A9 Search Engine Launches Yellow Pages

vmalik writes "The A9 search engine has launched a Yellow Pages service, and the listings in major cities include photographs of the storefronts. The site also contains information on how they did it. It seems to be pretty good with lots of store images and driving information from MapQuest."

Comments

Current?

[KontinMonet]

Cool idea, and keeping this up-to-date will be a nice little earner for someone. Presumably, photographed stores will tell A9 when things have changed... or will there be a two year delay?

Re:Current?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just updated information for the company that I work for. What is really odd is it lets ANYBODY change ANYTHING. In something obscure enough you could probably enter information about your competitor which would make anyone informed know that they suck. So, that's sort of a minus. I don't know if they're going to check the info I updated or what.

Their interface did not give me a chance to upload a picture. You can only "share a picture" if you're a customer. Being I'm an Amazon customer, I reviewed the business as 5 stars but will not shill it out by writing a review.

Re:Current?

[Enigma_Man]

What is really odd is it lets ANYBODY change ANYTHING

That is odd... It seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen at this point almost. I wonder if/who a store could sue if someone put a defamitory description on this thing.

-Jesse

Re:Current?

[deltavivis]

The images are already pretty out of date. I live in portland so i did a virtual stroll up broadway to see if i could spot anybody i knew. There were some businesses shown that i thought went out of business last year. I went up Harrison and it showed the street like it was before it was torn up for a light rail extension, which had to have begun at least a year ago.

Re:Current?

[blunt arrow]

The Manhattan pictures are about 1.5 to 2 years old as far as I can tell. That's pretty useless here, since it's the life expectancy of an average restaurant or bar. It's interesting, but not very helpful, to see a picture of a restaurant at the same location of where you know two other restaurants started and closed since.

Re:Current?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a page what make that with the main spanish cities:

http://www.qdq.com/

It is really useful. I used that when i was searching a place for rent.

Re:Current?

[Anonymous Coward]

It gets really funny when they map Harlem. Stop for the traffix light, drive on again, hey the datastream is gone. Get out of the car to see what is wrong, see that the camera is missing, and the car suddenly drives away by itself, grab the cellphone to call the police, then discover that your cellphone is gone too. Quickly hold on to your wallet, just to discover that another person is holding it already too.

I have read a previous article about this though. In the Netherlands some cities did this too to get a better register of the city.

Re:Current?

[yohaas]

They could not sue Amazon.

The courts have ruled time and again that simply providing a "wall" for someone to write on does not make you liable for what is written. The Communications Decency Act (Section 230(c)(1)), says that Internet service providers are immune from "distributor liability". At most they may be ordered to identify who the poster was.

The person posting however, may be liable.

Invasion of privacy

[fisheye1969]

Heh, anyone fancy an invasion of privacy class action lawsuit?

Seriously though, if they put up photo's of some defence companies, could that be (potentially) under some kind of terrorism law (ie, showing bombers where to put their bombs etc).

Now to remove the tin foil hat.

Re:Invasion of privacy

[fisheye1969]

Actually that's a daft idea. The A9 idea sounds good, and could be really useful on a mobile phone or PDA.

Re:Invasion of privacy

[Justice8096]

At first, I thought that it would be okay... but now I wonder. The defense places that aren't listed as such would be identifiable by the guards at the front. As such, it would be a problem.

As for government sites... I think the guards would notice someone snapping pictures at a non-obvious site. :-)

Re:Invasion of privacy

[Alpha27]

If you are on a public street, then there is no expectation of privacy. If you don't have a sign displaying your name, then it's a bit hard to map the image to you unless you're listed in the yellow pages, which in that case, defeats the idea of privacy.

So short answer, "no".

Re:Invasion of privacy

[Svencer]

It seems like your reasonable expectation of privacy is to be seen by other local people (and possibly photographed by odd CCTVs or tourists), but not to have your picture entered into a public internet database.
I don't think this is necessarily a serious invasion of privacy, but you have to draw some distinctions.

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

This photo is of that intersection in Manhattan, if anyone cares :-)

nobody uses A9

[Anonymous Coward]

A9 is like Google and Claria combined, with webbugs, click tracking and paid inserts all tied to your Amazon cookie which is tied to your credit card
it only exists to maximise Amazon and their partners (those who pay the most) revenue

at work we classify A9 as a "severe privacy threat" and therefore it is blocked at the firewall

Re:nobody uses A9

[cgenman]

it only exists to maximise Amazon and their partners (those who pay the most) revenue.

So... how is this different from most businesses? Not to be a free-market fundie or anything, but at least one of the motivations for all businesses is to earn revenue. A9 has decided to earn revenue for it's owners by providing better features to and tighter tracking of it's customers. However, I fail to see how what A9 is doing is different than the paid inserts or supercookie that Google uses, or for that matter the wealth of info that Yahoo keeps on it's customers. Some businesses can be said to only exist to increase revenue for their owners. Look at all of the old software that is "supported" for the sake of businesses at extortionist rates and without any updates. Compared to them and a lot of other software businesses, A9 is pretty customer-focused.

I hate to say this, but if people keep spouting words like "severe privacy threat," when actual severe privacy threats (like Claria) arise, people won't listen.

Re:nobody uses A9

[DrEldarion]

at work we classify A9 as a "severe privacy threat" and therefore it is blocked at the firewall

Do you work at a tinfoil factory?

Re:nobody uses A9

[FunWithHeadlines]

"A9 is like Google and Claria combined, with webbugs, click tracking and paid inserts all tied to your Amazon cookie which is tied to your credit card"

What Amazon cookie? You mean you allow them to set a cookie on your machine? I don't.

Re:nobody uses A9

[Emperor Igor]

All of Slashdot is one big tin foil factory. Hehe.

Re:nobody uses A9

[Saeger]

So... how much Amazon stock do you own, Mr 'free-market' defender?

Re:nobody uses A9

[GeorgeH]

at work we classify A9 as a "severe privacy threat" and therefore it is blocked at the firewall

What about the cookie-free http://generic.a9.com/?

Re:nobody uses A9

[numbsafari]

I don't own any and I agree with him.

User's should be able to make an informed decision about what they are willing to give up in exchange for valuable service. Some of that might be privacy.

The real thing to fear is what happens if Amazon.com were to violate the provisions contained within its privacy agreement or if it were to attempt to distort or hide the nature of that agreement or in some other way not properly acquire informed consent from the user. For that, user's have the court system at their disposal for adjudication under the contractual obligations set out within the privacy policy and the legal system under which the privacy policy is executed.

It's in Amazon's best interest to protect consumer data for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the consumer data they hold has value. Outside of that, if they prove to be a less than trustworthy vendor people will avoid using the service.

I'm glad the company I work for employs a firewall admin who believes in freedom of choice and personal responsibility. If A9 were a security threat for the company then I could understand blocking it. But, please, that's a stretch that goes beyond reason.

Personally, I'd consider the admin who blocks a site like A9 more of a privacy threat than A9.

Re:nobody uses A9

[Anonymous Coward]

A9 is a severe privacy threat. They tie your search information back with your shopping behavior on Amazon. Even worse, the A9 toolbar I tried tracks your entire URL history stream, and turns that tracking on every time you start your browser even if you turn it off!

Re:nobody uses A9

[greenhide]

I sold mine at $12.

(Banging head against wall)

I mean, I did buy at $8 or so. It's not like I didn't make *any* profit on it.

Re:nobody uses A9

[cgenman]

I own no amazon stock.

And note, I'm not defending the free market. Markets can never be "free." Nature abhorrs a power vaccuum too much. But when people start saying that such-and-such is making money for their owners... Lots of stuff does that. Heck, the place where I work makes money. That in and of itself is not enough to make a company evil.

Red Hat makes money. They're not evil.

So they correlate your search patterns with your buying history. Great, so they know that I search for Karaoke CD's and I buy Karaoke CD's. And if you install their toolbar, they track your history. Maybe I've become a bit jaded, but you're installing a toolbar, which amongst other things has a history option. At that point it should be painfully obvious that they're going to track your URLS. Even if you didn't read the EULA that should be obvious.

The difference between that, and an application which installs itself while masquerading as something different, runs silently in the background at all times, and has the power to track all of your keystrokes and pop ads up at you all day long while frequently crashing is tremendous. In one way the user is giving up a small amount of privacy at least somewhat knowingly for a small amount of gain. In the other one the computer user is duped into giving away all privacy and a lot of stability on their machine for no reason whatsoever.

Big difference.

It freaked me out!

[Aziabel]

Funny thing is, I just went to the home page and I see it greet me with my name. I'm like, "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!" ... then I notice the "How do we know your name?" underneath and click on it. Stupid me, I should have known that A9, being wholly owned by Amazon, would use Amazon session cookies to identify users. Sometimes, I really amaze myself.

Re:It freaked me out!

[Stevyn]

I was freaked out too when it knew the town I lived in. I thought I removed all the cookies since I last purchased a book through Amazon. Kind of cool though.

Re:It freaked me out!

[Enigma_Man]

When I RTFA'd, they mentioned that if they don't have any direct info about you, they'll use an IP->ZIP translator/database to guess where you are. They were a couple towns over from where I am.

-Jesse

Re:It freaked me out!

[drooling-dog]

I should have known that A9, being wholly owned by Amazon, would use Amazon session cookies to identify users.

Get tougher on cookies. I clean mine out multiple times per day, and rarely allow more than 3 or 4 to overstay their sessions (and two of those are Slashdot's!). With Mozilla, you can even leave the "Manage Cookies" dialog up and watch 'em as they come in; then it's just a click to get rid of the ones you don't want.

Re:It freaked me out!

[It doesn't come easy]

Anyone who doesn't routinely delete at least their cookies and cached web content should expect to have no privacy on the internet.

You can set Firefox to do this for you automatically...

Next step

[ceeam]

... travel the world! (May I have the job? :)

Really - "spidering" the country... Dear. Will they refresh the info every year? No? How often then? I now understand what all those flying cams are doing in HL2.

Google

[vladd_rom]

I wonder how much it would take Google to come up with something similar.

Another case where competition is benefic for the end-users.

Re:google

[drewzhrodague]

Right, so LET THE GAMES BEGIN! I find this kind of competition very interesting, and fun to follow.

Re:google

[antivoid]

dude your site is BLANK???

google

[antivoid]

In my ohnest opinion, it won't be too long before google comes up with something better.

It is worth mentioning, though, that A9's improved searching capabilities do provide much needed competition for google.

Not a bad idea though from them, it must have cost them one hell of a lot of money to do though.

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

You shoudl have used that new face blurring technology. Then you woudl have gotten away with it.

Google?

[E IS mC(Square)]

How is this different from Google Local? Looks the same to me, unless I am missing something. anyone?

Re:Google?

[adpowers]

I don't know.... maybe the block photos! I think it is pretty sweet. I'll keep this in mind next time I'm going to a new restaurant and I'm glad there is competition between Amazon and Google. If A9 continues competing well and coming up with these new ideas, it could be a cool place to work.

Concerns/Observations

[Enigma_Man]

I was taking a virtual drive around Boston, and could clearly see many people's faces. Do those people know that they're photographed, and on the internet for all to see?

Otherwise, very interesting. Some of the storefronts for businesses I know of were one or two pictures off to the left or right though, guess they're still working out the bugs.

-Jesse

Re:Concerns/Observations

[LinuxOnEveryDesktop]

I was taking a virtual drive around Boston, and could clearly see many people's faces. Do those people know that they're photographed, and on the internet for all to see?


There is no legal problem. When you're in a public place (e.g. on the streets of Boston), anyone can photograph you and publish the photos.

But IANAL :)

Re:Concerns/Observations

[Enigma_Man]

Why is it then that television stations always have to blur out faces of people that they didn't get to sign their permission sheet things? Or... is that a thing of the past? Or is it just an ethical thing, not a legal thing?

-Jesse

Re:Concerns/Observations

[Anonymous Coward]

It has to do with the context in which the photograph/video is taken. Since most people don't want to be associated with the show "Cops" the station cannot use their image unobstructed without their consent.

A public place that does not imply a certain association with something that could be used to intimidate/harm the person being photographed is fair game.

At least thats how I understand it.

Re:Concerns/Observations

[gatekeep]

I noticed this too.

For anyone who needs an example, search for 'sears' with zip code 60641. You'll get a picture of a store called 'Hats Plus' with only the edge of the sears store visible in the leftmost photo.

Now search for 'hats plus' and you'll get an imagine even further east along the same strip mall. You can verify they're next door by comparing the rightmost pics of the first search to the leftmost pics of the second search. Looks like the whole thing is about 50-100 feet off in that area.

Now, why is this? Probably because GPS is not 100% accurate. Even at it's best, consumer grade GPS (I'm going to assume A9 doesn't have access to military level equipment) is only accurate to about 20-30 feet. That also requires a relatively solid signal. In many areas, especially with large buildings, trees, and other obstructions, accuracy can drop to 100 feet or so. At this level of accuracy, you don't always see pictures of the business you're looking for, just the surrounding area.

It's a cool idea, but unless/until more accurate GPS gear is available it won't be much more reliable than following mapquest directions and looking for the nearest interesection.

Re:Concerns/Observations

[gatekeep]

A public place that does not imply a certain association with something that could be used to intimidate/harm the person being photographed is fair game.

Okay, so let's look at some sceanrios...

- A picture of a man walking into a porn shop.
- A picture of a man walking into a strip club.
- Someone standing outside a concert/sporting venue waving tickets in the air.

Granted, it's unlikely these things would be noticed, but there are certainly circumstances where someone could be intimidated, harmed, or blackmailed with information found on the service.

Re:Concerns/Observations

[Anonymous Coward]

The best use of this technology is to look up your local Porn stores and see if there's anyone you know entering or leaving.

DAD?!?!

Re:Concerns/Observations

[Hallow]

The law varies from state to state. There are privacy laws (which would not be violated here), and publicity laws (which may be being violated).

There's a whole host of rules and regulations about when you need to get permission and when you don't for photographs of people, places, and things.

A good article is here.

It seems news media usually get away with photographs of identifiable people in states with publicity laws under a fair use exemption for newsworthy reporting. In some states the publicity laws only apply to celebrities, but in others they apply to everyone (details).

Re:Concerns/Observations

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, and those were the exact examples I was thinking about when I posted...I think there is a very fine line on what is/isn't allowed to be published online without opening up some sort of liability for the publisher.

Perhaps they should attach some sort of megaphone type device on the top of their trucks. Blare some sort of PA announcement as they drive down the street warning people that pictures are being taken.

Hopefully the truck won't be bluetooth capable as hacking the PA to announce: "All your photo are belong to us" would be a pretty sweet hack.

Re:Concerns/Observations

[whizzard]

Now, why is this? Probably because GPS is not 100% accurate. Even at it's best, consumer grade GPS (I'm going to assume A9 doesn't have access to military level equipment) is only accurate to about 20-30 feet.

You're right, they probably don't have military equipment. But, you don't need military equipment to make GPS extremely accurate. One good example is the differential GPS system in Minnesota which is used for, among other things, city busses and snow plows (and is available for use by anyone with the necessary equipment). It has horizontal resolution close to a centimeter, and vertical resolution close to three centimeters.

erm, are you retarded?

[goldcd]

They've photographed storefronts - things you'd see yourself walking up and down a street. Now unless the secret terrorist targets are listing themselves in the yellow pages (is there even a section for secret terrorist targets)? I fail to see, sorry I can't even argue again your point, so vague and vacuous it appears to be.

Re:erm, are you retarded?

[lukewarmfusion]

I'm glad someone can spot a knee-jerk reaction.

I would question the security and common sense of any defense company that keeps a storefront where public citizens can walk by and see anything useful.

Re:erm, are you retarded?

[Anonymous Coward]

"sorry I can't even argue again your point, so vague and vacuous it appears to be."

That's the problem. Vague and vacuous are the modus operandi of Homeland Security. This is precisesly the sort of thing that will get mindlessly condemned by the Bushies and their allies.

Hmmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a hard time with this one...

Re:Hmmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

You did ask for directions to a UPS truck, right?

I wonder how long before people start flashing the A9 trucks when they recognize them...

This is an awesome idea, but...

[justinstreufert]

It looks like they kind of botched it. I'm not surprised, given the lag and inaccuracy of GPS in an urban environment (tall buildings = imperfect coverage) and the overall insanity of the whole project.

Basically I searched for some things in New York, and got some cool images. Not once was I looking at the actual storefront I asked for. Once, I was able to find the store by moving left two images down the block (a neat feature) but the next time I searched, I was not even on the same block with the restaurant I was looking for. Next search, there was a giant truck in front of the store I wanted. Woo!

It is really entertaining to walk up and down the block and take a look at all the poor slobs who A9 caught scratching themselves on some streetcorner. I wonder when we can count on the first lawsuit?

Justin

Re:This is an awesome idea, but...

[Seumas]

I can't believe this is idea is a big deal. Haven't most geeks been using Microsoft's Terraserver to get overhead sat images of locations they're going to be going to and using them as a guide once you reach the general location of your destination? Even though the photos are from a top-down perspective, they usually help me find the business I'm looking for when I'm in the neighborhood.

Re:This is an awesome idea, but...

[tod_miller]

What would be nice is to trawl the journey of the truck throughout the day into a video.

I wonder if it caught some people in first floor apartments getting undressed? neato.

I say it is a funky idea, and in the land of GPS enabled cameras, and the amazon 'I found this helpful' system (google needs this on page search results... with accounts etc, yes it can still be screwed over) people will be auto posting GPS encoded info to the amazon site for bonus points of purchases, and free pic hosting.

Just because it ain't perfect - it will still bring people and they are still first on the block. I kill myself, I really do.

Re:This is an awesome idea, but...

[parkrrrr]

You're not a geek unless you automate the process of using Terraserver to get aerial (not satellite) photos of locations you're going to be.

Real geeks automate this.

And if you automate this, you're beyond hope. (It's hard to see, but that's a Terraserver image used as a backdrop in GPSPilot Tracker for the Palm.)

Re:This is an awesome idea, but...

[DeadSea]

Big Dunkin Donuts truck in front of pizza restaurant

Seems to be a fairly common occurance unfortunately.

overjoyed

[fafaforza]

The owners of this storefront must be overjoyed:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/yp/B00036LLZO/002-51330 59 -6689664?

Re:overjoyed

[fafaforza]

Here's a better link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/yp/B00036LLZO/002-5133059 -6689664?

Re:overjoyed

[Enigma_Man]

Why? I see nothing remarkable about that at all.

-Jesse

Re:overjoyed

[morethanapapercert]

The site automatically chooses one of the availible pictures, (in this case 7 images) and lists it as the main picture. Everytime I reload the page I see a different choice from the series. One of those pictures features the building view blocked by a courier vehicle. (and big brown gets some free advertising out of the deal)
I'm guessing that when he first looked at the page, the UPS truck pic was the main pic.

Re:overjoyed

[Enigma_Man]

Oh I see :) Carry on then.

For those that aren't reading whom I'm responding to, apparently there's a series of images that can pop up. The one that I saw was the storefront with no problems at all. Another one apparently has a UPS truck all in the way.

-Jesse

Re:overjoyed

[The Other White Boy]

its not one of seven available images, you're next door. the pics are as if you were walking up and down the street.

which is actually pretty neat. in searching for a restaurant in NYC i was able to move two blocks to the left and find a friend of mine's apartment.

Re:overjoyed

[SharkJumper]

I'm noticing a little "Best Picture?" link that comes up under the "Walk down the block" thumbnails. Just a guess, but it looks like users can rate which picture is the best view of the storefront. I'm guessing, the automated system first entered in the picture with the brown truck. By the time you visited -- after enough moderation -- the actual storefront became the default.

SharkJumper

A bit inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Its view of what is a storefront is a little odd, I put in Chicago and hot dogs and got pictures of empty parking lots, cars, caribou coffee, and no image. But none of those I views seem to have a hot dog place yet.

Of course Mapquest has had me driving into the lake many times but maybe they need to add pattern recognition to there pics for error checking, there should at least be a building in the shot :o)

Irony

[NardofDoom]

I wanted to use A9 one day, so I googled for it.

Re:Irony

[Fancia]

You think that's funny, but my Russian Literature professor actually uses MSN search to get to Google. I suppose it must be somewhat common for people who haven't that much experience with computers.

Plumber

[barcodez]

Searching for plumber brings back some interesting images....

Re:Plumber

[cornjones]

I guess this depends on which market you are in for. I checked NY and seattle and saw nothing overtly interesting.

ej

Cheeburger Cheeburger

[SlongNY]

http://a9.com/cheeburger

Kinda neat... I go to cheeburger cheeburger, its a real popular place near my house for burgers.. It even showed a jpg of the menu! and the fat asses eating burgers and on the wall of fame for eating a one pounder.

Get a FREE Mini Mac http://www.freeminimacs.com/?r=14172807

Re:Cheeburger Cheeburger

[SteveRosenbach]

>>and the fat asses eating burgers Hey, thanks a lot, Slong! *I'm* one of those fat asses! (That's me in the glasses with my lovely wife leaning her head on my shoulder) Oh well, the Truth hurts ;-) Regards, SteveR P.S. - this reminds me of a story my mother told me. Mom & Dad were vacationing at a Catskills resort in the early '70s. Mom was playing cards by the pool with a bunch of ladies she met at the resort when she spotted a busboy walking nearby - the kid had really long, greasy hair. So my mother says, "Look at that sloppy kid with all that hair" or something like that. Naturally, the busboy walks over to their table and addresses on of the ladies... "Hi Mom!"

Re:Cheeburger Cheeburger

[shroompicker]

You wierdos posting a9 searches without ypLoc arguements are pointing us to YOUR search terms in OUR city. I've never heard of a Cheeburger, there is no such animal in Arizona, and I don't get to see the wonderful wide arses you speak of.

Better link

[Lady Jazzica]

The link in the article ("launched a Yellow Pages service") doesn't actually link to the Yellow Pages service.

Here's a direct link.

Yellow Pages? How 1980s...

[rueger]

Hmmph - it has been at least half a decade since I have used the Yellow Pages for anything more than looking up pizza delivery places.

I can't think of a more annoying, inefficient, and time wasting publication. If there's one that that I would love to see be replaced entirely by technology it's the Yellow Pages.

Re:Yellow Pages? How 1980s...

[Mant]

Yellow pages web sites are neat are much more handy, but I'd always want to have an old fashion hard copy around. Quite often when I need to use it, it is for something fairly urgent, if I need an electrician or a plumber quickly I may not be able to look something up on the net.

I definately dig the more technological alternatives, but I wouldn't want them to replace the big book completely.

Re:Yellow Pages? How 1980s...

[friedmud]

The one time I use them is for looking up car repair/parts shops.

I like to read the ads in the yellow pages for these types of businesses. ie I was trying to find some new tires for my car so I opened up the yellow pages and all of the tire places had adds telling me what types of tires they carry... so I knew which ones to call (I was looking for specific tires).

But, I agree, I don't use the yellowpages very often... only if I need a good smattering of local stores for a specific purpose.

Friedmud

Patents?

[mrjb]

Seems like one hell of an idea... how long until we will see this showing up at the patent office? For once, it seems like a nontrivial, more or less innovative idea, combining a cam with GPS.

Re:Patents?

[parkrrrr]

They're not the first.

Heck, they're not even the first to be profiled on Slashdot. There was an insurance company, or maybe a supplier of data to insurance companies, a few months ago doing the same thing, if I recall correctly.

And then there's The PennDOT VideoLog.

Brothels

[cerberusss]

Hey, how can I search for brothels? That ought to deliver some cool pictures :)

Re:Brothels

[backdoorstudent]

Search under massage + escort. Bingo.

Slow....

[MasterOfCeremonies]

I agree, the project is insane. It is inherently inaccurate and unmaintainable in the long term. A9 certainly has some very nice features, my problem with it is that these features slow the whole thing down so much (at least over the lake here is Australia). After being used to the lightning speed of Google I find myself impatient with A9.

Re:Slow....

[ivan256]

Time from typing A9.com and hitting enter to a usable page: 23 seconds.

Time from typing google.com and hitting enter to a usable page: less than 1 second.

Performance first. Features later.

Re:Slow....

[nicko65536]

Performance first. Features later.

That credo may work for us elite readers of Slashdot, but it works the other way around for the general public misusing the Internet. Just look at the relative popularity of Windows and Linux. On most metrics, Linux has greater performance but less features than Windows. Who's using Linux? Readers of Slashdot, a small minority of the Internet user population. Who's using Windows? Almost everyone else.

The success of A9's Yellow Pages will not be decided by this small minority, but by the people who actually consider that purple monkey named Bonzi their buddy.

Re:Slow....

[ChrisPee]

On the contrary, it is as inherently accurate and maintainable as the printed Yellow Pages.

99% of businesses have an interest in promoting themselves, and if their picture was inaccurate or flawed, they would submit a better one themselves. Many would even PAY for the privilege of doing so.

Yellow pages?

[Underholdning]

This is not a yellow page searh. This is a web search with some added functionality. There's a big difference. If I search in a YP for "restaurant ohio" I want a restaurant in Ohio, not a lot of webpages about "ebook - the secret about Restaurant Ohio in Mexico".

crap

[Anonymous Coward]

This service is horrible. Being from NYC I searched for a store, and it didn't even come close. The addresses seem to be off or something. And if you try to scroll through the map it is maddeningly buggy. You can't change the map by hitting "south" or "west". Just real crap. The web page is also filled with ads and other invasive stuff. I will never use it.

Sponsored Links from Google?

[TexTex]

I'm curious as to why A9 returns Google clickthroughs at the bottom of the page as "Sponsored Links" when you search for something generic.

So in the http://a9.com/plumber example, you'll find A9 directs through Google at the very bottom. I guess they need to make a dime somehow.

Paris: pagesjaunes.fr, since 1998 (at least)

[dolmen.fr]

In Paris, we have photos of builings on Pages Jaunes (the french yellow pages) for many years. I remember that I was already using this feature in 1998.

Re:Paris: pagesjaunes.fr, since 1998 (at least)

[Anonymous Coward]

In English that's pronounced:

Nanny-nanny-boo-boo.

doesn't work for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I searched for "tshirts" and "t-shirts" within 10 miles of zip code 30341 and A9 didn't find any listings! whitepages.com found 38 and superpages.com found 36. When I expanded to 50 miles it found 21. Why? Because all A9 did was grep for the string "tshirts" in the business name! The business within 10 miles had names like "The Fine Print" and "Cotton Graphics".

What a useless database. Apparently there's no categorization of the businesses. It's even funnier if I search for "lawyer", where I get 42 in the Atlanta area instead of 2883 (whitepages). And "attorneys" produces zero results.

The pictures are cool though. And if I already know the name of the business I'm looking for I suppose it's useful.

Re:doesn't work for me

[Whumpsnatz]

I did the same kind of checking. I do like the geographical location feature; anything that can reduce the mileage I drive to do stuff, I'm in favor of. Now if A9 can work with companies (and get paid for the service!) to provide detailed inventory lists, I'll be able to type in "paint scraper" or "left-handed fraglewhoozits", and see which store is closest.

To Save Space...

[jj00]

To Save Space...

They can use the same picture for all the Best Buys, Wal-Marts, etc...

Non-cookie version

[slyguy135]

Don't forget you can use http://generic.a9.com/ so they don't keep track of you (or at least don't LOOK as if they're keeping track of you...)

Ok, it's not bad

[digitalgimpus]

Though I do wonder how useful that will ever be.

It's not perfect, and the landscape is constantly changing. How often do they plan to refresh? How will they even do that?

A block in NYC can change dramatically in a year. Kind of hard to keep those pics up to date. Take a building down, put a new one up, or just remove the scafolding, and it looks like a different block.

Just my $0.02, but I think keeping that up to date and useful is going to be nearly impossible.

Re:Ok, it's not bad

[SharkJumper]

Looks like they've included the ability to "share customer images." I wonder if they are expecting users to fill in the missing data.

It might not be inconceivable if this catches on. The Amazon rating and review system is pretty widely used. Aside from some astroturfing, I've generally found it to be pretty useful to look at user-volunteered info. And it seems like this would be an instance where astroturfing would be welcomed. If it catches on, it would be in the best interests of small businesses to submit photos of their own storefront to be included in the directory. Maybe A9 can also enlist the aid of the geocaching community to map local areas with gps and digital cameras.

SharkJumper

White House

[brownpau]

No image available.
Duh.

I was right with them, till they said "Mapquest"

[detlev409]

Considering the number of times Mapquest has sent me down roads that weren't even there, I've given up on them.

It's not insane, it's genius

[solomonrex]

It's just attempted by the wrong people. Haven't you ever played Flight Simulator and wondered how long before the world was actually really completely simulated. This is the start of that. Search anything. Any book, any building. If you're the FBI, any person.

The problem for Microsoft is that these projects really belong on a server. Now that we can send email and write documents, all the exciting stuff is on the web. And people play games on consoles.

I imagine after Blue Gene, IBM may attempt this project in earnest.

Re:It's not insane, it's genius

[azhyd]

fyi this service has been available for at least 2 years on the French yellow pages: http://pagesjaunes.fr/ for a few major cities.

The A9 web site is heavily weighted toward ads.

[Futurepower(R)]

As far as I can tell, A9 is asinine. Maybe that's what A9 stands for.

The web site is so heavily weighted toward pushing advertising that it is just disgusting.

It's amazing that other people cannot learn for Google's success.

Asinine Manager #1: Hey, why don't we imitate Google, and not abuse customers?

Asinine Manager #2: What! Customers like to be abused! Didn't you know that?

I put in an address in Portland, Oregon, and selected Within 1 Mile, and it changed the selection back to Within 5 Miles, and gave me a list of what looks like all the businesses in Portland.

Google Images finds images for people who are specifically looking for images. A9 directs people to images on other people's servers as part of their regular content.

When will we get some good managers of technical companies? Start with replacing Bill Gates, for example.

Sports:

[DingerX]

A) COPS race. Any number of players can play. SEt a time limit (say 20) minutes. Pick a city. Score points for who can collect the most instances of:

1. Criminal Activity
2. Law enforcement officials
3. Men with their shirts off
4. Bodily fluids.

B) Product Place-a-thon.
THey've probably already figured out they can use the "car passing" technology demoed in the xmas lights hoax and are digital inserting posters, vans, newspapers and any number of other things.

C) Date the drive. Using contextual clues, figure out when the van passed by. Bonus points if you can locate the Van tech's Netstumbler log to corroborate the trip.

The French did it a few years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

The French yellow pages http://www.pagesjaunes.fr/ put online pictures of the streets of Paris France a few years ago. They did not use a van but good'ol pedestrians with Nikon digital cameras. It was perhaps in 2001 or 2002 if I remember correctly. Now you can visit Paris for free ;-)

Not a first

[sita]

The french Pages Jaunes (yellow pages) have had this for years: http://www.pagesjaunes.fr/pj.cgi. It is extremely handy.

Re:I was right with them, till they said "Mapquest

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this way you can tell what happened to the A9 driver when he decided to turn down the nonexistant road.

Lawsuit!

[soboroff]

Hey, now British Telecom can sue Amazon!

Is it just me?

[IdJit]

Or does A9's results look like a bunch of ads? I really can't see what I'm getting at A9 that I couldn't be getting at Google *without all the ads!*

--
http://www.coingo.net/freemacmini -- Get a FREE Mac mini!

Err...trademark?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought both the name Yellow Pages and the little walking hand sybmol were trademarked. I don't see any trademark symbols, so did they actually license it?

The other side of the street

[uf22]

This seems like a potentially great service, but clearly there are some issues that they need to work out.

I think that the fact that most of the store-front searches are one or two stores off will not be a huge problem. Amazon has provided the users with a way to easily specify which is the "best picture" for any given search. I think the user base will quickly refine the accuracy of the image search using this feature. Store owners themselves perhaps might take the time to make sure that their store looks correct (amazon even lets you submit your own pictures which an enterprising store owner may take the time to do).

One issue that is confusing me, and I might just be missing something here, is that I can't seem to find the other side of the street. I did a search for my local supermarket (in manhattan) and I got a great picture of the store on the other side of the street. There's no "turn around" button anywhere. Did they just take photos of one side of the street??

missed Houston,third largest city

[dj_virto]

They missed Houston, which is slightly larger than Chicago. Not cool, but everyone since Jeanne Michiel Jarre seems to make the same omission.

Re:missed Houston,third largest city

[Anonymous Coward]

That's cuz you're a Texan... ;) Go figure...

That is absolutely BRILLIANT...

[Assmasher]

...they have managed to give the abstracted and impersonal internet a touch of reality.

SERIOUSLY cool idea.

*sigh* Missing my city again

[Scutter]

As usual, my home town of Detroit isn't in the list, nor is my current town, Indianapolis, in spite of both of them being fairly large population centers. /still waiting for XM traffic for Indy...

Re:*sigh* Missing my city again

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* move to a large city you dope. Detroit != NYC

this has been done in France for 6,7 years now

[xrissley]

All major cities in France have been mapped this way: with photos of all streets numbers. So if you look up an address in the white or yellow pages, you get a view of the address's building.
The company that started it (in 1996, I think, three young guys, a scooter and a digital camera at the start) is now part of France Telecom and has mapped major cities in France, now doing Spain. The stuff is really cool and very handy for prospective tenants, buyers for housing!
Examples:
http://www.pagesjaunes.fr/pj. cgi?lang=en
or try direct to see Paris
http://photos.pagesjaunes.fr/x/home_paris.h tm

Re:this has been done in France for 6,7 years now

[Anonymous Coward]

The proper use of 'all of this is pure lies' would be 'all of these are pure lies' or 'all of this is a pure lie'. You're mixing singular/plural. Maybe 'the entirety of this post is a lie.'

Not so new idea, but promising implementation

[hangel]

Since more than three years, Pages Jaunes (Yellow Pages) from France Telecom has a included in his search service a link to pictures of the address front. You can even virtually walk in the streets of Paris, using their interface to photos.

Make a search there ( using for example:

nom: Follies Bergere
localite: Paris

In the answer you can click in the Photo link and voila (May be you can see the dancers getting into the theater ;))

Amazon implementation is interesting. They have done great in terms of integration.

Also YP companies from Latin America have explored this technology before.

City picks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see they skipped Phoenix, the sixth largest city in the U.S. http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US2/REF/50-top.html and one of the fastest growing.

404 Not Found

[OhHellWithIt]

I punched in "restaurants" and "adams morgan" (an area of Washington, DC, with many excellent restaurants), and the first link I followed led to a 404 error. I think I'll stick to the Washington Post's restaurant guide or the time-honored technique of wandering around until my stomach tells me I've found the place it wants dinner from.

Getting rid of geomatch preset?

[dtietze]

Has anyone figured out how to CLEAR the "Near" entry box, that automatically fills itself from whois info or something like that? The bloody thing thinks I'm in "Darmstadt, IN", when I'm actually in "Darmstadt, Germany" and just want to give it a try without having to enter "Beergut, UT" or "Upchuck, IL". Dan.

Why do this in the summer?

[Mumpsman]

Call me crazy, but I would have waited until the fall/winter to take these pictures. The leaves on the sidewalk trees obscure most of the single story storefronts so badly I can't tell what I'm looking at.

Current and ACCURATE?

[sterno]

So I decided to play with it for a moment and see how cool it was. I did a search for a couple restaurants and shops nearby. It didn't have a listing for any of them, with or without photo. So I decided to search for something obvious: Dave and Busters.

The entry came up with a photo and everything, but the photo was wrong. They had the right block but they were off by about half a block. Impressive technological feat to be within half a block, but it makes the technology totally useless.

In the case of D&B, if you scan up the street you can see the big orange and blue awning and find it. But then I knew the street and so knew which direction to scroll when I saw that they were off. So now they combine the sometimes humorous inaccuracy of on-line maps with a new level of inaccuracy using street level photos.

You may be better off asking for directions from a real person :)

Re:Current and ACCURATE?

[Saige]

And if you look at the pictures of the street, when you scan over them, there's an option to select one of them as the 'best photo'. I presume that would alter which is shown to people.

Even if you don't know the business, that scanning over the street is sure to help you find the location, since now you can see what's around. And even if you've never been there, if the actual business is in a different photo than the original shown, you likely can help select the proper one for it.

They were able to get things close when using the GPS and such. They're relying on people using it to get things more exact - which is fair, since they're not going to be able to get everything correct automatically.

this is truly a BETA

[baratunde]

i think the IDEA of this is good, but testing it out just now sucked 1. it auto-fills the location with some random spot 2. ...continuation. the search entry is not intuitive. I did a search for "India Palace, Somerville, MA 02143" and it still decided to look for India Palace in my last search city 2. It didn't really find places that are major in the Boston area. Only when I defined the search just so would it give me what I knew to be there 3. Clicking on the thumbnail storefront image, I thought, would take me to a larger photo. Instead it takes me to Amazon.com's front page. I like when Google released a beta product because it's actually usable. Amazon should have kept this under wraps a bit longer.

Re:this is truly a BETA

[ergowa]

Very much a Beta. This product needed a great deal more testing and feedback before being released. By adding all the "intelligence" or smart-searching features, the results become non-obvious. How it came up with "Optical" and returned opticians when I was looking for "Bookstores" is completely beyond me. Some kind of session issue, I would think.

Add to that the fact that even their canned photostrips for my neighborhood (Ballard in Seattle, WA, 98107) completely miss the actual businesses and show further down a very busy main street and that the few businesses that are shown are sliced in half so there is no "best" photo and they utility is really questionable.

I'd much prefer to see something where I can actually navigate around the neighborhood instead of guessing how to get to a street. Searching may work for books (though it's a poor substitute for browsing in a brick-and-mortar store sometimes), it definitely doesn't work here. I'll take a pass on this technological "advance."

I found my apartment

[elhoratioco]

Yes, it is freaky!

Once you locate a business you can scroll side to side, so I found a pic of my apartment.

Now it would have been really freaky if i was standing out front of my apartment staring blankly into the camera.

Please...

[Anonymous Coward]

...somebody write another post about how this has already been done in France!

Stanford CityBlock Project

[Anonymous Coward]

This is being done elsewhere too. I don't know who was first, or what the differences are, but check out The Stanford CityBlock Project.

Why an SUV

[cwgmpls]

If they had to drive tens of thousands of miles to get these pictures, why use a 14-MPG SUV? They could get the same results and cause much less polution in a smaller car -- not to mention save thousands of dollars in fuel costs.

It doesn't really work

[Anonymous Coward]

nearly as well as local.google still.

Contest is on

[Hiroto. S]

for somebody to come up with a link to a picture on A9 capturing an embarrasing moment (i.e. somebody taking a leak behind a bush).

Extra point if you can identify who it is.

Trucks Eye-Witness

[humbleice]

I spotted one of these trucks in Washington and thought wtf! Looked like a sting operation.

Some Editing Needed

[rueger]

Ahem. Methinks that the San Francisco crew could have been a bit more careful in which photos they use.

Look here

Problem might be with their geocoder, not GPS

[cdunworth]

Also experienced the innacuracy issue (the YP record was for a store at street number 940, the images were all of a building with a prominent '800' on their awning).

I suspect the problem could be that the geocoding database which they use to translate a street address into a latitude & longitude is inaccurate (a common problem). Even if the photos they took are perfectly coordinated with the street map vectors, the lat/long that the geocoder produced could be off by as much as a block or two.

---

http://www.earthcomber.com/
Earthcomber: The world according to you!

Much better (but one city only) version

[billybob]

There's this site called NowTowns that's based in Corvallis, Oregon, which is where I live. It's pretty cool, they have photos of almost every business that's on their site (inside and out), full restaurant menus with photos of the items and prices and thigns like that. I dont know if they're planning on expanding or not but I imagine they'd at least want to go to Portland eventually.

Local sites just can't be that cool, unless they're ACTUALLY local, which is why I think NowTowns is kinda neat. It only caters to one city currently (as far as I know anywys), so they have content that no other "local" site could dream of matching (google, yahoo, a9, etc).

Shock! YP lists business addresses

[starling]

Well what did you expect? You do realise that a Yellow Pages is a directory of businesses, right?

Adult Video Stores

[buddhaseviltwin]

I've been "walking" up 8th avenue looking for the poor SOBs who were caught standing in front of the adult video parlour.

http://images-yp.amazon.com/ImageServer/view/j_d X- YUVOIXKttPw9Y96BAJzPhr1RHzJb-u_bHE-XFRRQlA98OZzXsk z8LEyLdP2iCKfs2EsEdklkf7jK0e10SEFnC7LMY6aE9BiYHzsG u0=

Anybody know where the street walkers hang out in the city (NYC) these days?

Re:Adult Video Stores

[cerberusss]

...caught standing in front of the adult video parlour

That's a funny pic you found there. On the left, a guy is walking with his two little sons! Wait until the wife finds out how he educates sex... :D

Link

[buddhaseviltwin]

Sorry: Here's a better link.

Link

loose acceptance, strict issuance

[Doc Ruby]

They seem to have the same problem with address formats as all the other map sites. NYC has very regular geography, especially in Manhattan. But A9 doesn't recognize "101 W71St", which most New Yorkers would recognize, and enter. There are many variations, like "101 West 71St", "101 W71 Street", "101 West 71St Street", "101 West 71st St"; how about "340 Columbus", "340 Columbus Ave", "340 Columbus Avenue"? These variations are at least geographically unique, so the parsing engine should map them all to the same GPS coordinates. There's also confusion about the "town": people live in Astoria, Queens, New York City, NY. Do I search for my address in "Astoria, NY", "Queens, NY", "NY, NY", or "NYC, NY"? I should be able to search for any of those, and have them mapped to the same place, as long as they're valid. But those variations confuse A9 as much as any other mapping engine. We won't get people to all use the same "data format" when specifying addresses. So we need to add intelligence to the mapping software that must interpret us.

I should have said abusive ads.

[Futurepower(R)]

Okay, I should have said "abusive ads presented in an abusive way", such as trying to get you to look at things that have nothing to do with what you are searching for.

Re:I should have said abusive ads.

[starling]

Fair enough. I guessed as much but taking the cheap shot is what slashdot's all about :p

I knew if I looked long enough......

[jerzee_devil]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/yp/B000341YA8/104-2578164 -3979958?_encoding=UTF8&n=10284321&ref=sr_35_2&qid =1106853332&sr=35-2 Link to Times Square

Click the right arrow on top of the picture 7 times. Priceless!

Re:I knew if I looked long enough......

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect you mean left arrow 12 times

Re:I knew if I looked long enough......

[jerzee_devil]

Actually no. I did mean right arrow 7 times. This morning the main link did not show the Virgin Mega Store and 7 clicks to the right was a perfectly centered shot of the famous Naked Cowboy. It seems that in the mean time someone has fixed it so that now the link does in fact show the store and as you stated he is now 12 clicks to the left. What is strange is that he no longer is centered in the picture. I wonder why that is. It seems like its a whole new series of photos.

Evidence

[pen]

One of the pictures shows them driving across an intersection with the traffic light for the perpendicular street changing from red to green. Amazon ran a red light!

Big Macs and Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Macs and Porn, courtesy of A9

http://www.amazon.com/gp/yp/B00035K886/104-6605814 -0926357?

massaging the data

[trb]

They provide a "best image?" tool for calibrating the location of the photo, and other ways for users to customize/modify the returned data. Some folks have noted that this may invite abuse from users.

Remembering that this is Amazon, they can limit updates to logged in users, even to users who have made clean credit card transactions. This would help eliminate most abuse.

Some have noted that the locations are sometimes off by a block or something. I noted above that you can correct data for a location with their "best image?" tool. If they are clever, they can use this data to calibrate neigboring sites as well.

Ridiculous!

[World_Leader]

I am right now in Brookline, MA, essentially right in the center of Boston.

I gave it my zip and asked for restaurants.

It listed the closest Starbucks as being 1.8mi away tho I can see one right out my office window, directly across the street.

But I don't care about that.

I am just suggesting that there should be a check in any such software that if it's about to report that the closest starbucks is more than a mile away db admin alarms and sirens should go off, people should be shook out of bed, and a large apology stating that there has been a database error should be displayed.

We do same, but on foot...

[Wonderkid]

In trial mode in London currently, GoNumber.com has featured photos for a while, but we carefully position ourselves to get the best picture - even taking night time shots of restaurants to make them look more inviting - the yellow glow thing. A new version of GoNumber.com is in the works, based on open source of course and featuring a slew of innovations. That said, we're a bit smaller than A9 and their owners, so we may need to talk to them.

another San Francisco Virtual Tour. Navigatable!

[Anonymous Coward]

A9, A9, yes, cool,
But, please look at another San Francisco (and Alcatraz) virtual tour. You can navigate there and picture quality is much better.
Igor Polk,
San Francisco Click,
Photo Virtual Tour Magazine: http://www.virtuar.com/click.htm
Yes San Francisco, LLC