She Got A TV Eye On Me

If you were perhaps concerned by all the Volkswagen Beetles you’ve noticed videotaping your apartment, rest assured that it’s just Google’s ambitious new bodega-mapping project:

Heralded by observers as a step that could change the way people travel, live, and work in the city, Microsoft and Google have launched features that allow computer users to fly over realistic 3-D renderings of the city’s skyscrapers or take street-level tours such as following Broadway between Battery Park and Yonkers.

The developments were announced yesterday at the Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose, Calif.

Google users may view 180-degree photographs of almost every street and intersection in Manhattan, as well as sections of the other boroughs. For the past 18 months a company, Immersive Media, has sent Volkswagen Beetles outfitted with about $250,000 worth of video equipment to drive almost every mile of Manhattan and other parts of the city, the company’s president and CEO, Miles McGovern, said.

On top of the car is a dodecahedron camera with 11 lenses, each taking in streaming video at 30 frames a second. Google licensed the images and integrated them with its maps.

Mr. McGovern estimated that the 40,000 miles of America his company has documented — 2,000 of them in New York City — are captured in about 120 million spherical images.

. . .

A product manager for Google Maps, Stephen Chow, said he used the technology to scope out neighborhoods where he was looking for apartments in San Francisco.

“I would go to that location and see whether the listing was right for nearby restaurants and public transportation,” he said. He said he could also zoom in on parking signs to find out when he had to move his car to avoid getting a ticket.

(Nice URL, by the way.)