[Geowanking] A9 street-view photo data?

[Mike Liebhold]

One of Amazon's lead engineers on the photomap project showed up at our 
little Geowanker's gathering last night in San Francisco. It turns out 
that the project was never fully supported, and that Amazon has lost 
interest in a very complex and expensive battle with Google, Microsoft, 
and Yahoo, to compete with mulitmedia map services.

Meanwhile the others are forging ahead with much more elaborate plans to 
offer fully 3D navigable maps. Think of Sketch-Up buildings on Google 
Earth with full textured, photorealisitc surfaces. It has been rumored, 
for some time that Microsoft Virtual Earth has been gathering Lidar 3D 
imagery for exactly this application, And yesterday, at the deCarta ( 
Telcontar) developers conference, Teleatlas showed some spectacular 3D 
photorealistic maps with they are building.

-Mike

Dan Brickley wrote:

>http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WA_Amazoncom_Search.html
>
>
>[[
>SEATTLE -- Amazon.com Inc.'s A9 search engine has dropped some of its
>most widely touted features, including the ability to remember
>everything a user has ever searched for and a service that showed
>detailed, street-level images of major cities.
>
>...
>
>Prior to dropping the effort, A9 had put considerable effort into taking
>detailed, street-level photos of 20 U.S. cities, which people could use
>to map directions and find businesses. Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
>also have invested heavily in such photographic search technologies.
>
>Herdener said it was too early to say what Seattle-based Amazon will do
>with the technology and images now.
>]]
>
>http://maps.a9.com/
>[[
>Home > Maps
>A9 Maps are no longer available. You can continue to search from a9.com.
>]]
>
>
>Compare, from a year ago,
>http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/08/a9com_maps_pict.html
>
>
>http://www.toomre.com/GoogleRecruitsManber seems to offer some
>explanation (in terms of Udi Manber moving to Google).
>
>Does anyone here have access to ears within the Amazon camp? Could they
>be nudged towards making the dataset available under some Creative
>Commons open data license? Or is that total fantasy?
>
>cheers,
>
>Dan
>
>
>
>
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>  
>
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