Thursday, January 27, 2005
Amazon Updates A9 - What Do You Think Of The Implementation?
Posted by Suhit Gupta in "SOFTWARE" @ 02:00 PM
"The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is “Block View,” which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street. The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient."
You will need to watch the video on the page to see the implementation details, i.e. their camera and GPS unit that captured this data. I wish it were integrated with services like those offered by citysearch.com but presumably someone will be implementing that killer app soon. Anyways, the reason why I am posting this here is that while the app is awesome (good job, Amazon!), I wonder whether the quality of images could have been better? And if so, how would you implement it? A camera with a timer?
You will need to watch the video on the page to see the implementation details, i.e. their camera and GPS unit that captured this data. I wish it were integrated with services like those offered by citysearch.com but presumably someone will be implementing that killer app soon. Anyways, the reason why I am posting this here is that while the app is awesome (good job, Amazon!), I wonder whether the quality of images could have been better? And if so, how would you implement it? A camera with a timer?
