Google Maps Frenzy
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | May 30, 2007 | Share This
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Two cool new additions to Google Maps this week - Mapplets and Street View. On Tuesday, the Lat Long blog announced that customizable map mashups could now be created as overlays for Google maps. Google explains,
“Essentially, these are embeddable mashups. You can choose which of these Mapplets you want to see overlaid on the same map and combine them with the built-in features of Google Maps, like driving directions and business search. This lets you create your own mashups from the content that’s most relevant to you. it also gives publishers a new channel to reach the millions of Google Maps users who are looking for content.”
Google has a video demo for developers. Later that same day, the Google Lat/Long blog also announced Street View,
“With Street View, you can virtually explore city neighborhoods by viewing and navigating within 360-degree scenes of street-level imagery. It feels as if you’re walking down the street!”
The Google Earth Blog goes into further detail,
“It’s only available in five cities (San Francisco, Miami, Denver, Los Vegas, New York), but this is definitely worth trying out! You have to have the latest Flash to use this new features. it lets you view street level views based on photos taken by a car driving along the streets. The photos are very high resolution so you actually can have up to 16 levels of zoom to let you pan and get closer to things at the ground level…The really intereting thing with this is zooming and panning around. You can drag the little human icon to pick a new location for viewing…No word yet on whether this directly or indirectly has to do with the announcement of licensing stanford’ss robotic car technology to make 3D buildings.”
In March, Searchviews reported the earliest sightings of this super-zoom, first discovered by a group of French bloggers. Those scenes, however, were created from aerial photographs, whereas Street View shows lateral car-side images. Together, these enhanced viewing options seem like the first hint of a transition from Google Maps into a web-version of Google Earth.
Topics: Google |