Thursday, October 9, 2014

How does Google Street View Work in Cape Town or even the rest of the World



Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expanded to include cities and rural areas worldwide. Streets with Street View imagery available are shown as blue lines on Google Maps.
Google Street View displays panoramas of stitched images. Most photography is done by car, but some is done by trekker, tricycle, walking, camel, and underwater apparatus.
Street View had its origins in 2001 with The Stanford City Block Project, a Google-sponsored Stanford University research project. The project ended in June 2006, and its technology was folded into Street View.
  • 2007: Launched on 25 May in the United States using Immersive Media technology.
  • 2008: In May Google announces that it was testing face-blurring technology on its photos of the busy streets of Manhattan. The technology uses a computer algorithm to search Google's image database for faces and blurs them. Street View integrated into Google Earth 4.3, the Maps application on the Apple iPhone, and the Maps application for S60 3rd Edition. In November "pegman" is introduced. If this is dropped on the map the Street View opens and takes over the whole map window.
  • 2009: Introduction of full-screen option. Smart Navigation introduced allowing users to navigate around the panoramas by double-clicking with their cursor on any place or object they want to see.
  • 2010: Indoor views of businesses available. Google invites users to contribute panoramas of their own using gadgets with Android 4.2. Google highlights user-contributed panoramas with blue circle icons on Maps. The company also created a website to highlight places in the world where one can find them. 
  • 2013: Business interior views are shown as small orange circles. Businesses such as shops, cafes and other premises can pay a photographer to take panoramic images of the interior of their premises which are then included in Street View.  Google sets up program to let third parties borrow the Street View Trekker (a backpack mounted camera) and contribute imagery to Google Maps.
  • 2014: Street-level imagery from the past can now be seen. If available for a given street view. This is only available where Google has imaged a street more than once.

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