Does anybody know what – next to the camera's – the other stuff does that is attached to the pole? Is there it chance they also measure the distance between the car/bike and the buildings (with laser as a horizontal scanner or whatever)? If they did, they could create a 3d map of whole cities.

There's some clear prior art here, the Burning Man Earth OpenViewProject trike.

http://openviewproject.org/

Would be nice to see Google at least giving credit where credit is due.

Yes, they could. I'm waiting for a release for more than a year, now: http://www.educatingsilicon.com/2008/04/18/google-street-view-soon-in-3d/
Also: http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/

Yes, go where car can't go.

And, as result, more privacy complaints.

The black and gray things beneath the camera are almost certainly LIDAR (laser rangefinding) devices. Very interesting, I can't imagine much application other than 3D mapping for those.

Erik: I found this movie:
http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/2009/05/lidar-scan-of-london-in-landxplorer.html

It would seem if it is a LIDAR scanner, Google would also be able to create these images.

http://blog.aggregatedintelligence.com/2009/04/next-gen-street-view-3d-models-with.html
Talks about thermal viewing also, but I doubt they would go that far... (or would they!).

Yvo

Trycicles is nice, but how do you use them in Venice? ...Google has always a solution:
http://friendfeed.com/matteobordone/bc42055c/mappatura-google-di-venezia-oggi

1) do you think it is Google?
2) when you are so close to the walls, it is useless to put the cameras so high... isn't it?

1) Let's say that it's the least strange possible explanation...

2) I suppose that you're right. Maybe they don't want to change the height of the cameras often. And anyway he is close to the right wall, but not to the left one...

What I want to know is how they managed to get the Trevi Fountain in Rome without anybody there!