Google places

The recent intro of this has some very interesting plans.. google.com/places

One which caught my eye was 'Business photo shoots' which is basically as it sounds - google will do a similar thing they did for Streetview - but come and do it inside your business premises.

At the moment it's only on offer in certain cities in the USA, Japan and Aus as a test. It's free and they'll do it on request, you've just got to apply for it. (you can still upload your own photos for the same purpose - not sure why most businesses would need Google to take the pics for them)

Definitely another small step in Google's plans for world domination huh! What next? Live cams on every road in the world? Photos inside every building?

I'm struggling to see the benefits here, sounds like something a 'cool company' would do just be to all bleeding edge like.

Just put your existing floor plan online or something.

For sure, I agree ...it's just the sheer scale of doing it (if it goes global) is mind-boggling.

If I go to that address without being signed in to my Google account, I just get redirected to the google.co.nz homepage.

With my account signed in, I go to the business listings stats I manage. Not sure what you see.


Anyway, on a similar vein, I really liked what MS is doing with Bing's street view equivalent. (Worth watching)
http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html

That Bing Maps stuff is pretty cool. Although trying to use it in Chrome on OSX doesn't work

But holy shit that live video streaming inside the Map is fucken insanely cool...

And just to 3peat - Microsoft has kinda got cool again huh? Zune, Windows 7 Phone (or whatever the fuck they've called it), Bing Maps...

Woah woah, lets not say anything we can't take back here!

You can still see major failings with some of those tho. Take a look at the Bing app on iPhone for example, it's *pitiful* and dog slow. While that demo and tech is fucking *awesome*, and they have some very smart and creative people working for them, it's still....just not quite there for me.

Really like the look for Windows Phone 7, and I was thinking about hanging out for it, but I'll most likely pick up an iPhone instead - too locked in to the apps.

OK I'll go with cooler, which is admittedly coming off a pretty low base