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June 10, 2008
Google Updates Street View Imagery in US, Adds 37 New Areas
In celebration of Street View's first year of public availability, Google has made a major update to the Street View imagery. Unfortunately, none of the imagery is outside the US yet (despite the many sightings of Street View cars taking imagery in Europe). But, this update not only includes the many new cities in over a dozen states, but also updated and expanded coverage in many of the cities which already had Street View imagery. In particular, Google says more of the imagery now has more spherical panoramas (so you can look up and down in addition to 360 degree panoramas). And, they've worked on improving resolution and picture quality. Also, all the imagery has been processed with their new face-blurring technology to address some privacy concerns. Not only that, but the entire update is also available in the Google Earth Street View layer. Just to whet your appetite, here's one of the new cities:
View Larger Map
Read the full details on the new and expanded coverage over at Google's LatLong Blog. And, to see interesting sights found in Street View, or to share interesting things you find in the new imagery, try out Google Earth Hack's new Street View sightings database.
P.S. My apologies for the small number of posts the last few days. Had a bit of family crisis when my nephew Jason was involved in a traffic accident. Thankfully, he is miraculously all right now, and should completely mend in a few weeks. The other good news is that I got to do some flying in a Cessna between several states during the last few days.
Posted by FrankTaylor at June 10, 2008 4:28 PM
Comments
Posted by: Mapper99 at June 10, 2008 6:16 PM
I saw a Google car with a long aerial cruising around Hamilton, Victoria, Australia last week. Would this have been a Street View imagery car? Hamilton is only a little place (10,000 people). Not sure why they would be doing us!
Steve
Posted by: Steve Clark at June 10, 2008 7:16 PM
Even Holton KS now has street view( the sat imagery is still low res, however).
One thing I just noticed: Downtown Boston and Cambridge now have almost a complete set of buildings( as many as Denver, as far as I can tell ).
Duncan
Posted by: Duncan Brinsmead at June 10, 2008 8:38 PM
What happened ?!! With this June-10th update all hi-res pictures of Chicago are gone and on top of this many street views are missing !!! Go check it out ! All I could see were pretty bad quality blurry low-res images. Is that called a HUGE update ??? I really can’t get it. What was the point?
Posted by: alex at June 10, 2008 11:14 PM
Wow! This is like holidays from your living room! I was surprised by some cities, Minneapolis and Charlotte seem so huge, Atlanta is rather unspectaclar and Chicago is simply... WOW! What a city! Now there is so much choice, I don't even know where to start looking. Thanks google! I'm so looking forward for cities outside of the US
Posted by: Markus at June 11, 2008 1:54 PM
I live in the San Diego area, and am really disappointed that our street view resolution was downgraded. I liked the ability to zoom in and read the actual address on a house/building. It was such a nice tool to have. If it is a privacy issue, why not use the new "face blur" technology on the high res imagery, and put it back up. I do like having the integration into GE, however, at full screen size, the images are so blurry, they're almost unusable. Now, when I want to use SV, I just open a browser and go to Google maps, where the low res is somewhat tolerable. Please bring back the High Resolution.
Posted by: shuke at August 12, 2008 3:30 PM
...I second the comments about poor definition in Street View. Blur the faces if you must, but let's have Hi Resolution on the scenery.
Posted by: frank halliwell at August 30, 2008 8:14 PM
Please try and update North Alabama, Tuscumbia-Sheffield and the Muscle Sholes area. New business' coming in soon.
Posted by: Ralph Young at September 9, 2008 12:52 PM
I used street view for the first on Las Vegas. The images are blurry.
Posted by: Anthony at October 16, 2008 8:05 PM
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One problem...Google removed all of the original high-res imagery in San Fransisco and San Diego and replaced it with the new lousy stuff, thereby breaking links from my gallery to previous sightings of interest. Nice work, Google!