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Extensive Street-level Mapping Coming Soon?
posted by Satri
on Friday December 01, @11:07AM
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from the imagine-when-they'll-input-this-in-a-virtual-globe dept.
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from the imagine-when-they'll-input-this-in-a-virtual-globe dept.
Very Spatial links and discuss to VirtualCity, offering geolocated street-level photos for Toronto and Montreal, Canada, and planning to add more North-American cities soon. The photos are easy to browse over a Google Map interface. From their press release: "Over 4 million photographs were taken of the Toronto area, as well as 3 million more for Montreal, providing visitors a unique perspective on two of Canada’s most popular urban areas. VirtualCity plans to expand into the United States before the end of the year, beginning with Miami and continuing into the New York, Chicago, and Boston markets in 2007." See related story about Amazon A9's previous service of street level mapping and Microsoft's street-side photos.
Related Stories
Industry: Street Side Images for Microsoft
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All Points Blog runs a story on the upcoming street side imagery technology for Microsoft Goes Live. Service demo will be available a little later in the day.
Amazon A9 Stops Street-level Mapping 1 comment
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All Points Blog links (1, 2) to ResourceShelf note and AP article on Amazon A9 withdrawing from the webmapping competition. From the article: "Amazon.com Inc.'s A9 search engine has dropped some of its most widely touted features, including the ability to remember everything a user has ever searched for and a service that showed detailed, street-level images of major cities. [...] A9 had put considerable effort into taking detailed, street-level photos of 20 U.S. cities, which people could use to map directions and find businesses. Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. also have invested heavily in such photographic search technologies."
Industry: Microsoft Acquiring More Street-level Photos
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Slashdot discuss Microsoft's acquisition of new street-level photography. Their summary: "Today as we were biking around our neighborhood in a small city we saw a strange vehicle slowly driving around. It appeared to be an SUV, bristling with cameras mounted on the roof, and pointing just about every possible direction. The first time we saw it, all we could see was that it had a sign on the side, something about Windows. The second time we saw it, we stared at it so hard that the driver stopped and we had a chance to ask him what it was all about. He said he was driving around, filming streets, and that there were people doing this all over the world, and getting data from the air too. It was going to be available on the Web. I asked him if this was Microsoft's answer to Google Earth, and he indicated that it was. There seems to be very little about this on the Web, and I found no mention of Microsoft's collection of this sort of detailed street level data. The Windows site appears to be http://preview.local.live.com/, although since I use a Mac it didn't work properly. I'm not sure I want my neighborhood viewable on the Web from ground level. And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could." See also related stories.
U.S. Houses Being Massively Photographed
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Slashdot has a story on U.S. houses being massively photographed. Their summary: "Photographers from a Canadian company are going house to house, shooting pictures of every house in America, in hopes of building a giant database that can be sold to banks, insurance companies, and appraisal firms. While this activity is legal (as long as the photographers don't trespass on private property to get their shots), there are obviously concerns about security and privacy. Considering that an individual can be detained and questioned by the FBI for photographing a bridge in this country, why should this Canadian company get a free pass? Tinfoil hat aside, something seems very, very fishy here." From the Arizona Star article about the photographing of Tucson: "'The [handout given to people who complain] made it sound like they're doing it for law enforcement, when in reality they're doing it for sales and marketing,' said [a City Council aide], who received several calls about the company."
Massive Street-level Camera Acquisition on the Way? 1 comment
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All Points Blog links to an article about camera data acquisition and their potential integration to virtual globe apps. From the article: "IMC has started an initiative to capture complete street-level views of 25 major U.S. cities. McGovern notes that they drive specially outfitted Volkswagens up and down all the streets, then fill in the gaps, like New York's Central Park, with backpack-mounted units. [...] "If they have New York City or Chicago captured, then it makes sense to make it available through Google Earth. That allows you to distribute it easily, and Google has hundreds of millions of users that you can spread the cost over."" See also related stories below.
Industry: Google Launches Street View and Mapplets at Where 2.0 2007 8 comments
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Slashdot discuss the Google announcement of their new Street View and Mapplets feature. Their summary: "Today at the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference Google unveiled two new map features. An O'Reilly blogger describes Street View, which uses 360-degree street-level video from Immersive Media to enable neighborhood walk-throughs in (for now) a few selected areas. The other new feature is Mapplets, which let you embed Google Maps mashups in any Web page. Much more coverage is linked from TechMeme." The GEB covers the launch. Of course, you can read about it from the Official Google Lat Long Blog. See related stories below.
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Lidar street-level mapping
(Score:2)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )
Directly from VirtualCity
(Score:2)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )
"Kevin Cook writes "VirtualCity is proud to unveil its latest offering to the consumer information market, VirtualCity.ca. Users of the site are able to view major metropolitan areas through street-level photography, as well as search business names and view their actual storefront, all without any software to download or install.
Upon arriving at VirtualCity, the user is greeted with an on-screen map of the Toronto area. From there, they can either use the built-in search functions to find a point of interest, or drag and drop a viewfinder on the map to begin “strolling” the city. Millions of photographs are seamlessly stitched together for each metropolitan area, giving VirtualCity users the unique ability to stroll through streets, viewing points of interest before they ever leave their computer. In addition, the site allows users to traverse maps traditionally and find detailed directions complete with time and mileage summaries.
We will also be launching a keyword-based search platform shortly, allowing our users to find any business or point of interest associated with a certain genre quickly and easily.
VirtualCity’s photographs are collected via highly specialized mapping vehicles equipped with high-definition video cameras and the latest in global positioning technology. GIS-grade GPS, accelerometers to sense increases and decreases in acceleration, and gyro meters to sense directional changes, all tie into the vehicles’ computer bus to sense each full rotation of the wheels, while custom software compares these readings 10 times per second to create extremely accurate location data regardless of degraded GPS or "urban canyons.”
VirtualCity will certainly revolutionize the way online mapping is utilized. At present, everyone has become accustomed to finding directions online by way of MapQuest or Google Maps, but the evident gap in these solutions centers around the fact that satellite images and lines on a grid do not make up for the convenience of being visually familiar with the area prior to traveling there. As well as knowing how to get to their destination, our users are able to see everything else on the way and decide whether or not those points are relevant to their future travels.
Over 4 million photographs were taken of the Toronto area, as well as 3 million more for Montreal, providing visitors a unique perspective on two of Canada’s most popular urban areas. We plan to expand into the United States before the end of the year, beginning with Miami and continuing into the New York, Chicago, and Boston markets in 2007.
Check us out at http://www.virtualcity.ca/ [virtualcity.ca] "