SemiSerious

At the Intertech-Pira Image Sensor Conference a few weeks ago, I suggested that Google Street View might create a post-cameraphone demand boom for imagers. My reasoning (if it’s fair to call it that) was that the folks at Google have given us a useful virtual tourism concept simply by driving camera trucks around about 40 major US cities. But it struck me that Google’s approach is neither time nor location scalable. If you want fresh images, you need trucks rolling 24-7 just to achieve something like annual updating. Perhaps Google (who has the money for such an undertaking) will replace its current rolling camera approach with a vast array of permanent camera installations. Street View could then be “live.”

What about new locations? More trucks more time…I think you get the picture. With apologies to Little Rock and Milwaukee, I am interested in virtually touring around some places outside the good old USA. Well Google now has a competitor, and although you can only view three locations today, one is outside the US. MapJack offers Sausalito and San Francisco, California along with Chiang Mai, Thailand. Even with by giving us the first location beyond the borders of the US, it would hardly be fair to say that MapJack has leap-frogged Google Street View. However, MapJack does provide a better user experience and a convenient additional search window to browse for shopping or dining. I first heard of MapJack from Scott Bourne on This Week in Photography.

I don’t understand any of the nuts and bolts holding MapJack together, but it appears to depend on Google’s own Map grids and location-based information like dining and other entertainment options for anyone who intends to take a step beyond virtual touring. It will be interesting if MapJack gets large enough for Google to think about shutting down access to its map grid information.

Surely part of virtual tourism is a way to maintain your carbon-neutrality. But that won’t be the case if Google and MapJack are spewing truck exhaust to capture images. Vast networks of low-cost IP surveillance cameras are the only way to go.

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