Google Maps has released the latest updates for South Africa and they now include street views. Undoubtedly timed for the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa, the street views feature not only wonderful shots on the inside of each of the World Cup stadiums but they have also travelled down all the main roads and photographed them so that, for example, if you go onto Google Maps, you can see a very clear image of the front of my offices together with cars on the road and then advance up and down Jan Smuts Avenue.

Car registration numbers and faces have been blurred but they seem to have captured my part of Johannesburg at least, on a bright sunny day. I just hope our thieves are not sophisticated enough to use these in more residential robberies, because you really can now pick up quite clearly whether somebody has an electric fence, how many strands there are to that electric fence, whether they have video cameras on the gates, in which direction those cameras are pointing and various other details such as the type of gate, the size of wall, that would really allow one to prepare extra carefully for any less than honest plans.

There will be less and less privacy in an Internet-driven world, but some people, when they see the outside of their house all over the Internet, are going to be somewhat shocked as to the detail that anyone can now view and study, without necessarily having to stand outside the house for hours.