New Mapping Tool
For a while, Google has been the heavy hitter as far as online maps go. Both Google Maps and Google Earth are amazing applications. I find myself using Google Maps on a daily basis.

However, another behemoth has entered the fray and their map portal has a very unique twist: The beta for Amazon's A9 Maps is now available. What makes their system unique? It seems they have sent vehicles with mounted cameras all around a few select cities and taken millions of photographs of both sides of each street.

Here is an example for you: If you search for 420 Broad Street, Seattle, WA, you are shown a fence and a crowd of people. If you 'drive' to the right, the base of a very unique structure comes into view, which happens to be the Space Needle.

It is not perfect though...if you drive a little further, you can see that an oncoming bus has obscured several frames of that side of the street. Still...a pretty cool tool with some real potential - especially for locating and identifying an address in an unknown area in advance.

And no, my street doesn't come up with any pictures either.

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Comments

Very cool, though it would seem to be an insurmountable task to make and maintain this sort of feature for a lot of towns in the U.S., and unless Joe Blow from Any Town, USA can check out his own street this isn’t really going to be useful past being an internet curiousity.

Posted by: Rob - 05:51 PM - 08/09/2005

There’s something really creepy about this.  I don’t like the thought of Yahoo sending its minions out to photograph my house (for the record, my house is not there either...yet).  Are photographs of the street really any more useful than maps and satellite pictures?

Posted by: - 06:39 AM - 08/10/2005

Good post. Another cool thing with maps.google.com is if you geocache or have Lat/Long information. For example you can enter

N 44° 02.157, W 123° 10.119

where you would normally put an address and - ta da - Google takes you there. Click the Satelitle button to check the terrain. Way cool!

Posted by: JustaDog - 04:30 PM - 08/17/2005

Yes, I use the lat/long and satellite imagery for that very purpose.  It is also very handy for puzzle caches.  Once you solve the coordinates, popping them into google maps and seeing it locate in the middle of a park gives you a little more confidence in your figuring.

Posted by: - 07:20 PM - 08/17/2005
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