Idea #33 – Google Maps Gutter Inspection I am terribly afraid of our rain gutters. I’m afraid that I’m not going to notice I bumped into one of our downspouts, redirecting every drop of rain that falls directly towards our basement. I’m afraid that I’m going to cut myself on the edge of the sheet metal. And I’m afraid of what they might be collecting. Leaves, definitely. Probably a bunch of mucky, organic guck. In my nightmares, there are little bird and squirrel corpses up there as well. And probably a moldering raccoon or two. All clogging things up, causing the house to rot downwards from the roofline. But I’m also terribly afraid of falling. Heights I can handle, so long as I can’t imagine falling from them. I’ve happily lived on high floors of tall buildings in apartments with high window ledges. Put floor-to-ceiling windows in the same place (or those glass balcony panels that have been littering downtown streets recently) and I will be reduced to a quivering heap of jelly. A heap of jelly that will not stop crying and peeing itself, more specifically. So while it would be nothing for most people to pop up a ladder and have a look in the gutters, it’s really not for me. Anyway, our ladder’s not quite tall enough and if it was, it’d be even worse. Could Google Maps be my saviour? In Grade 9 I remember our science teacher both fascinating and terrifying the class with stories of spy satellites powerful enough to read the license plate on a moving car. Do these actually exist? Could Google start using these instead of the clearly non-military-grade ones they’re using right now? They’ve got their fingers in a lot of pies right now, couldn’t gutter inspection be the next one? They could use either a per-use or subscription pricing model. They could call it GGutters. They could give me a piece of the action. And a discount on my first inspection.