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January 23, 2009

Street View for Central Europe (Not from Google)

Until Google manages to gather Street View imagery for the entire world, there's a big opportunity for other companies to offer a similar service.

Norc is a street-view service created by the Romanian company eXtreme Soft Group, which covers cities from 5 European countries:

* Austria: Wien
* Czech Republic: Prague, Brno
* Poland: Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw
* Slovakia: Bratislava, Trnava, Kosice, Banska-Bystrica, Zilina, Nitr
* Romania: Bucureşti, Ploieşti, Constanţa, Braşov, Cluj-Napoca, Timişoara, Iaşi, Sibiu, Piteşti, Târgovişte



Norc uses Google Maps API to let you find a location, but the search feature doesn't offer good results. Maximize the Street View window to better see the panoramic images and use the arrows to navigate.

If you know other services inspired by Google Street View that have a significant coverage, post their links in the comments.

{ Thank you, Vasile. }

41 comments:

  1. Wow, I am kinda impressed, none the less I am surprised by the bad quality of the user interface and the fact that nowhere the name of the company behind it is mentioned, nor is there any ad...

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  2. hah, should have quoted me :)

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  3. There's also Seety (http://www.seety.co.uk/) for central London.

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  4. Impressive 3d-maps of several norwegian cities (Oslo, Trondheim, ...)

    http://kart.sesam.no/3d/

    PS. Requires you to install a small plugin.

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  5. There is no money in these things. Only Google will make money off Maps, because they have local search. This is the product that makes money.

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  6. http://www.gorodalive.by/ has extensive street view for Minsk, Belarus.

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  7. there is http://www.visual.paginegialle.it/ for some italian cities (click on "strada" botton in Turin, Milan, Rome, etc.)

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  8. Just small mistake. That town in Slovakia supposed to be Nitra not Nitr

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  9. Acquisition in 3...2...1...

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  10. What I think is that some of these services offer better, higher-resolution imagery than Google's. I know of several services not listed here, but if I remember correctly I learned of them from this site so they're listed somewhere on it already (EveryScape, MapJack, iiCosmo, Location View, City8...) And for gorgeous geo-tagged panoramas, you can't beat 360cities.net.

    I agree with Sebastian, though - where's the money it for the smaller companies? I know I certainly prefer using MapJack for the few cities it covers, over Google - but again, it only offers panoramic street-view style images for cities in California and Thailand, as well as Stockholm (but not from the MapJack website).

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  11. Big mall has everything.

    Small shop around-the-corner knows YOU.

    That's life.

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  12. http://www.hitta.se/gatubild/ - Stockholm, Sweden

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  13. Did any of you realize that the krpano viewer used by norc is actually supporting keyboard input while in fullscreen mode, while "# Users cannot enter text in text input fields while in full-screen mode. All keyboard input and key-related ActionScript is disabled while in full-screen mode, with the exception of the keyboard shortcuts that take the viewer out of full-screen mode." tends to be true when I tried last time... weird...

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  14. http://gothere.sg covers Singapore.

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  15. thanks, i am from bratislava and enjoyed the photos from the streets.

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  16. For Seoul, Korea: http://local.daum.net/map/index.jsp and click the third button at the top right hand side of the map to get the pano street view image areas highlighted. Per online news reports, Daum plans to extend coverage to most of the rest of Korea.

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  17. Norc sites must be getting a lot of hits today. I only succeeded once at visiting the site for Austria.

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  18. A little firm called Microsoft, I think they're out of Washington state, offers a similar view for some US cities:
    http://preview.local.live.com/

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  19. http://www.mappy.com for France and Spain

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  20. Russia, Moscow: http://www.kartamania.ru/kartamania/

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  21. nice service and without the ads! I can now search in Bratislava for that small coffee shop from my dreams...

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  22. What coffee shop are you lookin for?

    BTS resident

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  23. Microsoft's version of street view is nearly useless since it only covers Seattle and San Francisco, and the images aren't panoramic. You can get both of these cities in Street View, and you can get a far superior version of San Francisco in MapJack.

    My idea of a perfect map - and it will probably never happen - is to have Microsoft's Bird's Eye View AND Google's Street View, all on the same map. But for obvious reasons, it ain't likely to happen.

    Although I find iiCosmo buggy as h*ll, I like how you can drive through. Wish Google had something like that - it can be slow-going navigating through the photos.

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  24. So why is Google taking such low-res images? A 1 MP cameraphone could compete with image quality for Google Street View. A few years from now, images from Google Street View will need to be retaken in order to compete. MapJack's quality, and now eXtreme Soft Groupto compete. MapJack's quality, and now eXtreme Soft Group, among many others, have far higher image quality. Google's imagery is wortheless.

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  25. Iyvyn, I agree with you to a point about Google's imagery, except that Google's Street View imagery for some of France, Spain and Italy is higher resolution than that taken in the U.S. It's actually pretty good.

    I love MapJack, but they'll need a lot more funding to compete with Google. Google simply has *more*, combined with an easy to use interface. The real estate and tourist companies, as well as city governments, all of whom use Street View, have no other option unless they are located in those California cities for which MapJack has photos.

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  26. www.kapou.gr is a street view like service for Thessaloniki, Greece

    http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Thessaloniki&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=49.891082,72.509766&ie=UTF8&ll=38.976492,24.158936&spn=6.173604,9.063721&t=h&z=7

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  27. Daum Communiation in Korea now launched Road View and Sky View covered whole South Korea ( http://local.daum.net/map/index.jsp )

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  28. Looks to me like that Daum map only covers Seoul, not the whole of Korea, yet. Do you know how to get it to show coverage for the rest of the country? When I zoom out to see the entire country only Seoul has the blue coverage indication.

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  29. Would be great if Google joined forces with Norc (seems to be based on "Noroc").

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  30. all Moscow: http://www.gdeetotdom.ru/map/
    all Saint-Petersburg: http://spb.gdeetotdom.ru/map/
    & other russian cities (see in search)

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  31. Vancouver, Whistler, or Squamish in British Columbia: go to www.canpages.ca and enter a search. Search appears to be the only way to access the Street View images (yes, they are called "Street View") - I can't find a way to directly access them without doing a search.

    Looks like the MapJack folks provide the imagery, just as they've done for Stockholm at hitta.se. Makes me wonder what other projects MapJack is working on.

    The one thing all of these imagery providers have in common is they give no idea when and where to expect updates.

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  32. A few areas in B.C. (Whistler, Squamish and Vancouver) have "Street View" coverage via www.canpages.ca. Doesn't appear to be direct access to the imagery - you have to do a search, but once the map is brought up you can click anywhere there are blue dots to access the images, which have full-screen options. Pretty neat, although coverage in these areas is mostly limited to main roads and business areas.

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  33. Is there a Street View for cities in India like Mumbai and New Delhi?

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  34. Mr Truth (or strives to be)June 12, 2009 at 4:35 PM

    "What do you think?" is what it says above me so what I think is that MapJack has had it.

    Actually all of them has had it I've noticed......even Street View.

    The last update was in December 08 and usually after a few months we have a major update for some part of the world.

    Me thinks the depression is hurting them financally. If they do anything I bet it will be all on bicycles and maybe hiking trails such as Mt Shasta.

    That idea doesn't sound that bad actually. It sure would save a lot of money on gas and we probably would have high definiton photos as a result of more money saved. ;)

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  35. It would be called Bike View and Hike View!

    I am not holding my breath anymore for announcments though or I'll go pale.

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  36. Wow! Impressive list of providers! Thanks for all infos!
    I have read something somewhere about a video-streetview that would come from Europe but unfortunately cannot find the article/link anymore. I will try again and search more... and get back to you all!

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  37. http://maps.yandex.ru/
    MOSCOW NEW

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  38. http://www.cityscanner.ru/#

    Yekaterinburg

    http://map.properm.ru/

    Perm

    http://www.nnov.ru/pano/
    Nizhny Novgorod

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  39. Moscow,St.Petersburg,Kiev @ yandex maps

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  40. Immersive 360° video + mapping= http://www.VideoStreetView.com
    What a blast and nice coverage altogether!

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