Taking Online Maps Down to Street Level

Since MapQuest.com's creation in 1996, online mapping systems have rapidly gained worldwide popularity. With Google Maps leading the charge, new sophisticated AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) mapping applications began appearing in 2004. A fairly recent offering of the best online mapping systems is aerial imagery. Such imagery takes the so-called GeoWeb to the next level, providing tremendous value to activities such as real estate sales, insurance, environmental management, municipal government, emergency services, and law enforcement, as well as engaging serendipitous Web users. Yet the imagery often is not detailed enough, and viewing buildings and streets from above can be disconcerting. To address this limitation, Google launched the Street View feature of Google Maps in May 2007. The underlying idea is very simple: Provide an interface that can display street-level images in a natural way that enables convenient navigation between images without losing the map context.