’s on their roofs, then anything is game…
People are leaving negative comments because they are fed up with adverts. Drive down the road, you got billboards, browsing the net you got pop-ups, adwords, banners…, check your mail box you get fliers, phone calls durring dinner. And now, we have annoying adverts in maps. How nice. Keep up the good work making this world a more enjoyable place!
Spam isn’t unsolicited advertising. It is unsolicited emails that you don’t want. If this excellent bit of commercial good-sense gets labelled as spam then every billboard and tv ad will have to be pulled.
These guys just did what any enterprising business person with a bit of time on their hands would do. Not only that but with their blog they’ve got a storming bit of PR as well (hi, slashdot).
They are going to go far!
Doesn’t take much for google to brush out the offending logo – just one dab of a brush with photoshop and all that work will be gone. Then again, they could always send a bill for the advertising if they leave it in 😉
I just love the idea and honestly hope it worked out.
hahaha darwin dating, i just saw a thing on the news and they were talking about it as if it was deadly serious. too funny! just goes to show how stupid people are here in america 🙂 hahahahahahahah
The human race never fails to disappoint.
Nicely subversive. I hope to see more of this in the future. If I ever find out when Google/Yahoo/MS/NSA/whomever is going to do a flyover of my Minneapolis, MN, USA location I intend on doing the same sort of thing.
If Google (et al) really cared about this sort of thing then all they would need to do is not tell us when they were going to take the photos. I suppose all that would take is one well placed goatse.
Don’t say I never had a mission in life.
Lame
Damn. People here who talks of spam needs to get a life. 😀 You are so pathetic.
So where is it??? Google Earth open and looking…
Do you have a link for it???
Fuck Jodie is hot. I have a huge cock just looking at her pic. Care to loan her to me for a quick fuck?
Ignore the naysayers- it was creative and seemed like you had some fun doing it. Good on ya’, mate.
For all you people whining about “oh no they spammed Google!!!1!”:
1) How often do you *really* pay attention to the satellite images on Google Maps? If you need directions, more often than not you’re looking at the diagram than the “satellite” overlay. Even if you do check out the photos are you really going to be staring at that park for hours and be annoyed by the little prank? If so, get a life. I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of the complainers will never even see the “spam” unless they look specifically for it.
2) Google earns the vast majority its revenue by placing ads next to search results, email, etc. To complain that somebody snuck an ad into the map image is ludicrous & hypocritical.
3) Swiftcity.com uses the Google Maps API for its website so it’s not like they’re just crapping it up for other people. This is “in their backyard.”
4) Get over yourselves.
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Good work guys, don’t listen to the spam obsessed comments. Looks fun :^).
I went for a run around moore park and centennial park on that day and saw these guys and many others. I thought it was pretty cool until I realised they were just advertising.
Most groups were doing things that were funny, or romantic, or interesting, but a certain cross-section was purely interested in self-promotion. Guess what – these people were all bloggers. The only people I saw doing advertising with this opportunity were all web2.0 idiots. These guys weren’t the worst, at least they were a little bit humorous. Some people at other locations rolled up with huge professionally-cut vinyls. Now *that* is feeble.
Anyway, I went home and painted ‘I need good, free marijuana’ on the roof of my house. If that pays off only once it will be worth it.
What a bunch of tards. Google says “we are doing a promotional flyover, please make signs that we can see” and you idiots go and bitch at people who made signs that Google could see. They were INVITED to make signs.
The basic definition of spam is UNsolicitied email. How is acting on an invitation any different than a billboard except they didn’t have to pay for it.
Grow up people. There is a big difference between any form of SPAM advertising and acting on a public invitation to do so.
Hmmph…if people are so worried about the views from space or out a plane window, then they should clean up their neighborhoods; stop building so many roads or cutting so many trees…and what’s up with all the houses? Face it, we’re hopelessly overpopulated on this mudball, and to worry about instaspam that’s gone in 4 hours is wasted worry. Worry about the stuff that doesn’t erase or grow back…
Haha you guys are getting bashed for trying to make a buck. I will NEVER visit your website now. 🙂
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Couldn’t you just stayed indoors that day? Damn it!
Spammers suck. Congratulations on becoming part of that suck.
Good work 🙂 Hope Google’s images turn out good. Any word on any of it?
I don’t believe this was SPAM.
SPAM is the cr*p I get in my email when I’m trying to read my email. Or (loosely) cr*p that pops up on sites when I’m trying to read the contents.
I don’t believe I’ll be looking at google maps to see the event, and even when I do, I don’t think I’ll be pissed at these guys for covering a small green area!!
Looks like you guys had fun day and you were responsible enough to remove the sticks/etc. on your way out.
Just wanted to voice my support and also say that not all slashdotters are morons, lol.
Good luck!
SPAM is “unsolicited electronic mail; the internet version of junk mail”
Therefore the above is not spam BECAUSE IT IS NOT AN EMAIL; no one is FORCING anyone to look at the message.
IF YOU DON’T WHAT TO SEE IT THEN DON’T GO LOOK AT IT!!!
Paper and skewers? Now that’s dedication!
This is just a fine example of people taking an initiative, having fun, and hopefully making a business work – it’s not spam. Is it clogging up your inbox? No, I didn’t think so. Well done SwiftCity
Well, now I have more of a reason to avoid having to look at Oz on Google Maps.
Good on ya.
This idea, really lame, and totally a missed opportunity. Not only that, but spamming is so forward thinking… in 1998. I do however, want to congratulate you on joining “teh suck”.
Next time, smarter people will do smarter things, that’s all. Also come on, the woman, while she’s average, there’s no reason for people to hoot and holler like a bunch of rhesus monkeys… for your own self dignity, knock it off you twits. If you think she’s hot, fine, go have a private wank and be done with it.
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“ps – guys, you act like you’ve never seen a woman before.”
Most of them are from slashdot, and therefore haven’t…
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My mates & I were planning to paint a massive ‘cock & balls’ in a park for the flyover,
I think it would have been more tasteful than turning Sydney soil into some wannabe-American spamming stunt for A DATING SITE amongst other things. I wouldn’t disrespect your Brisbane soil like that.
Pay no attention to the trolls – This is awesome!
Genius idea. Keep it up! :] Always have to find new ways to market.
what’s to keep google from blurring out this stuff?
Hey where can we look on the google maps to see your sign is there a address for this park or something that you can just type in or anything like that
Ignore the Yea-sayers – you’re a pack of wankers. Hope you have fun with the spoof.
This idea has been done before. Not original, just continuing the lameness.
What a bunch of pathetic whiners commenting in a critical fashion!! You take yourselves WAY too seriously. Get over it.
Advertising on Google Maps for a spoof site creating zero value to anything apart from self-promotion. How utterly fucking boring.
They could have used all their hot air to fly a huge balloon with “arentwesofuckingawesome.com” on the side of it.
All we need now is someone to say these guys are geniuses to make me projectile vomit.
Saw this on an online newspaper before I saw this
on my first day back at work.
My stomach sank as something fun is taken over by self promoting wankers again.
Why dont you buy a pixel on the new million pixel website or something lame like that. Now you’ve fucked up Sydney’s google map. Shame
We think this is a waste of paper. Ancient trees are being cut down in Canada for this.
I like it!
http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/google-botch-sydney-flyover/2007/01/29/1169919256978.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
Looks like it won’t matter anyway…
1. Microsoft were also sending a satellite over the park we were in to take photos. These should be released on Jan 30, so we’ll update the blog when those pics become available. The Google pictures are due out in mid-Feb.
Read the article pls, it says when it will be updated on google maps (& microsoft).
2. We also run a spoof dating website “For Attractive People Only” DarwinDating.
Again, read the article. Its a SPOOF dating website, not the real thing.
3. This is NOT spam. Why??
Because spam is un-solicited EMAIL, and also because Google INVITED ppl to make signs visible when they did their flyover.
I don’t see all you ppl bitching on google’s website about this.
Get a life to all those ppl whinging about this. Its a frakking funny idea, good on SwiftCity for taking part, its got heaps of publicity for your website, and its all harmless fun.
I just hope you used recylced paper, and then recycled it again when you were done. Apart from that, ignore the losers, you guys are legends!!
HAHAHAHAHA. Just read the SMH Article.
“A plane chartered by Google either never made it over some of the designated areas or arrived hours after it was scheduled to pass overhead – by which time, many of those who had been waiting below had packed up and moved on.
The flight plans had to be hastily changed after Sydney air traffic control, because of safety concerns, denied the plane permission to fly over parks and beaches in inner Sydney and the east.”
…….
http://www.google.com/intl/en_au/events/australiaday2007/index.html
The link on google where ppl were invited to do this. Google actually says:
“and we want to make sure as many of us as possible squeeze into the picture.”
So blame google, not SwiftCity. LMAO
Well, I hope your efforts will be all for nothing. As this gets publicity, I hope Google will do the right thing and just leave these pics out from Sydney pictures and keep the old ones for these spots…
To pick up on the definition of Spam is a little intellectually dishonest… spam may be technically defined as unsolicited email, but it’s becoming more widely known as unsolicited advertising, which is what some of things people were doing fall into. Regardless of whether Google (or Microsoft) invited this, there are other issues:
* Google (and Microsoft) maps are a great, freely available resource, that one could argue shouldn’t be cheapened by publicity grabs
* Many people were using public space, and in some cases, breaking the law to get advertising seen. This is different to say, putting advertising on the roof of public property (such as the huge symbols on top of Target stores)
This is a great idea. Congratulations!
BTW, I used to work full-time as a spam fighter, and think people who call what you did “spam” are NUTS. And I said so on Slashdot. 🙂
I have no problem with your efforts. Looks like fun, efficient marketing.
At first couldn’t help thinking that it seems like a waste of paper, I’m sure your resource usage is infinitesimal compared to most any other marketing campaign.
While I have no problem with this scale of advertising, it does kind of make me worry how this will likely be taken to extremes in the future. Ugly, empty rooftops are one thing, but big open spaces are another.
Then again, it was just for a few hours, so…
WTF is with people criticizing you for creating a logo that can be seen from the air? They are acting as if you propose to kill and eat babies. Even a quick search of the ‘large type’ section of a site such as google site seeing http://googlesightseeing.com/category/post-cats/large-type/ will show up hundreds of visible advertisements and logos, such as these:
http://michaelcastellon.blogspot.com/2006/11/kfcs-logo-first-to-be-seen-from-space.html
Get a grip people!
Wake up to yourselves the lot of you. This isn’t spam – its an innovative form of advertising and nowhere near as intrusive.
And for the record, Michael’s the hot one.
Bruce (CA)
Jeez… I’m almost embarrassed that I came here via Slashdot if this is the kind of comments those readers make.
Well done guys for getting off your asses (arses?) and getting outside for some social fun (and actual sunlight) while the other twits were configuring their firewalls to download pr0n faster.
Greets from Cape Town!
Heh… I had that idea and you totally beat me to it… but only because I live in a small town that isn’t due for a flyover for… well, until they get more than 4 traffic lights installed within the city limits. 😉
As for those complaining about “spam”, grow up. Once upon a time, a sig was considered out of line by those who would take the time to sit around and complain about that sort of thing.
Advertising is what makes business happen. Business is where the money comes from. Money feeds the starving children in Africa.
Are you saying that you want those kids to starve? SHAME ON YOU!
PS – Using the word ‘jokes” as anchor text (as I just blatantly did to make a point) in a link to my joke site is spam in the commonly used sense. It’s only a problem because, as i just demonstrated, it is exceptionally easy to do. Making a gigantic sign by hand, however, is bloody brilliant. once again, I just wish I could have gotten a flyover before then… I’d love the free publicity this has caused. 😉
I felt I should leave a positive comment to outweigh all the humourless Slashdot losers who have already posted.
Well done, looks cool — the whole point was to make something you could see from Google Earth, and it looks like you did! A rather good effort.
Just ignore the whiney Slashdotters.
Lol. I would have waited until the pictures came out to post this though.
Hahaha, you’ve got to love Slashdot nerd rage. Cool sign dudes, nicely done 🙂
Quit smoking.
Sorry.
Judging by the number of comments on your site, I’d say you’ve managed to get better mileage out of your blog to get free marketing rather than the actual marketing itself.
If/when you see your banner on google maps and microsoft you’ll find it will be you and about 2000 others who all had the same idea. I helped another company display an olympic swimming pool size banner.
I saw a lot of people with banners and messages for the cameras that day some were nice such as birthday wishes, marriage proposals etc etc, but predominately what I was saw was people such as you thinking they’d try and cash in on it with some tacky marketing.
I wouldn’t mind betting Google scraps the whole thing and does their fly over again in secret, simply because they probably won’t want all the tackiness that ended up on their pictures.
Having said all that, well done, it’s good to see people putting in the hard yards to make it.
Bwah, damn what people complain, I like it, I wouldn’t consider it spam ;D
Technically, this is not spam, but it’s still another peice of spam-flavored, unwanted, ill-placed request for money/attention someone is trying to force down my gullet.
If I want what ever service you’re offering, I’ll search for it using appropriate methods.
Was this original or especially ingenious? No. Is it kinda distasteful? I think so.
Having said that, it’s a free world, and what I think doesn’t really matter.
This is a spam test. Positive, I guess.
Slashdotters are windowlicking retards. The posts here have confirmed this. End of.
It was FUN, people. The “spam” isn’t going to affect your lives one bit. Fuck off and get a life instead of bitching about insignificant shite like this.
The word ‘spam’ is also used for search engine optimization techniques – or ‘black hat’ SEO – as in ‘spamming keywords’. This has been widened to include most unscrupulous SEO techniques and has been widened further to include unscrupulous advertising online.
People saying ‘spam is just e-mail’ are still living in 1999.
I just wanted to explain why Slash-Dotters (and I’m not one BTW) use the word ‘spam’ as they do.
You people (in comments) are crazy, this thing is cool imo 🙂
When Google/Yahoo!/MSN Maps will be widely used on mobiles and GSM enabled nonPC devices, someone will *have* to start GeoSpam company 🙂
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Yeah, it really IS cool! You may have started it all and lots of people will follow you. That’s gonna make (google) earth a lot more interesting 😉
Hiya. Nice job. This is an american. Cool. Uhm, yea,… Dunno what else to say. Originality is my game. And you didn’t spam. Nice. Don’t get the part with the red banner and the wedding costumes though. Sorry. But cool anyways. Shows tremendous commitment. Is it just google maps, or the google earth too?
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Woops: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/01/29/1169919256978.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
mind polluting crap
Google is the modern day God of advertising. I wasnt going to comment but I just had to agree with the fairy godmother statement. Really; have none of you complainers logged in to Google maps recently and seen all the ads tagged into to if you search? I’m quite sure Sergey and Larry would struggle to pretend they wouldnt do the same a few years before they had hammocks in their 767. I like the Google guys, or what Ive read of them, but I dont think that Google is some perfect creation. The only serious critcism I can agree with on here is the person who pointed out that you might have highlighted a good cause aswell; then you might have pleased everyone. 10 points for enthusiasm, but a few less for alturism; next time aye? 😉
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CLEARLY THIS BLOG SHOULD BE ABOUT JODIE!!!!
You ignorant commenters. Their idea isn’t ‘inventive’, ‘origional’, and ‘creative’. It was at one time, but they just copied an idea that has been done numerous times before. The media only picked up on it because news is in a slow period and people want to hear something other then Iraq. Original? Inventive? Creative? No…
Lucky? Yes
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Excellent piece of PR and marketing SwiftCity – Two keys to marketing today Get Attention – Be Remembered – You certainly got attention – Perhaps you will be remembered by the few people who manage to spot the image on Google Earth – but more important it looks like you had a huge amount of fun – I think some people seem to have forgotten what fun is.
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Good job!
Ignore those nerds, just having fun is fine. This is no spam at all. The world is filled with stupid advertisment and you just put your logo on some photos and nobody has to see it every day like stupid billboards or the s**t in the middle of films on tv.
lol, parade
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I don’t care if that you made a sign to put on google earth it just would have been better if it had actually been *funny*
What the hell is everyone getting so pissy about. these guys were just trying to have some fun. there is no need for anyone to keep them from doing that or their right of free speech.
lol lol gd pics
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I love it.
I think a lot of these comments are way off the mark. Lets take google/yahoo as an example – before search marketing opportunities came about, there were NO ads on google, or on Yahoo.
There is now, on every search engine in the world (almost) they place ads infront of us that we arn’t asking to see… But do you call that spam?
Does the company you work for advertise? Is that spamming your daily life? When you own a business and have your car painted with your business logos is that spam?
I’d look at the whole topic like SEO, if you optimise your advertisement (or website), get inbound links (PR in this case), make sure content is king (these ads were great) and be live when google comes to index you… You’ll force your way into google’s rankings – it’s no different here.
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very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
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spammers =)
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That’s so awesome. But how on earth did you know which day it was going to be? I’d love to do this myself : )
Hey just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you know a few of the pictures aren’t loading properly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue.
I’ve tried it in two different browsers and both show the same results.
Hi there, I enjoy reading all of your article post.
I wanted to write a little comment to support you.
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