http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68405,00.html?
tw=wn_tophead_1
Riding With the Urban Mappers By Jeff MacIntyre
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/
0,1282,68405,00.html
02:00 AM Aug. 08, 2005 PT
PALO ALTO, California -- "I didn't think it could be done," says Tim
Caro-Brice, a Stanford University graduate student and pioneering
member of Amazon.com's A9.com project team. Barnaby Dorfman, A9.com's
vice president, laughs and taps the accelerator. A nondescript sport
utility vehicle eases down a Palo Alto street, and the rest may be
search engine history.
Dorfman and Caro-Brice are part of the small team responsible for the
block-view technology A9.com launched this spring, which allows users
to virtually stroll city streets to get directions and identify local
businesses. The vehicle they drive is a prototype for the mini fleet
currently crisscrossing the United States in a photographing spree,
racing to put a visual Yellow Pages online.
While the duo is not quite Lewis and Clark, Dorfman and Caro-Brice
are decidedly human surveyors in a hotly contested field dominated
thus far by satellite images. This pedestrian point of view is parent
company Amazon.com's latest bid to help A9.com differentiate itself
in the local search market, which has seen a number of mapping
innovations from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo this year. (Not to
mention the continuing flood of hacks.)
A9.com's trucks have been rolling for about a year now. They have
already photo-mapped 20 major American cities (with a bank of 30
million images) as part of an aggressive rollout, capturing, by their
estimate, storefront images for 1 million of the 14 million small
businesses in the United States. The fleet, currently two vehicles
strong, is barreling through New Mexico and Minnesota right now.
The truck itself is fairly innocuous. A FireWire cable snakes up from
a rear door window to a roof-mounted storage box. Peering out from an
opening in the right side of the box is a consumer-grade digital
video camera, which is running constantly.
Inside the truck, a laptop sitting on the passenger seat records
movement on a map and controls the camera as it brings in a steady
stream of visuals that, at 30 frames per second, is adequate for
generating the image stills that create the A9.com Möbius strip. A
Garmin GPS device, portable hard drive, DC/AC power inverter and
power strip complete the picture. A "neutered," buttonless mouse
dangles over the passenger seat, its gentle motion keeping the laptop
from hibernating.
Less visible is the gyroscope attached to the truck's accelerator,
which helps determine relative position where satellite line of sight
is unavailable. This innovation, which calculates time and speed
between recorded GPS points, can determine the path in between those
fixed points, effectively defeating the classic GPS dilemma of "urban
canyons." A9.com has patented several such elements.
"The physical world is a very irregular place, this has been our
challenge," says Dorfman. "We're trying to create a window into the
places you visit -- and visualizing it the way you visit them."
A9.com's gambit, "to provide every small business in America with a
web page," recalls Microsoft's failed attempt with Sidewalk in the
'90s. But Microsoft didn't have Amazon.com's 900,000 seller accounts,
user recommendations, click-to-call or other features. Users can
submit additional images, such as business interiors, along with
Yellow Pages-type information such as hours of operation or payment
options.
Although much of the process of posting the data is automated, the
user community has been quick to notice Easter eggs and other
irregularities. The Naked Cowboy of Times Square is there in his full
glory; in an early shot of the New York Stock Exchange, a tourist
could be seen riding the bull statue. Dorfman says that A9.com images
have reappeared on Flickr as "art by accident" for sharing. The
photographing of federal government buildings in Washington, D.C., a
mere week before last year's election, prompted some tense moments
with the Secret Service.
"We're familiarizing people with their surroundings before they
inhabit them," says Dorfman. "It's about traveling there before you go."
"There's something about this view which is different," he says,
pointing out that A9.com's block view is providing an unbiased bank
of images. Far from the ideally lit, airbrushed photos typical of ads
for real estate or accommodations, these visuals tell no lies.
They also offer context. Caro-Brice thinks users will end up using
A9.com for apartment hunting, for example, and for locating desirable
neighborhoods and green spaces. Also, users would never again fret
over booking their elderly relatives into a motel adjacent to a dive
bar. No mapping tool can yet provide this kind of consumer intelligence.
The A9.com team may be at the forefront, but there is a widening race
for street-level mapping. At neighboring Stanford and University of
California at Berkeley campuses, efforts are already underway.
Berkeley researcher Avideh Zakhor has proposed a way of grafting
photo facades onto 3-D scenes to create whole neighborhood
environments in minutes as opposed to hours. At Stanford, the Google
team is rumored to be using laser technology to provide an added
layer of detail to building modeling. There are likely others out
there. But it's A9.com that has already mapped Fargo, North Dakota --
a bit of hometown homage from one of the team.
"I'd love to look back at this in 40 years and get a sense of what
we've accomplished here," says Dorfman. "We'll probably be able to
access historical data and do time-lapsed views of this block.
"I like to think we are bringing a new and valuable data set online."
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