Direct to EveryScape

From Red Herring:

This is not fantasy. This is not virtual. This is the real world as you know it,” said Jim Schoonmaker, chief executive of Waltham, Massachusetts-based EveryScape. “I’m trying to build the whole world online. It’s a very humbling idea.”

Backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Draper Fisher New England, Draper Atlantic, and LaunchPad Venture Group, EveryScape launched its beta site with outdoor views of Boston and New York City and interior and exterior views of Miami and Aspen. The company plans to expand its interior views and to introduce new cities, including Laguna Beach, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, in coming months.

While the site isn’t quite the real world, EveryScape’s panoramic peek inside local restaurants, hotels, and stores do go beyond the street views pioneered by Google.

…

startups Earthmine and MapJack are among the others scrambling for a sliver of the 360-degree map pie.

Quick Notes:
1) Street-Level Imagery Has Been Available for Years (Before MS and Google)
Examples: First from Pages Jaunes (major cities in France and Spain) and then for several cities in the U.S. from Amazon’s A9. The A9 service launched in January, 2005 and was taken offline at the beginning of October, 2006.

2) 360 Degree Imagery is Also Available from Sites Like SuperTour Where You Can Take A 360 Degree Walk Down the Las Vegas Strip and in to some hotels or Walk the Streets of South Beach. This post has more.

3) This post links a few other sources and has links to a few of the companies that provide the the core technology.

4) When we think of street-level imagery we primarily think of static shots. However, don’t forget about webcams offering live and in many cases, streaming street-level imagery. Here’s are two examples. One in Chicago near Wrigley Field and several streaming webcams around Times Sq., NYC.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 and is filed under Databases, Directories, and Guides, Geographic, Source File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.