Google Streetview in the Wild

John Musser, May 8th, 2008

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In late March, Google announced enhancements to their mapping API that gave developers programmatic access to their popular streetview feature. Streetview allows users to “virtually explore city neighborhoods by viewing and navigating within 360-degree scenes of street-level imagery.” The API enhancements provide the ability to embed panoramas in an app and to even pan them dynamically using JavaScript.

Since that release, developers have had a chance to create some very interesting mashups using streetview, and in a recent Maps API blog post, Google’s Pamela Fox highlighted some of these (3 of which are now cataloged in our directory: StreetView Adventure Game, Povo Boston, and Dual Maps):

• StreetView Adventure Game: In the spirit of the classic interactive fiction games like Zork, this demo lets you play a short game that begins with chasing a guy trying to climb out a window in San Francisco.



• DualMaps: For a given location, displays the Street View, Birds Eye View, and Google aerial map view simultaneously and lets you embed or share the result.
• Povo: A local reviews site specially for Boston. Displays street view in a lightbox for each location, and has made a Street View tour especially for the recent Boston Marathon.

And if you want more streetview mashup examples:

Also check out VegasVision, Ong Map V2 (Alpha), VPike, FlyRig, Street View Gadget, LotView, Street View SF Tour, RealBird, Glotter and a Street View Tour Gadget. And if you loved Trulia’s implementation (announced on Google LatLong last week), check out this demo that shows how to angle a street view panorama towards the side of the street that a building is on. (It involves math, but don’t worry, we’ve done it for you.)