Learn How to Buy the Best Condo in San Diego

San Diego is a great place to buy a condo because of its perfect weather and wonderful easy lifestyle. Anything you could ever hope for is at your fingertips. People who live in San Diego are always smiling, drinking surfing and having a good time. Who would not want to own a vacation condominium in San Diego, or even just live in a condo on the beach? Sunny San Diego is a coastal Southern California city located in the southwestern corner of the continental United States. As of 2006, the city has a population of 1,311,162 people.

It is the second largest city in California and the eighth largest in the United States. The larger metropolitan area is the 21st-largest in the Americas, with a population over 4.8 million. It lies just north of the Mexican border (shares border with Tijuana, Mexico), and is a home for United States Navy, United States Coast Guard and United States Marine Corps bases, many miles of beaches, and a mild Mediterranean climate. The average temperature is 72°F, with an average rainfall of 9 in (228.6 mm).

San Diego’s economy centers on the military, tourism, trade, agriculture, ship-repair and construction, defense-related companies, biotechnology, computer science, electronics, real estate speculation. It is also home to some of the wealthiest enclaves in the country, including the suburbs of Cardiff by the Sea, Del Mar, Fairbanks Ranch, Rancho Santa Fe and Bonita.

Downtown San Diego is located on San Diego Bay. Balboa Park lies on a mesa to the northeast. It is surrounded by several dense urban communities and abruptly ends with Mission Valley to the north. Coronado and Point Loma separate San Diego Bay from the ocean. Ocean Beach is on the west side of Point Loma. Mission Beach and Pacific Beach lie between the ocean and Mission Bay, a man-made aquatic park. La Jolla, an affluent community, lies north of Pacific Beach. Mount Soledad in La Jolla offers views from northern San Diego County to Mexico.

Mountains rise to the east of the city, and beyond the mountains are desert areas. Cleveland National Forest is a half-hour drive from downtown San Diego. Numerous farms are found in the valleys northeast of the city. The city of San Diego itself has deep canyons separating its mesas, creating small pockets of natural parkland scattered throughout the city. San Diego County also has more endangered plant and animal species (as determined by US Environmental Protection Agency) than any other county in the United States.

Military bases in or near San Diego include U.S. Navy ports, Marine Corps bases, and Coast Guard stations. San Diego is the site of the largest naval fleet in the world, and with the reductions at the Norfolk, Virginia basing facilities and the retrenchment in the Russian naval base at Vladivostok, San Diego has the largest concentration of Naval facilities in the world. It has two of the US Navy’s Nimitz class supercarriers, (the USS Nimitz and the USS Ronald Reagan), five amphibious assault ships, several Los Angeles-class “fast attack” submarines, carrier and submarine tenders.

For more resource about San Diego Condos or even about condos and espcially about condominiums please click these links.

Google Street View Continues to Raise Privacy Concerns

Google Street View, a Google Maps feature that lets users see images of streets and the surrounding areas, continues to generate controversy. Since its launch in May 2007, the feature has prompted questions about whether it constitutes an invasion of privacy, complaints about inappropriate images, and even a lawsuit.

Aaron and Christine Boring vs. Google

The lawsuit came from a Pittsburgh couple in April 2008. The couple lives on a private road. However, Google’s Street View team travelled down the road and continued taking images all the way up to the couple’s home. The images were then posted to Google Maps and included close-ups of the couple’s home, swimming pool, and outbuildings.

Google’s response? “Complete privacy does not exist in this world except in a desert, and anyone who is not a hermit must expect and endure the ordinary incidents of the community life of which he (or she) is a part (1).”

While Google’s assertion that its Street View imaging team is an “ordinary incident of community life” is far-fetched, Google does make some good points in its response. Namely, that the plaintiffs could have simply requested that Google remove the offending images from Street View via a form available on Google Maps. Instead, the couple filed suit and in doing so have made the matter public record and ensured that the images will be viewed by even more people.

Since the lawsuit, Google has removed the images in question, but the suit remains open.

The Borings’ Neighbors

On Goldenbrook Lane, a nearby street, some of the Borings’ neighbors also had an incident with the Street View team. In this incident, the Street View team drove up Goldenbrook Lane and into the driveway of the McKee residence. They continued to drive, snapping Street View images the whole way, up to the garages of the McKees (2). While it appears that the McKees didn’t resort to a lawsuit, Google has removed the images of the home that were taken from private property from Street View.

Street View in California

In California, the antics of the Street View drivers continued. Drivers reportedly went on over 100 private roads in Sonoma County according to an analysis done by PressDemocrat.com. In another instance, Street View drivers went past two no trespassing signs as they photographed the 1,200 foot private road leading up to Betty Webb’s house in Humboldt County. In another incident reported by PressDemocrat.com, Street View drivers ignored a no trespassing sign, passed through a gate, and drove through someone’s yard on a dirt road near Freestone.

Street View and U.S. Military Bases

In March 2008, the Pentagon requested that Google remove some images of military bases taken from public streets due to the potential threat those images posed to national security. “It actually shows where all the guards are. It shows how the barriers go up and down. It shows how to get in and out of buildings,” said General Gene Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command (3). According to Google spokesman Larry Yu, Google has honored the Pentagon’s requests (4). However, the Pentagon was still reviewing the many images of military facilities that were included in Street View (5).

Street View Goes Global

After the complaints in the U.S., other countries warned Google that Street View would have to be modified to comply with their stricter privacy laws. To this end, Google has improved facial recognition technology so that it can find faces in images and blur them so that they are unrecognizable. This technology has also been applied to license plates. The blurring feature has since been applied to U.S. Street View imagery in addition to images in other countries where Street View is now available.

Accountability

While Google has removed some of the aforementioned locations from Street View, the burden to monitor Google’s actions, be it Street View or other Google services, continues to fall on people like you and me. With regard to Street View, Google argues that “many people–visitors pulling in the driveway, neighbors turning around at the end of the road, deliverymen delivering packages–can all plainly see the exterior of the (Borings) home (6).” While these examples are likely accurate for the Borings and the population in general, they involve people that we know or strangers that we requested to come to our homes. Private residents didn’t request that Google visit these neighborhoods nor would residents reasonably expect that someone would be driving down their streets taking photographs of everything. In fact, I suspect that if you or I were to do the same thing, someone would call the police and we’d have some difficult questions to answer down at the station.

Potential Consequences

So, what could the consequences of Street View be? Well, while the feature has been used to aid police in a kidnapping investigation (7), I think the feature could be far more useful to criminals. For example, a criminal could use Street View to case a neighborhood–checking Street View for cars that are parked in garages or driveways so they could know when someone isn’t at home, scan the yards and windows for any signs indicating that homes have security systems, check the proximity of neighboring houses using Street View and Google’s satellite imagery, look for signs of pets that could pose problems for a thief, see if the homes have newspapers delivered (which might help the thief determine if the residents were on vacation) and, assuming the criminal found a good candidate, select a few potential access points (like open windows) for breaking into the home. If the Street View car happened to pass through your neighborhood on garbage day, the camera might even capture the box of that new HDTV you got. Scary, huh?

Protecting Your Privacy

So how can you protect yourself? First, check your address using Street View. To report a concern with Street View imagery, enter the address you desire and click “Search Maps.” Then, click “Street View” in the thought bubble that appears on the map. Once the “Street View” image appears, click “Report a Concern” in the bottom left corner of the Street View image and enter the details of your complaint.

Second, be mindful of how your information is used and act when you feel your privacy is being threatened. Google’s Street View can be a helpful tool, but it is meant to help Google sell ads and make money, not protect your privacy. You can write your local, state and federal representatives and even the local paper to voice your opinion.

Oh, and if you believe as Google does that “complete privacy does not exist,” then you should check out the house where Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly lives using satellite imagery from Google Maps. It looks like he has had some construction done in the past few years. A simple Google search of the address (366 Walsh Road, Atherton, CA) will tell you that Schmidt merged two adjacent lots in 2001 (8) to create the new lot and then added a new fence, retaining wall, and drainage in 2004 (9). Eric, that creepiness that you’re feeling is probably approaching the level of the people who had Street View vehicles in their driveways. So, while it is Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful,” the company should thoroughly consider how that information can adversely impact the same people it is meant to help.

Sources

1. Preliminary Statement.” Boring vs. Google, Allegheny County, PA
2. TheSmokingGun.com “Google is in Your Driveway!”
3. Reuters. “Google pulls some map images at Pentagon’s request.” Mar. 6, 2008.
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
6. Preliminary Statement.” Boring vs. Google, Allegheny County, PA
7. Telegraph.co.uk. “US police use Google Street View to find missing child.” Jan. 9, 2009
8. Town of Atherton City Council Minutes, May 16, 2001.
9. Palo Alto Online, September 24, 2001.

(C) Medium Blue 2009

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The Bay Area Of San Francisco

The city and county of San Francisco is the fourth most populaous city and California and the thirteenth most populous city in United States. It is the financial,cultural and the transportation center of the larger San Francisco Bya area, a region of more than 7 million people. It is a popular tourist destination, renowned for its’sttep rolling hills, modern architecture and cultural diversity.

San Francisco is a major city in United States,and is a popular vacation destination in US.Known for its’ amazing setting, San Francisco is located at the northern tip of the peninsula at the entrance to San Francisco Bay.Alcatraz, Angel, Farallon, Treasure, and Yerba Buena islands are part of the city.

The region north of the Golden Gate Bridge is also known as the North Bay. With a few exceptions, this region is quite affluent. The North Bay is comparatively rural to the remainder of the Bay areas and consists of many areas of underdeveloped open space, farmlands and vineyards.

The Eastern side of the Bay consisting of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties is locally known as the East Bay. The East Bay is broken into two regions- the inner East Bay and the Outer East Bay. The inner East Bay is more urbanized, more obtusely populated, has a much older building stock (built before World War II) and a more ethnical population. The outer East Bay is particularly urban in Livermore, while being part suburban in Pleasanton-Dublin and its base was mostly built up after World War II.

The residential areas along the Southern edge of the Bay are known as South Bay, Santa Clara Valley and Silicon Valley. This area has long been industrialized and enlarged and is often marked as a stereotype of the exemplary California suburban city. Today, the growth continues, primarily fueled by technology and cheap immigrant workers.

So, here is some information about San Francisco Bay, which is a very attractive and pleasing area to visit.

My husband and I are planning a vacation during the end of November. We thought maybe Alaska, but I found out that there isn’t much daylight during that time. We are now looking at the Yellowstone area. We don’t ski. Would like to try snowmobiling. We want to stay in an area that isn’t really crowded. A cabin with a fireplace but is easily accessible if it snows. Also how’s northern California or Washington State?