Yes! Finally, almost half of the Netherlands is now covered in Street View, including some parts of the city where I live, Zwolle. This is what the LatLong blog reported yesterday. More Street View cities have become available in the Netherlands and Spain. Apart from that Google also announced that Street View imagery is now available in Hawaii!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

More Street View in more Countries

Google Maps has just announced that they launched a beta verison of Turn by Turn navigation software for the Android 2.0 platform!

Features highlighted are :

• Search in plain English
• Search by Voice
• Traffic view
• Search along route
• Satellite view
• Street View
• Car dock mode

The first phone to be supporting the application will be the motorola droid. More info in the video!

via: mashable

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Google Maps Turn-by-Turn navigation for android 2.0

Saw this one over at Mike’s blog and found it funny enough to share with you people.

Must be one hell of a job!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Collecting Street View data

Google Japan decided to take a different strategic approach to Street View to not violate privacy regulations. Instead of the regular Street View car they are now using a bicycle, with a slightly different set up.

the new setup includes:

• the bicycle (trike) with the camera almost half a meter lower than the normal ‘street car setup’.
• a telephone hotline to receive image removal requests (to those who have no way to do so via the Internet. )
• enabling residents to mask their ‘nameplate’
• enabling residents to mask their licence plates (when this has not already done so automatically)

Google Japan has put up a cool video as well You can find it after the break!

(via: Asiajin.com )

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Google Street View by bike?

According to Belgium newspaper ‘De Standaard‘ Google will soon file a declaration to the Belgium Privacy Commission to continue their Street View project in Belgium. Google thought at first it would not be necessary to file a declaration because of existing certificates that made their datasharing between EU and US possible.

A statement from the privacy commission says:

“Our privacy laws tell us that also foreign establishments that process personal information in an automated way need to declare this with the privacy commission. “

By filing they also declare that the imagery can solely be used for the purpose of Google Street View. Brussel will be the first city in Belgium to get Street View. But other cities will follow shortly after. It will take a couple of months however before Street View will be available in Belgium.

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Google files declaration with Brussels for Privacy Commission

Woah, enjoy the views of streetview now in Full screen mode! by pressing the new button in the right hand corner. Quite stunning if you ask me!

Try it in Barcelona, close where I used to live, you will see the bullfighting arena ‘Monumental’ and in the same picture also another Street View car.
Try it out yourself!

(via Google Maps Mania)

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Put Street View on Full Screen

Major cities have now been added to Google Maps Street View for both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Grotere kaart weergeven

Cities that have been added include London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Belfast, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Groningen. I expected Street View to be released sooner but I guess legal regulations and privacy regulations delayed things a bit.
This must account for Germany as well where privacy regulations are stricter than in other European countries and Google Street View was signaled there over a year ago .

I hoped for more cities in the Netherlands to be added, like Utrecht and The Hague. But hopefully they will follow soon.

The imagery used seems quite recent. In many occasions probably a lot newer than the map data used.

(via Google Mania )

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Street View now available in UK and Netherlands

The following!

With each new year, people start creating lists. Things to do, things not to do. Well, here is mine for the year of 2009.

Luckily, the thing about lists is that you need to maintain them. So keep looking forward to more articles about the above topics covering Local Search Optimization, Universal Search and anything that might occur in the local space in the year of 2009!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Local Search will bring you in the year of 2009…

Take a look at this shot!

View Larger Map

Update: Street View now also available for the Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile platform

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Google Street View – give me more

The Google Maps interface was revamped, again, to get a better user experience, especially by putting more attention to Google Street View and to increase maps usage in general. This was just announced on the Google LatLong blog

When you drag the pegman (the little yellow mascotte) from the zoom bar to the map you will see thumbnails of Street View appearing on the area you drag it to. You can see directly which areas are available in Street View. Very Cool!

Some of the new features include the mini map in the bottom corner, showing the area around you. Almost as it looks like with Street View on the newly released firmware for the iphone.

For a video `showing off` the features click the |> button below:

another question I’m asking myself with this new update is how I put the ‘new’ zoom bar and icons in use with the Google API, but I bet I’ll read about that soon enough in the Maps API Groups.

Feel free to join the conversation with your thoughts on the interface update!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Google Maps Interface Revamped for Street View