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February 12, 2008

Street View Update: 12 New Cities

About every two months, Google Maps adds 6-7 new cities to Street View. In May 2007 the service was launched with images for 5 cities, two months later 4 new cities were added, in October Google added 6 cities, while in December a record of 8 cities were added to Street View.

This month, Google added 12 new cities from the US: Juneau (Alaska), Boise (Idaho), Salt Lake City (Utah), San Antonio (Texas), Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill (North Carolina), Manchester (New Hampshire), Kansas City (Missouri), Milwaukee (Wisconsin), Albany, Schenectady (New York). It's interesting to see that the 12 cities are distributed uniformly and the total number of cities is now 35.

When do you think Google will add all the important cities from the US and the rest of the world? Shouldn't Google outsource this job to other companies or at least accept photos from users and use technology like Photosynth to combine them?

Bonus question: can you find the formula for an integer sequence that has the first 5 values: 5, 4, 6, 8, 12?



{ via the unofficial Google Earth Blog. Updated with more information from Google LatLong. }

14 comments:

  1. the blue lines were changed a little:
    Start: May 2007
    Today: Feb 2008

    ReplyDelete
  2. Google already gets its imagery from Immersive Media. In some locations (like San Francisco and San Diego) it is just more cost effective for Google to take the imagery themselves rather than pay Immersive Media the licensing fees.

    So, really, the slow roll-out is likely just to run usage tests, to divide costs evenly across reporting quarters, and to keep themselves in the news.

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  3. Google no longer gets the images from Immersive Media (I can't find a link to Immersive Media's press release that announced this). Check the copyright message from all the new cities.

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  4. Can't wait to get street view for London and other major European capitals. Why is Google not expanding the feature outside US? :(

    ReplyDelete
  5. Manch-vegas! Sweet!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Perhaps in their analysis they determined that it would cost them less to do it themselves than to pay Immersive? If that's the case, then it saves them money... and they get a mention in the news/blogosphere every few months or so.

    ReplyDelete
  7. come on, whats the bonus question?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi,

    Google Street View is agreat tool.
    I think, the answer to the integer sequence question is 11.

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is kind of cheap way to do your problem, but it works.

    2int(n/5) + 3int(1/n) + 2n

    "int" is the step function and maintains all of the integers.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I think something cloud be done with the Fibonacci Series... They are somewhat simmilar... ;)

    I think that before google adds street views from world's major cities, it should at least have street map details for all of them! It's pretty fun that Argentina has practically no map detail in GoogleMaps, being the place they've chosen for their hispanic headquarters O_o

    ReplyDelete
  11. A quick Lagrange interpolation applied to the data gives me the formula:
    y = (408 - 514x + 283x^2 - 62x^3 + 5x^4) / 24

    For x=1 to 10, we get:
    5, 4, 6, 8, 12, 25, 59, 131, 263, 482

    Do I get a cookie? :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ohhh I need those number for NM Lotto.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I LOVE STREET VIEW, as much as I love Ann Arbor.

    When does Street View expect to update the pictures of Ann Arbor (the ones of State Street for instance, previous to the new constructions there, are already terribly outdated)

    Best and many thanks

    ReplyDelete
  14. Showbox users all over spread content through facebook and youtube directly from the software. showbox apk

    ReplyDelete

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