Seeing some nice pictures people have taken through Google Street View from around the world, roused our curiosity and we decided to read up more about it. The first stop was the Street View site by Google. On the site, Google claims that Google Maps with Street View lets you explore places around the world through a 360-degree street-level imagery. You can check out restaurants, visit neighborhoods, or plan your next trip.
They even have a technology page on the site where they have described in detail the process, techniques and equipment they have used to gather all the street view data and have stitched it together for viewing. Quite impressive. You can read more about it here.
So of course the next question that came to mind was (we have seen quite a number of examples of very useful mashups that were created using Google Maps over the number of years), whether the same has been done with Google Street View. Below are a few examples we liked.
1. Stweet – Google Street View convenes Twitter
Stweet as the name suggests is a mash up of Google street view with twitter. It shows the exact location from where the tweet originated against a panoramic view of the location using Google street view.
Once a user selects a destination, Stweet shows the tweets from the selected location and as the user moves around in Street-view, it shows more tweets from those locations.
Stweet refreshes automatically when a new tweet is found in the destination that the user is viewing. Currently only available for some cities of US and Europe.
Created by: We Love The Net
Link: http://www.we-love-the.net/Stweet/
2. Zombie attack on Google street view –
Streetview Zombie Apocalypse developed by Wonder-Tonic
is a game using Google Street View. The user can choose his location and can fight the zombies and“œmoving pins” against the street view of that location.
You can play the game here: http://wonder-tonic.com/zombie/
3. World Cup Soccer 2010 Venues – Step up on Puyol’s playground
If you’re a sports fan, you probably came across this mashup developed for the Soccer World Cup – 2010. You can take an inside look at the various World Cup venues, pan around and check out the videos and images from that location and read up more about the location. It was early days yet for Google Street View but this was quite a nifty little tool developed for those who are fans of Soccer and Technology both.
Link: http://www.mibazaar.com/worldcupsoccer/venues.html
4. Globe Genie –
And now you can roam the streets of London and take your own short vacation while sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of your office. Globe Genie is mashup using Google’s street view technology with which you can teleport yourself to your favorite destination. You can view street level details about almost any place and it feels like actually you’re there.
Just select the continent and hit teleport, experience a whole new level of possibilities.
Link: http://web.mit.edu/~jmcmicha/www/globegenie/
5. Street Traveler –
A mash-up to virtually travel around the streets of some of your favorite cities around the globe. Roam around the streets of Sydney, Prague, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Barcelona, Madrid and London using Google Street View. It lets you read about your favorite destinations, visit your favorite landmarks, and tour around in the panoramic view.
Link: http://streettraveler.blogspot.com/2009/08/list-of-places-in-rome.html
(If you’re in the mood for a few laughs, you can also check out these funny sights captured while taking some of the street views http://www.streetviewfunny.com/streetviewfunny/index.php)
However, looking at these examples and more, it’s pretty clear that it is early days yet for Google Street view and it hasn’t yet been tapped for it’s full potential. We are not sure whether it is because Street View by itself imposes some technical constraints (it could be that it’s just not as handy as Google Maps yet) or whether it hasn’t been explored as an option by people yet. We are definitely interested in exploring this further and discussing ideas on how Google Street View can be used to create more valuable tools. If you have some ideas and feel that you would like to discuss them with us, do feel free to reach out or share.
(Incidentally, Google has already started capturing Street View images for India and Bangalore is their pilot.)
source : http://ibnlive.in.com/news/google-launches-its-streetview-project-in-india/156060-3.html
