Thursday, June 10, 2010

User Photos Merges with Google Street View


Google is now allowing you to overlay photos from other users into Street View, giving you a new way to experience places near and far.

With this new feature, you can view any available user-contributed photographs within the panorama of a Street View location. User photos first came to Street View more than a year ago, but this is the first time we’re seeing image and object recognition used to place this trove of content placed in a real-world context.


To try out the overlay, click “Photos” in the top right corner of a Street View screen. Street View will then show thumbnails of related photos placed over Google’s own Street View imagery. When you mouse over the thumbnail, you’ll see a preview of the corresponding photograph without navigating away from Street View. When you click on the photo, you’ll be directed to Google’s photo browser, where you can explore other user-generated images from that location.
This is a stunning, inspiring way to see different people, perspectives, seasons, events and even times of day at a given spot.

Check out this feature when used to view the Eiffel Tower (below), and then try it at a popular tourist attraction or someplace you’ve always wanted to visit. Let me know what you think in the comments.



0 comments:

Post a Comment

Share

Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites