6 Comments Add your own

• 1. discreet_chaos  |  May 30th, 2007 at 1:14 am

  OK - So, I had to read the article to find that it was Microsoft, who unveiled this last year and which was written-up on LR and had Cory very excited. And, I see that MS still hasn’t taken it further than it was in the beginning because until it becomes video, it really isn’t very useful beyond the “wow” factor and then, I’m still not sure how useful it’ll be or whether it’d jibe with my privacy concerns.

  Though, if you’d like to tour Manhattan, one click per ten feet, then it really looks like a cool service and it might even be fun to look for a stoop-sitter, they didn’t blur.

• 2. M  |  May 30th, 2007 at 11:35 am

  Microsoft Live Maps 3D is still great when you want an overhead, but this is absolutely amazing.

  Discreet, you don’t think this can be useful? What if I want to see the what the store I’m trying to get to looks like so I know what I’m actually looking for? Or how about what an intersection will look like so I know where to turn before I pass the road sign? Or seeing the neighborhood from ground level when I’m checking out a house listed for sale. This definitely can be very useful. Compiled video from the frames would be the cool but not useful feature. And privacy? These are public roads and views. Google is just making them easily accessible. If showing what a public street looks like was a privacy concern then local tv news would be impossible.

• 3. discreet_chaos  |  May 30th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

  Right now, both this and the MS product that Cory linked-to last year only showed one side of the street and the view is oriented toward the road. Even if they were going to use this for real estate, it looks to me that they’ll have to retrace their steps to capture the other side and though you can sort of make things out, neither really had a clear picture.

  Sure, there’s some “wow” factor, but both of them look like they’ll be more of a novelty. Heck, pretty much all of the map services get the occasional address wrong and I know that Google has a long ways to go, just to catch-up with Microsoft with their aerial shots of rural areas. There’s a lot of America out there and other than being a cute thing for a few cities, I really don’t see it expanding to cover everywhere anytime soon and right this minute, they’re both only useful for one side of the street.

  As for privacy, I don’t know how the courts will rule or what the future may hold, but someday there’s going to be some guy’s car caught in front of his mistress’ house and it’ll be permanently archived in Google. And, I suspect the privacy risks is one of the reasons, my simple playing seemed to jump-over or blur people sitting on stoops.

• 4. discreet_chaos  |  May 30th, 2007 at 2:48 pm

  WHOOPS!

  I’m sorry, the Google thing does show both sides of the street and I was mistaken. I had just taken the arrows at their word and it wasn’t until I was verifying my last comment that I found, you can ignore the arrows and who knows, you may even be able to go the wrong way down the street.

  Still, the pics aren’t very clear and the interface is quite clunky. Someday, it might amount to something for the big cities, but it has a long ways to go, if you ask me.

• 5. discreet_chaos  |  May 30th, 2007 at 2:51 pm

  PS) As for using them for directions: How often will they update the pics?

  I’m originally from the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham) and they think nothing of realigning or totally changing an intersection. Offhand, I’d say that frequency of updates would be a problem in every area on the fastest-growing lists.

• 6. trash man  |  February 15th, 2008 at 10:15 am

  I checked out my street. It is trash day and all the cans are out in the driveways, still full of trash. Two streets to the east the trash cans have been emptied. I am going to pan up and down the streets and try to find the trash truck doing its thing!

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