Covid and Street View Treasures
Interesting note: I rather foolishly submitted this idea to Cadbury’s (sadly not really Cadbury’s any more since they were taken over by Mondelez).
In January 2021 I sent them a link to a technology demonstrator, featuring Easter eggs hidden at Cadbury World on the Google Maps overlay. I wrote “I bet you haven’t seen a way of hiding Easter eggs like this before!”
Just a couple of months later, Cadbury’s came out with their “Worldwide Hide” Easter egg hunt, which is exactly the same thing… and they have rolled it out every year since. It could of course have been a coincidence, but you judge… It’s rather frustrating that I was not acknowledged or recompensed but it’s equally nice to see that my idea was good enough to be used by a massive corporation!
I don’t follow the news much. Important news finds its way to me anyway, and I’ll jump into action if it affects me, or I can affect it. The energy I have saved not worrying about things can then be used for good, I hope!
Covid-19 affects us all. I’ve regularly been contacted about making ventilators, but my guess was that lots of people would be doing the same, so I’d only be reinventing the wheel. I don’t do that. I thought about ways that I might help, and came up with two ideas:
The first is a way to prevent the spread of bacteria and viruses at source. I looked at the challenge from a systems engineering perspective, and found what I believe to be a simple and effective solution. A few pennies spent preventing infection can save a life and tens of thousands of pounds in treatment further down the line. Watch this space!
My second thought was the one I started this post with – a way for us to get out and about in the “real world”, even when we were in lockdown. I found a way that we can explore our familiar world, but in virtual reality, and so far I have had hundreds of people visit the site to play in these worlds. It has become so popular that I have decided to remove my test sites, develop the concept further, and relaunch it as fully-fledged “game experiences“.
My favourite demonstration not only features hidden “Dizzy” video game characters (see if you can find them!) but also fairly realistic 3D sound of local objects. It works best if you wear headphones and also click on the play button at the stop of the screen to get the ambient sound.
Me second favourite demo is the classic “warm and cold” game – in this case, Daisy the little egg gives you clues to where she is. Click on the map for instructions.
Enjoy!