Google launched a new map feature today for San Francisco, Miami, Las Vegas, Denver and New York. It's called Street View.
And it rocks pretty darn hard. It's a souped up version of the now defunct A9 project that was called Blockview. It's up and live as of this afternoon. The announcement was made today at the Where 2.0.
In those four cities, the 3D views are available along major streets and points of interest. Google worked on portion of this with Immersive Media to produce the views. Some of this, however was done with Google Earth's own technologies. San Francisco and South Bay, for example are at very high resolutions and done completely by the Google folks.
Why It's Called Street View
For now, the Google experience only allows you to move along at street level, thus the name. But the full experience of looking up and around can be found at the Immersive Media site.
The image to the right links to this google Street View map along South Las Vegas Boulevard. It's right in front of my favorite hotel, The Bellagio. This is a truly interactive 3D experience. You can change your angle of view and move along the street while maintaining that angle. If you head north in my map example, you can actually turn into the Bellagio driveway and go right up to the valet entrance.
The word in the tech industry is that they've got a whole bunch of other cities already mapped, so look for some updates quick on the heals of this announcement. Talk about Localism!
The consumer experience in these cities has been greatly enriched today. Go check it out for yourself. You can bet this interactive geotagging is only going to become more common.
Oh... and there's already a goofy youtube video from Google.
Comments(62)