Google takes street view to Amazon - The Washington Post →

TUMBIRA, Brazil – This community in the heart of the Amazon is so remote that villagers had until recently never heard of one of the world’s best-known companies, Google.

So when they were told that Google would be introducing an off-road version of the company’s Street View project into their hamlet, population 100, residents thought that a popular Brazilian variety show host known as Gugu (pronounced goo-goo) was on his way. What came were a half dozen “Googlers,” armed with a contraption holding nine cameras and fastened high above a bulky white tricycle.

Used previously to photograph Stonehenge, the Google Trike was mounted atop a motor boat that sped along the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon, the cameras incessantly snapping pictures. It was then slowly pedaled along Tumbira’s dirt paths, past wood-plank homes and onto the soccer field. A special tripod-mounted camera was used to shoot inside the small school here and taken along a forest trail that led into a sea of green, where the Googlers were met by a cacophony of singing birds.