Posts Tagged ‘Panoramabilder’
Bing Maps Streetside: Panorma Pictures Now In Germany
11 Jan. 2012 | Author: 
Microsoft has released its geodata service “Streetside” in Germany as a new feature on its local search engine, “Bing Maps”. Bing Maps has thus become a competitor on the same level of “Google Maps”, which has offered its own panoramic image service “Street View” for about a year. Read the rest of this entry »
Live Search Maps now with 360º views
The US-edition of Live Search Maps is now offering its users panorama and 3D-views, of cities, street views or buildings.
Microsoft has equipped its local search service with the Web2.0 photo tool Photosynth, with which users can assemble three-dimensional views using a collage of ‘normal’ photos. Whoever uploads photos with location-details, will facilitate these images being searchable through Live Search Maps. This recent addition was announced by Microsoft employee Chris Pendleton in his blog.
Find thing the new feature is however like a needle in a haystack – it is found after a search, in the left hand menu, under ‘Explore Collections/Show/Photosynth (per link or icon). Once discovered, a list appears showing all available Photosynth images – the geo-locations of which are displayed on the map. As these images are not embedded in Live Search Maps, users must have the Photosynth software installed on their computers. (Note, at the time of writing, the software was only available for the Windows platform).
Although this application is at present only accessible through the English-language edition of Live Search Maps, one is able to access various locations in other countries, including some in Germany, via this version of LSM.
Tour-de-France-Route in Google Street View
The 95th Tour de France has been taking place from July 5 -27, 2008. For this great cycling event, Google has placed its first Street Views of France on-line.
The 360° Views are to be found in Google Maps, Google’s local search wing. By clicking on “Street View”, a virtual view of the entire race routing is to be found. What’s more, the view is presented from the rider’s perspective, as was reported by Google employee Daniel Ratner in the Google Lat Long Blog. According to Ratner, the absolute latest features of Street View have been implemented for the 21-stage France tour, encompassing ‘Face Blurring’ and high image resolution (see our post).
So, for the first time users are able to access panorama views of Europe, via Google Maps. Until this introduction, users were only able to view USA cities, national parks and recreational areas in Street View. The Tour-de-France route is only the beginning ― Google has already announced that views of other European cities and areas will be forthcoming (see our report). At the moment, German cities are being documented (as noted in the Google Watch Blog). Street-View cars have been already spied in Munich and Berlin– confirmed by a report in the Berlin Tagesspiegel, which also mentions that Google is also shooting in Frankfurt am Main. When these Street Views will be posted on-line is any body’s guess.
Posted in Local Search per PC, Local Search, News, Local Search Engines, Practical features | 
Tags: Frankreich, Google, google maps, lokale Informationen, Maps, Panoramaansicht, Panoramabilder, Radrennen, Straßenansicht, Streckenverlauf, street view, Suchdienst, Suchmaschine, Suchmaschinenriese, Tour de France | 
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Google “Street View” grows and grows
At the end of May 2008, the Google Maps feature “Street View” celebrated its first birthday. On the occasion of its birthday, its creators added recently a bunch of new parorama views.
For this purpose the drivers of the Google-Street-View cars (fitted out with special 360º cameras) spread out over 37 ‘new’ USA areas, shooting or reshooting a whole lot of new photos. As detailed in a post in the Google Lat Long Blog, programmer Jiajun Zhu revealed that with this new surge, the coverage of Street-View is doubled.
Twenty new cities and urban areas, including Springfield, Atlanta, Oklahoma and Reno, as well as the addition of ten National Parks and Recreational areas such as the Everglades National Park, Death Valley National Park and the Florida Keys, have been newly documented at close range. The survey of cities such as Kansas City, Miami, Nashville, San Francisco or New York City have also been expanded.
Simultaneously, according to Zhu, the photo quality has been improved, and the glimpses of the Street-View car have been removed from photos– when looking at street level, one now sees the street itself, instead of the roof of the car on which the camera is mounted. Face-Blurring technology has now been fully implemented, thereby rendering the faces of pedestrians and license plates unrecognizable.
Although until recently only cities and regions in the USA were viewable using the Street-View technology, results are now also viewable in the German-language editions under the label “Straßenansicht”. This link appears on the map, whenever areas or locations are displayed where the photo-documentation has been published.
Posted in Local Search per PC, Local Search, News, Local Search Engines, Practical features |
Tags: Geburtstag, Google, google maps, Panoramaansicht, Panoramabilder, Straßenansicht, street view |
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Point of View – “Street View” in Germany
A report by news magazine ‘Focus’ reports that Google intends to introduce its panorama photo innovation for German towns and cities. Deutsche Post AG plans a similar venture. The call to action for data privacy activists has been sounded…
To realize the Google Maps Feature “Street View” for Germany, the foreseeable future will show cars sporting specialized cameras, cruising the streets of local towns and shooting innumerable 360º photos. “We are at the moment already on the go in Europe and will also come to Germany”, confirmed Google’s data security executive Peter Fleischer to ‘Focus’ magazine.
In the USA, this service has been on display since May 2007 and is constantly being expanded. From the launch, Google’s display of highly detailed photos – some of which clearly show faces of pedestrians or license plates (and occasionally still do) – has been cause for discussion and uproar. For example: a couple whose house was visible in “Street View”, felt their privacy had been invaded and took Google to court. In Europe the situation will not be any easier for the search-engine market leader. On the contrary – according to a report posted in the online magazine PCWorld, the EU’s data protection supervisor, Peter Hustinx has expressed his reservations concerning “Street View” and warns against its introduction, as its present format is not compatible with European legislation.
Google has actually already started to blur the faces of people caught in “Street View”, using a technique aptly named “Face Blurring”, which automatically recognizes faces and blurs them. This technology was first tested in documenting Manhattan, according to Google’s Lat Long Blog. It is planned to be universally implemented in Europe, and will obliterate not only faces but also vehicle license plates as well. “In all European locations, no faces or vehicle license plates will be recognizable [in Street View]”, promised Fleischer to ‘Focus’.
However this doesn’t satisfy many privacy watchdogs. As outlined in the ‘Focus’ report, the Deutsche Post AG is working on a very similar project. For this project, watchdogs are calling for not only the blotting out of faces and license plates, but also house numbers. According to ‘Focus’, concerns are mounting regarding public display of private buildings. These could then be linked to specific people [and invade their privacy].
Whether these fears are unwarranted, is questionable. Actually, “Street View” is a nice and useful feature. Shouldn’t it, assuming that faces and license plates are unrecognizable, also be granted the blessing of the data protection legislators?
