Technologizer » Mapping

MapQuest: It Lives!

Harry McCracken — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:44:08 +0000

I’m not the only person out there who used MapQuest incessantly for years, but stopped cold the moment Google Maps came along, right? Well, it’s time to revisit the mapping pioneer–it recently relaunched MapQuest.com, and has a new version of its free iPhone navigation app that does spoken turn-by-turn directions and can run in the background.

C3′s Amazing 3D Cities

Harry McCracken — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:14:15 +0000

I’m at O’Reilly Media’s Where 2.0 conference in San Jose. It’s a crowded and exciting confab on one of the hottest topics in tech: location-aware applications and services. There are a bunch of interesting demos going on, but the one that’s really knocked my socks off so far is one I’m watching right now, by a Swedish company called C3 Technologies. Mapping applications such as Google Earth include some painstakingly handcrafted 3D models of buildings, but C3 uses photos taken from aircraft to capture entire cities–buildings, trees, everything–and recreate them as photorealistic 3D models. We’re swooping through London, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and other locales, and it’s just stunning.

This video isn’t new, but it gives you a taste of what C3 does:

C3 says that its technologies requires no human intervention and can recreate an entire city in weeks. The company has recreated fifty cities to date. I can’t wait until stuff like this shows up in mapping programs, on GPS handhelds…everywhere there’s geography. Amazing stuff.

Don’t Fear Pegman: New Google Maps Street View is a Winner

Harry McCracken — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:06:07 +0000

McCracken’s Law of Software Mascots states definitively that they’re almost always a truly lousy idea. Most of the evidence has come in the form of grating, patronizing Microsoft characters, from Bob to Clippy to Rover, the miserable mutt who shows up in Windows XP’s search. So I was alarmed when I heard that Google Maps’ amazing Street View photographic imagery feature had been updated with a new interface involving a mascot. Named Pegman. Who, in an image in the Google Blog post announcing the news, seemed to be channeling Clippy:

He’s also exuberantly obnoxious in Google’s explanatory video on the new Street View features, which he narrates:

The good news? In Google Maps itself, Pegman is your friend. He really does help make using Street View easier. And Street View is better than ever in this new version.

When you’re not using him, Pegman (who looks sort of like Pac-Man, except with a body and without a mouth) stands in waiting in Google Maps’ navigational controls on the left-hand side of the map:

When you drag him out of his nook onto the map, he provides a thumbnail Street View preview of wherever he’s hovering (assuming that the area is covered by Street View). He’s even smart enough to show the left or right side of the street depending on where you plunk him:

Release him onto the map, and you go into Street View mode, with a larger window than before and a nifty little overview map that lets you nudge Pegman around to travel to other areas:

And you can flip into a view that’s 50% Street View and 50% map:

Lastly–and this has nothing to do with Pegman, but it’s new and smart–you can also get to Street View by simply zooming in on the map. When Street View exists for a region, Google Maps shows it as the most-zoomed-in view.

Oh, and I forgot: You can also use a new control to whip around the Street View scene in 360-degree splendor. It’s hard to show with a still image, but trust me, it’s neat:

Google Maps was already among Google’s most inspired creations, and Street View was its showstopper feature. The new user interface is innovative, intuitive, fast, and fun–one of the very best interfaces I’ve ever seen on software of any sort, ever.

Which is not to say that I might not love it as much or more if Pegman was a nameless, non-anthropomorphic pushpin or something…