Google Star Maps

Wednesday August 8 11:46 AM ET


They cost a lot less that the ones being hawked at Sunset Boulevard street corners; and, from all appearances, they're generally much more accurate.

By FilmStew Staff, FilmStew.com

Not so long ago, the lifestyles of the rich and famous were the purview of bellowing Englishman Robin Leach, forever in search of champagne dreams and caviar wishes. But in a sign of the times, his beat has been co-opted by the Internet to the tune of champagne latitudes and caviar longitudes.

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The "Famous Homes" section of the website GoogleEarthHacks.com catalogs some 270 palatial domiciles. Starting with the Beverly Hills homes of Tom Cruise, the Beckams, Eddie Murphy and Will Smith.

But all is not fun and games here. Thanks to quick and handy links, users can easily convert a Google satellite image into a Google map, instantly breaching a celebrity's privacy. Of course, just like knowing the location of the Playboy Mansion on Charing Cross Road won't get you in the front door, this doesn't mean a stalker now has access to an A-lister.

Still, it's perhaps one more sign that technology is overtaking us, offering too many means and too many ends. At the very least, in a world that is increasingly subservient to GPS, the image of a personage like the lead character in the 1997 independent film Star Maps is starting to feel positively quaint.

Many of the "Famous Homes" listed are in other parts of the world, well beyond 90210 – Peter Jackson's pad in New Zealand, a property owned by Catherine Zeta-Jones in Wales, Tiger Woods' place on Jupiter Island, Florida, and so on. There's even the real life Bahamas pirates' island owned by Johnny Depp. Among the top downloads are Eminem's home in Michigan, a spread owned by the Sultan of Brunei and, of course, Brangelina's beachside digs. And well ahead of those, by a Seattle mile or two, is the compound of Microsoft guru Bill Gates.