Mara and I just moved into the Lower Haight earlier this month, and Google just released a new Maps feature — Street View — that has a picture of our place. If I weren't writing about this, I'd be speechless. Wow.
Our place is the yellow two-story walk-up that is bustin out of the top of the frame. I love that it was captured on one of those semi-sunny days where little wisps of fog drift through. So nice to not live in the fog belt. Incidentally, here's the Chronicle's fog forecast. Doesn't look good.Street Level seems like useful functionality, esp. for fancy mobile devices, which I don't have. The controls are pretty straightforward and easy to use on a desktop, but I wonder about the ease with which one could navigate up and down the streets with those teeny arrows on a Palm or Blackberry. This is really nitpicky, but I think it would be effective to introduce more map navigation into the image, i.e. skipping to the next intersection, returning to the original destination, etc. Future-wise, it would be awesome to be able to do stuff with the images — easily insert them into other things, string them together in connection with directions, etc. What I want to know is: How the heck did they do it? Thx, kottke.
One reply on “Google street-view meets new apartment”
Basically, there is a fleet of vehicles that roam around the streets of major cities and rural ares that have spherical camera pillars mounted upon them. Thay drive up and down steets in a grid-like fashion. The cameras take pictures in set time intervals i.e. every 2.7 seconds OR thay have pre-programmed distance intervals for the camera shots i.e. they take a picture every 10 feet or every 2 meters. In this case, the vehicle's odometer relays the pertinent data to the rooftop photography hub or the rooftop camera hub. SOme of the camera cars also have a built in SICK laser, which in essense digitalizes the foreground for electronic computational rendering (ECR) support. Theres your answer, honey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!