Text In Street View Could Be Used For Quality Improvement
Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped observes that Google could potentially use OCR (optical character recognition) to attempt to derive text from signage and such within Google Street View images in order to create further enhancements.
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Street View, Los Angeles.
However, I see a much more immediately valuable use that could be put to text scanned from the images — quality improvement of address pinpointing functionality.
Popularity: 4% [?]
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 08/05/2008 | Permalink | 
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Filed under: Google, Maps, Research and DevelopmentGoogle Street View, Google-Maps, Mapping
Marriage Proposals Via Google Maps
What is it with Google Maps that seems to inspire people to propose marriage?
(Click to enlarge - Marry Me Leslie)
Googler Michael Weiss-Malik, a member of the Google Geo Team, planned ahead and stood at the side of the road when the Google Street View pictures were being updated in a drive-by photo shoot. (Read Michael’s explanation of what he did and why.) Google has been aggressively expanding Street View images this summer.
Michael isn’t the first to have a marriage proposal appear in Google Maps. Here’s a few more we’ve collected in the past:
Popularity: 4% [?]
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 08/05/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, MapsGoogle-Maps, marriage-proposals, Roofvertising
Google Street View Attacked As Potential Tool For Child Predators
The Stop Child Predators organization has launched a campaign specifically targeting Google’s Street View as a tool that potentially enables predators to stalk and kidnap children more effectively.
Kids playing at a park in Google Street View
A video on the site presents Stacie Runemap, Executive Director of the organization, outlining how Street View shows pictures of neighborhoods, homes, playgrounds, schools and pics of kids. She further describes how Google Maps can be used to plot distances from your doorstep to bus stops and schools, suggesting that child predators could use the service to plan attacks or kidnappings. The site elsewhere describes how to request that Google remove photos from Street View.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/23/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Maps, SecurityChild Protection, Google Street View, Google-Maps, Internet Privacy, Internet Security, privacy
Google Maps Introduces User Review Snippets in Listings
The Google Lat Long Blog announced today that they’ve introduced little snippets of a user review with each business listing for which they have reviews data:
To me, this seems like a bit of an experimental feature, since I tend to want to see a sampling of multiple reviews to try to get a balanced picture of what to expect from a business. Of course, one can click through and view multiple reviews, but why would I only want to see one sample — is there something being done to try to select the most-typical review for the business, or are they only selecting random ones?
Popularity: 11% [?]
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 06/10/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Mapsdirectories, Google-Maps, User Reviews
Opt Out of Google Street View?
The guys over at Google Sightseeing noticed that the Google Streetview camera in Fairbanks, Alaska apparently got covered over with plastic bags, obscuring some of the images that were shot.
This led to speculation that some enterprising residents had perhaps purposefully obscured the cameras out of privacy concerns - though, that seems moderately unlikely to me since I doubt most people know what the car even is when it’s tooling around, shooting photos of places. (more…)
Popularity: 13% [?]
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/08/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, MapsGoogle-Maps, privacy, Street View, Surveillance
Where’s Waldo in Google Earth
In a very clever bit of marketing, Canadian artist Melanie Coles has created a large rooftop image of the iconic character found in the popular Where’s Waldo? book series.
The image is located somewhere in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was created with the specific intention of being findable via Google Earth (warning, I have the location pinpointed in a link and geocoordinates at the end of this post). It will be a while before Waldo can be found in Google Earth (or in Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, or MS Live Search Maps, for that matter), because there is a time lag in between when satellite images and aerial photos get updated in those services — so, it could be six months to a year before the image is really findable and viewable online.
The image was created as a demonstration of a viral game for Coles’ graduation art project at the Emily Carr Institute. Her blog statement on the project says:
Popularity: 29% [?]
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 04/14/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Maps, Newsaerial-photos, Google-Earth, Google-Maps, Maps, Mapvertising, Roofvertising, Satellite-Images, Viral-Marketing, Where's Waldo
Independent Contractors Excluded from Google Maps
My article on How To Get On Google Maps Without An Address pubbed today on Search Engine Land - it outlines one of the top most frustrating issues facing some small businessmen who need to have listings in directories without including their street addresses. Google Maps, by policy, does not display listings for those who do not have street addresses, so smaller providers who might actually provide the best quality service work are left out in the cold when users perform local searches. Independent contractors (like plumbers, electricians, building contractors, etc) are the most affected by this issue, but some other businesses are also impacted.
My perception is that this lack of what is something of a standard among traditional yellow pages directories is due to Google’s desire to provide best user-experience. In a map search display, does it make sense to display items which can’t be pinpointed to the map?
My opinion is that it does make sense to do so, (more…)
Popularity: 64% [?]
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 02/11/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Maps, Online Directories, Yellow Pagesdirectories, Google-Maps, independent contractors, Local Search, Yellow Pages
Google Sending More Traffic To Google Maps
The New York Times today reported on a recent Hitwise post by Heather Hopkins highlighting that Google was now sending about three times as many of their users over to Google Maps comparing a week ending January 6th with a year ago.
This is apparently due in part to Google recommending Google Maps instead of recommending other mapping providers in addition as it had been doing early last year. (more…)
Popularity: 46% [?]
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 01/14/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Maps, Market DataGoogle-Maps, Local Search, Mapquest
Google Testing New Local OneBox Layout & Addresses in PPC Ads
Greg Sterling this morning mentioned that Google is apparently experimenting with allowing full street addresses to appear below the URLs in PPC ads.
Even more interesting, this thread at Webmasterworld now reports seeing a new layout of local listings within Google SERPs — their screengrab shows the Google Maps onebox results on the right side of the page, apparently above the Sponsored Links ads.
Is this just usual UI/Usability testing, or could this segue into more unrest for the local SERPs?
Popularity: 41% [?]
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 01/08/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Design, Google, Local SearchGoogle, Google Local, Google-Maps, Local Search, SERPs
Google Maps to Embed in New Magellan GPS
Barely one day in advance of the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show opening in Las Vegas this week, Magellan issued a press release about their next generation of GPS navigation devices, highlighting how they will come integrated with Google Maps to provide local search capabilities.
John Hanke, Director of Google Maps & Earth is quoted, saying, “We’re pleased to be partnering with Magellan to provide users with detailed, relevant local information while on the road. Magellan devices are powerful, interactive tools for navigation and discovery that serve as a cutting-edge platform for Google’s robust local search capabilities.” (more…)
Popularity: 26% [?]
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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 01/07/2008 | Permalink | Email
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Maps, technologyCES, Consumer Electronics Show, Google-Maps, GPS, Magellan
