Check this out: Virtual Earth Streetlevel

Yeah it's Live now and it's pretty cool! :D

Well done Microsoft!

"What do I think?"

I think Channel 9 must be doing badly if you are going to start threading everything through that site.

Pimp those Hits, Scobie!

2.8 million unique visitors last month Goebbels. This video is actually ON Channel 9. No YouTube today, sorry.

The stupid cars are moronic.

The stupid Xbox controller is even more moronic and utterly pathetic. Get rid of it immediately.

Oh, I see: the images don't piece together in walk mode. Might as well kill that.

The lower viewer with "Street" mode is cumbersome to say the least.

Is there no zoom?

I can't tell the extant of the work. You have no data for Mission Street; last time I checked Mission went, not only through the Mission, but is pretty close to "City Center."

A Few initial thoughts. Hope they help.

Yes, but your videos suck and are in a format many of us will not or cannot view. You know that.

Still waiting for that prove that Microsoft did something of quality and produced the iPod packing parody? Ha, ha, ha!! You really fcked up saying that!

So scanning around: you didn't go ONE block over from Market but you sweeped the expanse of the Embarcadero that is virtually empty of any commercial activity or distinguishing landmarks for many, many blocks?

Another tip: hire mappers that know the city.

The Street View doesn't allows display images when there are sometimes images to view.

Makes it very difficult to figure out what the coverage is (Market down to Battery, but Green down to Pine?)

Why does "Broadway" net a result, but it not like simply "Market" (needs a number before "Market")?

I was looking at it and it was pretty slow, but I think now you've just killed it!

very nice!
and most importantly for MS, they got it out before google

Goebbels, the fact that you're bursting a blood vessel over the apparent limitations of software that is labled as "prototype" makes you look like a complete idiot. Just thought you should know.

This is awesome! I love going the wrong way on a one way street, they've got the correct pictures for it and everything.

I like this, however the problem I have with this is , like many sites, I don't live in Seattle, San Fran or another one of those big important cities. So when will things like this filter down to my level? I hope one day this is possible. Good job

This looks really cool Robert. The response time was great also. I hope Boston will be covered in the near future :P

Jonathan: I asked that in the video. The team finds that a tough question to answer. Scaling this out is gonna be quite tough. Plus they are still learning how to do it well (as Goebbel's comments above demonstrate) so they want to make sure they nail the usage model and actually add some real value before they spend the money (and programmer time) to do this more places.

"Goebbels, the fact that you’re bursting a blood vessel over the apparent limitations of software that is labled as “prototype” makes you look like a complete idiot."

skc, I thought I was doing what I was requested to do, I thought I was helping. What I wrote was literally instantaneous and momentary feedback to my experience. I thought I was beta-testing a prototype.

Your arrogant, ignorant, and clearly prejudiced (my rep precedes me) remarks demonstrate that your own comments speak for themselves and need no response. Thought I'd let you know.

Since I won't be watching the video, Scoble, can you tell me how long the SF imaging took? Thanks.

Great job. Now find some use with it :)

Definitely need Zoom. Am I missing it? Maybe they're jsut having trouble implementing it with the 2 panes, but you simply can't go from all map applications having it to not jsut because it is a different perspective. I cannot browse the lower pane effectively without it because of the speeds.

Goebbels: if I remember their answer right it took about a month each city. I'm sure it'll speed up in the future, though. I should have asked how many mistakes they made and how much on the street learning experiences they had.

I just blogged about a mapping problem with Google Earth, and Microsoft has dropped the ball as well. Where's the National Grid data? Why isn't Microsoft, and Google, leading the way for their online mapping software to help rectify the fact that this country hasn't adopted one mapping language? I sent an e-mail message to the folks at Virtual Earth, but haven't received a live response yet.

See my post on this at: http://www.dorealtime.com/2006/02/google_earth_...

Goebbels- from watching the Channel 9 vid, the reason the three top images don't piece together is because they are not supposed to. The middle image is supposed to be looking straight ahead, the left and right images are looking out of your left and right windows (or turning your head). A good thought, but I would agree that on a 2d screen, especially in the walk view, it doesn't quite work. Instead of a 3d effect, it looks confusing. Now with 3d glasses...

As for zoom, you can double-click with your mouse or use your scroll wheel.

Jeff, I'll try to get you an answer on that.

Jeff, the Grid may be accurate, but it's not necessarily useful or user-friendly. ESRI and the USGS are/have largely solved the problem of disparate forms of spatial data, and coordinate systems, though sometimes buggy, are a trivial issue for the Arc Suite of products to deal with.

In fact, Jeff, I actually love that Microsoft still displays lat/long in the urls (left over from MapBlast). MapBlast and several others actually allowed an address to be output as coordinates. That was nice. It's tough to find these features without StreetMapping plugins to GIS applications.

Brian, I understand how the images are supposed to stitch. In "Walk" view, however, it looks like crap and/or they do not come together at all. The view is horrible and should be dumped or some cheesy graphic overlay should be placed over the poorly stitched images.

Unfortunately, the page is no longer loading properly so I can't test out zoom right now.

Since the map isn't loading, I'll digress on Jeff's point. Yes, there are not enough very well trained GIS specialists, and yes, lots of government and other attempts to collect spatial data have been made over decades in disparate forms with different and developing tools. But now shape files are largely XML (or moving there), and ESRI and the entire industry are moving towards geodatabases in which different coordinate systems and other data differences can be resolved.

Yes, the GISes that have developed over the last couple of decades may be proprietary or canned or whatever, but the issues you raise aren't very relevant going forward if the right tools are used by skilled GIS specialists.

From a technical point of view, it's very cool. From a user perspective, however, my reaction is closer to "meh". As one of those people in "flyover country" (Colorado Springs, specifically) I chalk this up as another toy for the major cities that will in all likelihood never be expanded to cover where I live. My additional minor quibble is the appearance of the "walk" mode -- the left and right image panels are quite distracting since they don't tile with the look ahead. I'm not sure why anybody would use the car interfaces: I don't want or need additional junk between me and the information I'm looking for...which in this case, would be the ground-level imagery.

Very cool. Last week in Rochester, I used the "birds eye" views for the first time and was FLOORED by how useful they'd become since initial beta (the ability to pivot on location to see different angles was particularly useful, if buggy).

This stuff is still all about 2 years away from being ready for the mainstream, but the strides being made in 1) capturing useful imagery and 2) presenting it in a way that is increasingly useful to users; is amazing.

See you on Wed/Thurs at NewComm Robert :)

I have always wondered why A9 had prolems accurately mapping street addresses with their photos.
Live's preview is almost flawless in this aspect. The match between the lower screen and the top is good in most places.

Suggestions for improvement:

If you would restrict the car to not move (too much) away from the roads, it would be nicer :) I forsee the difficulties of that, but if your Navteq mapdata is perfect, you wouldn't have to worry too much.

Allow people to start maching addresses ?

Allow people to report mistakes easily, by pointing out on the screen, etc. :)

why should you allow users to report mistakes?
check 1st ave and blachard st intersection (in SF) - the pictures are goofed up.

Get the headlight on the car to go off, when it goes to areas without data.

met, thanks, I'll make sure the team sees these.

oops, i think the headlight thing is done already :)

met, I wouldn't even try to address the quirks or fundamental usefulness (a big question mark) of this yet. (Hell, even the sat imagery which is "complete" has quirks and flaws.)

But this? In a city like SF where hundreds of store fronts might actually change per month, they would always be behind (even if they were flawless) considering it took a month to cover a small portion of the city. If the purpose was to have an image well mapped to address and other "meta" data, it wouldn't be flaws but rather ... LAGS would appear instantly and always!

Goebbels: yep, I took this on in the video too. Yes, they will be out of date. This imagery was taken in late 2005, by the way. So it's already about three months out of date.

met, Goebbels, et. al.: It raises the question- what exactly is this useful for? I could see myself using it for two main purposes:

1. Getting really good directions, where I can actually see the turns and lane changes clearly.

2. Getting a feel for landmarks and the lay of tourist spots in cities where I will vacation.

For both, getting up to the minute data is not essential. Having data within a year or two should be fine for #1- you should get all but the most recent construction changes. For #2- sure, the little shops and restaurants will change, but the things a tourist wants to see are stable. The Space Needle, the Statue of Liberty, a museum or stadium...those aren't going to change much over a two or three year period.

Out of date doesn't seem to be that big of a deal if you can at least be around a year or so, the buildings will usually look the same. I just wish we'd have most of the data before releasing a tech preview. The UI is a little hokey, I'm sure it will be cleaner by release. Very cool overall though. Will have to play with it more.

Would be great to have some international sites also, but some countries might think the vans are working for the CIA. :)

Brian, that's why figuring out your purpose first usually makes sense? If you want landmarks then: sure, swing around the Embarcadero, duck through the Mission (staying on the Street), hit the Castro, but why waste two months going up and down streets in the Sunset that look the same and offer no landmarks? (But why not just have VR panoramics of the sites than, actually accomplish good stitching.)

If you want it for directions, just shoot intersections. (This "purpose" I think would be utterly absurd in SF and, say, a city like Boston -- the image is not going to prepare you for what you face anymore than an aerial. An image doesn't capture traffic flow, pedestrian traffic and behavior, etc..)

If it's for commercial use, it'll fail too many businesses too many times. (I'd be happy to hear how Scoble treats this, but I'm not watching a WMV; maybe he'll start posting on YouTube.)

Another thing I don't get is why the UI is so different from Virtual Earth (presumably they were done by the same team or at least if just because it was local photos, they split into separate teams, they should have checked out each others work):

why are the directional buttons up top instead of by the side as an overlay? (They should be with the lower pane anyway: you essentially don't navigate the top.)

why is there no zoom slider (it wasn't working so well for me because it's so much slower; why? Presumably the lower pane is the same, but the speed difference is enormous.)

Additionally:
I don't see the reason for allowing the car to be moved. Rotation, yes, that's necessary, but if you panned and moved the scene under it than it's less confusing than moving the car a little, panning the scene, moving the car, which is what I notice myself and others doing a bit.

Emphatically:
Have I said how pathetic the XBox controller and choice of cars is? Get rid of it, simplify it -- Cheezy is not cool, cheezy is not cool. Repeat. And if the choice of cars is any factor in the speed issues, that "feature" is insane.

Goebbels- In the C9 video, they said that when this gets integrated into the actual Windows Live Local, it will have the same UI/capabilities (pushpins, etc...).

The directional buttons aren't meant to be navigational- they are just there to show you that you can use your keyboard to move the car. If you click on them, all they do is open up the help bar.

As far as the cars, I actually think the "sports car" looks pretty good, and it does the best by far at approximating the 3D, 3-pane view.

Brian, thanks, your more helpful than that shat video. Amazing how a couple of sentences work.

What I simply don't understand is why they start with a DIFFERENT, CRAPPIER UI in the first place if the intention is to return to a more functional one.

Kudos to Microsoft, this is very cool, the big G must be but-we-do-the-cool-sh*t ticked off. ;-) A disappointment: searching "moma" in San Fran gives no results.

Well, I'll probably be more impressed when I get past the lame redirect to a 404 error page because my Firefox javascript blocker hasn't yet been told to allow the site. Because of the redirect, I don't get the opportunity to allow scripting on the page you linked to with a click on the options button. I'll have to go in and do it manually.

It redirects to here: http://preview.local.live.com/Help/NoJavascript...

Note the url: Help/NoJavascript

So it's intended to help the visitor who has javascript turned off, no? NO! It's a standard 404 not found page. An excerpt:
The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

etc.etc. Definitely the wrong error message for the situation.

I got around the site's lame error-handling and went for a test drive. Kinda cool. Pretty sluggish, but to be expected across the internet.

-sam

About the questions re "priorities" for the ongoing accretion and growth of the image database...

--images around "public service" locations such as police stations, schools (at all levels), libraries, hospitals, cemetaries?, etc (these are all relatively stable, frequently visited sites, often only once). I guess that "emergencies" aren't the best time to go check a sites location online, though!

--heavily-visited tourist sites (as already known, by local/state tourism boards). No need for rural state/national parks, perhaps, since they have unambiguous routing.

--known "everybody-gets-lost" locations, as evaluated by?? automobile-clubs? local police? common wisdom? state DOTs? Perhaps the images should be sure to show the areas good signage?

--As previously requested, there could also be high-quality panos and 360 virtual panos at these locations, grabbed by the same vehicle which is capturing the more linear images. The UI would indicate where 360's are available.

Goebbels, why don't you just swallow your pride and watch the video? i'm sure you will feel a lot better afterwards.

This is really interesting stuff. Although it's very rough at the moment, i'll be very interested to see how this turns out in a year or so's time. Thing's like this take a long time to get right, (i can only imagine the amount of work involved) so i don't think any reasonable person would expect it to be everything they want just yet. It's definitely got huge potential for the future.

It would be interesting to see a transition effect between each image to simulate movement. Maybe it should zoom in to the current image before displaying the next image. Of course, that assumes the images will load much faster than they are now.

Channel9 should be shut down. It's a waste of Microsoft shareholder resources and is extremely high-risk from a PR standpoint.

I visit this blog a lot more often than channel9, I find Scoble's blog more valuable, and I think channel9 can't be trusted because it is closer to Microsoft as a purely propaganda arm than the author of this blog.

cool, I guess. But, what end user problem does this solve?

anon: you're funny!

Dmad: what end user problem does Halo solve? Can't we do anything just because it's cool or fun anymore?

But, the team answers what problems this solves in the video. Oh, wait, anon thinks the video is useless. Geeessshhh.

I just can't believe Microsoft did it.

Congrats :D

Scoble,

I think StreetLevel presents Microsoft an excellent opportunity to involve the geek community in its projects.

Grabbing photographs of every street in the US is going to mind-bogglingly expensive, but guess what, there are some enthusiasts would be willing to help Microsoft wih this...hint hint...;)

If a person can grab pictures of the street where he/she works or lives, then slowly you can build up a big database of pictures from all over the country.

While there are severe logistical, and I assume copyright challenges to be worked out, this is a great community project; after all it is a preview (alpha?) right?

Cheers :D

If you can't figure out what end user problem Halo solved, then you are more clueless about business than even Chris Coulter could imagine.

I think MS's stock price reflects how valuable doing "cool stuff" is.

Why can't it drive me around town by itself ? Sort of like a sight seeing tour :)

"Goebbels, why don’t you just swallow your pride and watch the video? i’m sure you will feel a lot better afterwards."

I used to occassionally despite Scoble's poor techniques, sycophantic interview style, poor demeanor, and constant "oohing" and "ahhing" and "that's cool"ing.

BUT... Microsoft has dropped Apple support without a vlaid reason. Scoble has claimed he would determine what the "true" reason was and report it to us; he has failed to do so for over 2 months, I believe. Scoble also said even he saw it as a problem and would pursue changing formats: he acts as if this is a monumental tasks that task tons of time and money; in fact, if he skipped one silly trip to one silly convo I could have a server set up for him in the time alloted and half the price.

I will what the sh!t videos only when one or more of the following occurs:
1. SMPTE actually approves VC-1 as a standard: yeah, right!
2. Scoble reports to us the true reason for dropping Apple support
3. Scoble converts the video to an acceptable format (which even includes the simple YouTube format)

And, finally, feel better? Why? I can test a beta quite easily. If the people behind that beta want feedback and info and want to provide it to testers, but refuse to give it in anything beyond a crappy video done on a handheld, that's their problem, not mine.

Hi Goebbels - What are your questions? you can email me your questions related to Windows Live Local or the Streetside Preview, and I'll be sure to get back to you with a response.

As for your Zooming question, I can address that here.

To Zoom In:
Plus key
Doubleclcick the map
Roll mouse wheel forward

To Zoom out:
Minus key
alt-DOubleclick
Roll mouse wheel back.

Hope that gets you started. send me other questions directly.

Steve Lombardi
Virtual Earth Program Manager
SteveLom@microsoft.com

Steve, thanks. I ultimately was able to scroll.

I have few questions; a fair number of my critiques are posted here, but maybe I'll send a more comprehensive list to you via email. Thanks.

Sorry: "Steve, thanks. I ultimately was able to scroll." should be"Steve, thanks. I ultimately was able to ZOOM."

If you liked Windows Live Local I think you will also enjoy SuperTour.com. The main difference between the two sites is that while exploring SuperTour you walk the streets instead of driving. You are also able to explore the insides of hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. Since the site is still in beta there are only two locations available, Miami and Las Vegas. More is to come, so check it out (www.supertour.com).

Well SuperTour has a huge annoyance factor - the need to install a plugin before it will work. The site requires Shockwave version 10, which probably means that most visitors give up before they get to experience what the site can offer.

I agree that loading Shockwave 10 is annoying, but SuperTour.com does that transition effect I mentioned earlier. That's a really nice touch.

Hey,

Some of you had said installing Shockwave for www.SuperTour.com was annoying.

So here's the flash movie for a preview of the site and its features:

(http://www.supertour.com/movies/edenroc/)

Nice resource, very interesting reading... Good luck with your site in the future!!! May be you like my sites?

Nice resource, very interesting reading… Good luck with your site in the future!!!

I found it quite refreshing and exciting would like to see this all over the country or most large cities.