Slashgeo

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Stay tuned, we'll soon publish our "final call for collaborators" post. Some people have already expressed their intention to become "editors" and contribute feeding the site, exciting! Meanwhile, remember our open budget? I am happy to announce our first donor: MapJack.com. Their financial contribution of 300$ will help pay for hosting our servers. I have been clear: it is very important for Slashgeo, in order to stay reliable, to be product-neutral. I don't want to be or appear corrupted, my integrity worths more than a few thousand dollars (but don't try with millions ;-). Since MapJack offered support even during Slashgeo's hiatus and knowing the site might not go live again, here's some more about them: they offer a street-view mapping for San Francisco and you can read their recent press release below.

Ogle Earth introduces Earthmine, a street-level 3D webmapping tool which allow 3D user annotations. The video explains the concept effectively. From the TechCrunch article: "What this all means is that Earthmine’s system can keep track of the objects found in the real world and attribute information to each of them (a process known as “asset mapping”). The latitude, longitude, elevation, and other attributes of garbage cans, telephone posts, manholes, and trees can be recorded and tracked in a pseudo-3D virtualization system. The information can be exploited within Earthmine’s software or exported to GIS or CAD systems. Alternatively, the information stored in preexisting Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be brought into Earthmine." See also the numerous related stories below.

Mentioned here previously, the NYTimes (via APB) runs an article EveryScape, another 3D street view candidate, which has some unique features: "Now, one company is planning 3-D-like tours of Cambridge, Mass., and other cities that not only venture down streets, but also inside some local businesses. Tourists to this virtual Cambridge will be able to click their way along a Brattle Street rendered in realistic detail, and move through the computer-generated interiors of dozens of nearby shops and institutions. [...] EveryScape (www.everyscape.com) in Waltham, Mass., will start virtual tours of streets and businesses in Cambridge and Lexington, Mass., in December, said Mok Oh, founder and chief technology officer. [...] Mike Liebhold, a senior researcher at the Institute for the Future, a research organization in Palo Alto, Calif., says EveryScape is entering a complex marketplace of mapping services that already has many established players, like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo." See also related stories below.