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Google Debuts Street View and Mapplets
Today at the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference Google unveiled two new map features. An O'Reilly blogger describes Street View, which uses 360-degree street-level video from Immersive Media to enable neighborhood walk-throughs in (for now) a few selected areas. The other new feature is Mapplets, which let you embed Google Maps mashups in any Web page. Much more coverage is linked from TechMeme.
The New York MTA Subway stops are now shown on Google Maps. This works on the PC version, but doesn't seem to be active for the mobile version of Google Maps yet. I hope they update this soon.
Dekker Dreyer
TFA's 'Check it out' link takes you right into a streetview-enabled map area. Interesting to just walk/drive along the enabled road, following the familiar Google-ish road markings, now projected in 3D into to the view.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Thats all great and stuff, but when will they add exit numbers? It's a pretty basic thing along the lines of labeling road names as far as I'm concerned.
Morphing Software
They did it over a year ago. But it looks like the project may have been abandoned: http://preview.local.live.com/ Also, A9 (Amazon) had something similar but they got rid of it.
These street views are amazing. Some of the shots are pretty high res - people on streets, through windows - I bet if you look hard enough you could see inside of people's homes - hmm, a new crop of google treasure hunts - find the guy in his window. How many people can you find breaking traffic laws? Hmm, how many people will go look up their cities and find their bfriend's car in front of a stranger's place! ;) so many fun things...
Are there any potential privacy laws google could break by making these photos so readily available online?
Cool, we're almost there. While this needs dedicated hardware today, and thus dedicated surveillance of areas to be displayed, as digital cameras get integrated GPS and people post those pictures on the web, Google can index the EXIF tags, and do some image processing (based on embedded lens and exposure data) to get us this kind of experience anywhere somebody has taken a/enough picture(s).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Here's a video grab showing Street View in action - this looks & feels amazing, albeit there's potential privacy issues due to the level of detail (you can make out individual faces, license plates and so on):
Uh Oh, people might see you in a public place.
No seriously, If you're walking along the side of a road, driving your car on a road, what expectation of privacy do you have here. Are taking pictures of people and vehicles illegal now, do I need to go back and blur out all faces and license plates?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Its not exactly the same thing, but MS's map thing (whatever they call all their MSN/"Live" stuff these days), does have what they call "birds eye" view. It only works in IE, and its not ground level, but it still works fairly well. You can easily see landmarks and stuff to help you find places. And its a lot better quality than the satellite photos (and not straight down), you can easily see people and stuff in the photos. I think they have their birds eye view thing for around six months if my memory serves me, so I would give MS a little credit. They do make some cool stuff occasionally.
Its not available everywhere, but I'm sure its available more places than Google's street view is(it looks like only Manhattan, Miami, Denver, San Francisco and Vegas have it now). Google maps has a lot of cool stuff, but it would be nice if they offered some of the cooler stuff in places other than just the five or ten biggest cities. Granted, some of it wouldn't be as helpful in smaller cities or in the suburbs, but it would still be make it more useful to a lot of the population.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
could we please have a moratorium on that word? The quicker it (and the jizzmops that use it) dies the better.
Go to the street view of Times Square and what do you see? A big billboard for Yahoo.
3 3,-122.420654&sspn=1.051842,1.867676&ie=UTF8&om=0& layer=c&cbll=40.756663,-73.986495&cbp=1,156.292682 926829,0.5,0&ll=40.763544,-73.987255&spn=0.013392, 0.031028&z=15
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&sll=37.8488
I know Google themselves didn't collect the data, but it's still kind of amusing.
Much like Windows Media Player, the Microsoft site was poorly designed, clunky, wasted precious screen real estate, and doesnt work around the typical user queries. Google's version almost predicts the features I want and works accordingly. I'm not purposely MSFT-bashing, its just that the difference is vast.
This stuff makes scoping out someone's house soooo much easier.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
So how long now 'til we can play Grand Theft Auto:Earth?
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
I REALLY FUCKING HATE THE WORD "MASHUPS" !!!!!!!! Apparently there were too many caps in my post, so I typed this to change the cap/lc ratio. Bite that you yelling detectors!
ts not exactly the same thing, but MS's map thing (whatever they call all their MSN/"Live" stuff these days), does have what they call "birds eye" view. It only works in IE, and its not ground level, but it still works fairly well. You can easily see landmarks and stuff to help you find places.
You lost me at IE...
Beetle B.
I was always curious about what was happening with Microsoft's project. Last year I was at my parents' house in Philadelphia about 11 miles from the city center and in an area of no real interest and I saw a black SUV drive by with a large 4-way camera mounted on the roof and the Windows Live logo on the back. It was apparently driving up and down the streets in the neighborhood. While the site has not changed at all I would be surprised if MS abandoned this project given the resources they must have sunk into it. Maybe they're just waiting until they get a certain number of cities or decent area covered first? Who knows. Interesting concept, though.
A little more programming and this can become a second Second Life ?
Wired has some pictures of the kind of car rig that takes these street-level panoramas.
That's too bad, because the bird's eye view works just fine in Firefox (not in Opera, though, and I don't have a way to test against Safari/Konqueror at the moment). I just verified it, and you can, too. Here's Microsoft's headquarters, in bird's eye view. View the link in Firefox, and all is good.
Bird's eye view is just using different images for the tiles, and the only limitation is whether or not Microsoft (or whoever they buy their data from) has flown planes over the area to take pictures. As the grandparent said, it's not the same as being street level, but it's still quite detailed -- I can clearly see my truck parked outside of my house in bird's eye view. The same truck just looks like a white blob in aerial or hybrid view.
Damn, I thought it said Muppets.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I typed in my own address, and by zooming in all the way on the street view photo, I was able to very clearly see my dog sitting in the window, staring directly at the camera. Scary.
Interesting, it didn't work for me with Firefox 2.0. But I looked at the useragent, and apparently FF 2.0 uses a useragent like BonEcho/2.0.0.1, instead of Firefox/2.0.0.1. When I changed it to Firefox (like it was in previous releases) it worked fine. With BonEcho it just showed a small, boring looking map. Same thing with Opera. I wonder why the Mozilla folks changed the useragent in 2.0.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
search for "500 State Street Brooklyn NY" and move west along state street. The camera gets stuck in traffic and the address keeps moving along. Additionally, 500 State Street isn't what it's supposed to be http://www.mro.org/firelotus/firelotus/index.shtml . It's cool and all that they did this, but I'm not impressed with it's usefulness.
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
To try it just click 3D view on a major city. It really is quite beautiful once it's done loading, but it takes a helluva long time on my system to load. I think it's the bandwidth that's the limiting factor on it, since my computer is pretty up to spec.
Sorry, I meant to say move East not West.
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
Actually, this was one of the first really interesting uses I had thought of for it. Albeit, not for stalking.
Combined with the already excellent HousingMaps (google maps + Craigslist apartment listings) hack this would be a great way to get a view of potential apartments... well, from the outside at least. If photos are available (and for a good chunk of San Francisco they thankfully are) you can even get a quick, vague overview of the neighborhood without having to go all the way out there first.
Or everyone's favorite: Google Theft Auto V
God spoke to me.
I count at least three of the "Use of Cameras Prohibited, Strictly Enforced" signs on the Triboro.
The competition between Microsoft, Yahoo and Google over all these features is wonderful, but as each new feature is announced they work only in a few major cities and in some cases there seems to be no prospects for a wider roll out. While New York and Silicon Valley may have 3D rotating virtual reality animations large parts of the coastline are still low resolution 8 year old images. This is starting to look more like a pissing contest between the big players rather than anything that will be useful in the near term for most Americans (let alone other countries).
For comparison I picked a random part of Washington DC and zoomed in using Microsoft maps to see the 3D view, which (since Google isn't there yet with this feature, would put MS in the lead as far as usability for my general area) but as I zoomed in I noticed that I was looking at a construction site and during my zoom the construction went from bare dirt to a fully developed community (ie the closer pictures were more up to date). Well, thats nice, but in general it is very distracting to see roads change and seasons come and go as you zoom in or out of an area. Google is no better with often old fuzzy-to-the-point-of-useless sections right up next to crystal clear housetop photos, with no rhyme nor reason to which sections are sharp and which are fuzzy. At least with Google the image resolution doesn't change as you zoom in or out, but I've certainly been following a road in mid density areas and found that the road would be clear enough to see vehicles on it in one section and then almost impossible to discern the road from the surrounding objects in the next.
Let's face it: ALL the imagery is a nice to have not a need to have. The cartoon maps are good enough for navigation. But if they are going to present us with imagery at all, isn't it time some of these things get out of the laboratory phase and into something more closely resembling production?
You are talking about another feature altogether. But while we're on birds eye, you are wrong. It is not IE only.
Yeah, someone else posted something about that. It works find in Firefox, except that in my copy of Firefox 2.0 (actually the repackaged version by FrontMotion, that I can deploy and manage via Group Policy), the useragent is BonEcho, as opposed to Firefox. And if its not set to Firefox, then it takes me to the "old" ugly map. I'm not sure if its just with FrontMotion that the useragent is not Firefox, or if its with all Firefox 2.0 releases. I've found references to both user-agents with BonEcho/2.0.x.x, and Firefox/2.0.x.x.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
... if it saves a few car trips around the neighbourhood to scope out places to live. :)
Now I don't have to go to SF, I'll just spend a a few hours online "walking" the place!
ISO certified == THX certified
Wow, Microsoft's street level navigator looks like the designers played too many mid-1990s racing games during the development. Streets of Sim City, anyone?
To be fair, the MS' early version is probably exclusively the product of devs, with the UI designers to come in when the technology's ready.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
All of the non-San Francisco Street View data is provided by a company called Immersive Media. They have a special omnidirectional video sensor with 11 elements that shoots 30 frames per second. The 11 cameras do a great job rejecting glare from the sun. Compare the SF footage with the Las Vegas footage and look for sun glare overriding the sensor. At street speeds, there is about 1 image every 3 to 5 inches. Street View is showing you one frame every 30 to 100 or so.
The Teleatlas camera car doesn't shoot panoramas, the cameras are too far away to avoid massive parallax errors and their cameras are pretty narrow field of view. I'm sure the collect very good POI data, though. The survey vehicles used for the Immersive Media dataset are actually Volkswagon Beetles, there is a tiny picture on the Immersive Media homepage. The camera can actually see down most of the way to the road and anything other than a Beetle has a pretty big footprint in the image. The camera system also see straight up even though the Flash viewer in Street View does not. It's actually the warping of the pixels to make the view that is the weakest link in the distribution chain.
The vehicles have the camera system and a special inertial positioning system that provides survey grade coordinates as the vehicle moves down the road even underground. That system is made by Applanix and it's the same type of system used by many of the Darpa Grand Challenge Candidates.
All this adds up to many TBs of data and although it isn't easy to stream on the web, they have figured out how to do it. If you visit the demo page you can see full motion video panoramas that you can drag and look up, down, left and right in! Requires Shockwave from Adobe. The streaming isn't as sharp as the original product but it gives you an idea of navigating an Immersive movie. Sort of like Quicktime VR but it is really a movie!
Immersive Media has collected data all over North America, you can see the complete extent of their collects and browse some clips. We also just announced a major expansion into Europe so we'll see you blokes over the pond soon!
Full Disclosure: I wire the systems on the Beetles and write post-processing software for Immersive Media. I've trained a lot of drivers in how to run inertial positioning systems and I'm really pleased that data I support is finally being seen by people! And feel free to Slashdot the demo page, the servers are waiting to show you our movies. Remember to click and drag to look around, this isn't boring old static web video where you look where we tell you too.
The blue '06 Infiniti G35 in the center of the picture, with the license plate conveniently obscured by the "City of Palo Alto Parking" sign.
Oh, and my I-key is fine.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
I don't believe you're actually using Firefox 2.0. Or rather, you're using a very old alpha release (Bon Echo was the Firefox2 codename in development). Upgrade your browser :).
That said, this seems typical for Microsoft. They "get" that they need to support Firefox and other non-IE browsers, but they do so in the crappiest of ways -- using UA string detection. UA detection is obvious and "easy". It basically creates a "fail by default" model, where if you're not doing exactly what is expected then it just refuses to work. This is easier to build and test than a proper object detection mechanism which may have strange edge cases when the objects you need are supported in a browser but don't quite act the same way. It's possible to do, but it's a lot of work to get right and I bet that the Windows Live guys decided that just getting it working was more important than getting it right. If you use your BonEcho UA on other Live properties (Spaces, live.com, Expo, QnA, etc), they'll probably fail in a similar fashion.
I've fought that fight several times myself, and each time I end up losing because doing the right thing is hard and there's just no time to do it and all of the other high-priority work items. The only way to ever win that argument is to change priorities -- if working on all possible browsers was priority #1, there'd always be time to do it right even if another feature or two had to wait for a later release. If working on IE6/7 is pri1, working on Firefox (but not other Gecko-based browsers, like Seamonkey, Galleon, or K-meleon, even though if you did the right thing they'd just work) is pri2, and working on anything else is pri3, guess what'll happen? Yep, a quick regex against the UA for "Firefox", and if you don't find it then bail out.
Although I completely agree with you on the matter of "privacy", I do believe there is a social norm which dictates that it is rude to photograph someone without their permission.
I have no inkling of any such norm. Instead I have a large number of books filled with street photography, much of which was taken very much without the subjects knowledge or permission or even awareness.
While this is not exactly in the same artistic category, I personally agree that there simply is no expecation that images cannot be recorded of you at any moment you are in public view - that to me includes standing at your window in full view of the street!
If you want true privacy and eliminate any chance of stray images capturing you, get enough land or move somewhere remote enough that you can have it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ah! That explains it - if you remember the Debian Iceweasel stink a while back, non-official releases are not allowed to be named Firefox. Hence your browser identifies itself as Bon-Echo.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi
Just a quick follow-up on my previous post regarding UAs. If you set Opera to identify as IE or Firefox via the per-site preferences (details here), it renders Live Maps almost perfectly. Compare:
- Opera 9.10 identifying as itself
- Opera 9.10 identifying as Firefox viewing the Microsoft campus in bird's eye mode (I specifically closed the scratchpad, as I was unable to remove items from it and really didn't want to post my own address on the interwebs even in picture form)
Playing around with Live Maps in Opera-as-Firefox, I noticed the following few issues:- Scroll-wheel zoom doesn't work. Scroll-wheel zoom does work in Opera on Google Maps, so this is not a problem native to Opera (such as not exposing events to hook scrolling).
- There are obvious layout problems, but only with the floating controls. IMHO, those need to be cleaned up and re-arranged anyway, so I don't mind them being in the wrong places.
- Some hover controls are missing. Hovering over an item in the scratchpad doesn't produce the popup that allows you to clear the entry, for example.
- Missing close controls on some items. Specifcally, the "Welcome" box is missing its closed "X".
Aside from the scroll-wheel zoom, all other functionality works, and actually works quite well. More importantly, if 95% of the site works in Opera, I'd be willing to bet that 95% of the site works in Konqueror/Safari or any other modern browser. What's left is a matter of a few specific fixes for minor functionality, some layout adjustments that could serve as a catalyst for a better interface, and a move away from UA reliance.Wow, I knew that people couldn't use the icon and stuff, but even the useragent? Granted, it is very easy for me to change it via FrontMotion's group policy extensions, so it is Firefox on all our computers, but I'm surprised that they would care about the useragent.
I know that FrontMotion's releases had it as Firefox at one point in time, because I had to change it in order to get to my high school's Blackboard site(hehe, one of the network people tried to block people using portable Firefox to get around their web "security" proxy server by blocking the Firefox useragent. I'm not sure if they were aware that it only takes about literally about three seconds to change that. They eventually did it the right way and got an application level firewall).
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Google maps now shows bus stops in Seattle with schedules for next bus along the line. Only thing missing now is the ferry schedule nearby...
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
Good! (waving) Goodbye!
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
You can't look up and down.
Yes, but sometimes you can't see the road!
The Farewell Tour II
Hmm... is this an homage to Tron? Where are the lightcycles?
j pg
Just move the car into the building to see the real world:
http://img170.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tronws9.
The above is rather off-topic. All the same, I severely doubt that Google's failure to come up with a 'light-hearted' memorial day design was anything planned or intentional - unlike the above poster's (obviously an owner or administrator of the extremely right-wing-delusional "little green footballs" website) very obvious intention to paint Google as something "bad". Also, the arguments presented are as ineffective as they are non sequitur - the rather 'light-hearted' poppy is not the symbol of American Memorial Day.
The above post was rather despicable even in its blatant, off-topic slanderous intention. What was its goal, exactly? Why slashdot? Keep the delusional hysteria to your own website, please.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Could this perhaps be the google maps team? :)
t heatre+Parkway&sll=37.750087,-122.467346&sspn=0.19 3009,0.317917&ie=UTF8&ll=37.426999,-122.083125&spn =0.012116,0.01987&t=h&z=16&om=0&layer=c&cbll=37.42 0894,-122.084098&cbp=2,360.672238842947,0.50249733 808249,0/
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=1600+Amphi
Why is it news that Google now has it, too? Has Google become like Microsoft--so automatically newsworthy that it is automatically news whenever Google copies its competitors?
I played with it A9's version a while, but have never been able to find any practical use for it. At one point I thought I had a use for it--trying to settle a question of how many stories tall a particular building was--but the views didn't show enough in the vertical direction.
And then another time I thought I a use for it--verifying the exact name of a building. Specifically, I was trying to find out whether the signage on the old old John Hancock building, the one on 197 Clarendon Street, actually said "Stephen L. Brown" building or not. The sign or plaque or whatever was obscured by parked trucks.
Meanwhile, it appears that Google Maps does not currently have any street level views of Boston at all.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
God, what an ugly place. Is that California? Shew, I shudder to see such awful environs. I predict "street view" will be a flop.
Plus, I've got all sorts of privacy concerns.
You are welcome on my lawn.
For some reason, the state made this program with tax money:a sp
http://www.dot7.state.pa.us/ividlog/video_locate.
it only works in IE, but the images are pretty cool.. it's very extensive too
if only google could index this information
http://toronto.virtualcity.ca/ has had street level images for Toronto for some time now, and combines it with Google Maps. Works pretty nice.
When will Google Earth have this in it?
You are simply pulling that "social norm" out of your a@@.
There is no such thing in the US neither. You simply are paranoid and over sensitive.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So what you're saying is that you've never tried to take pictures of people without their permission.
That's what I'm saying. I've been doing this for years. Sometimes if I want a closeup, like I want to get a picture of someone from a few inches - sure I'll ask. But lots of times I'll just point and click and wave and smile after (if they even see me taking a picture). And I've never had a problem with this. And that's a picture focused on a specific person or set of people.
For the stuff Google is doing, wide angle shots of an area, asking for permission is even less meaningful. How many times have you taken a picture of a large building or other area with a crowd of people? Do you ask the permission of every person on the scene? Or do you just take the picture?
It's very nice and all that you want to ask peoples permissions before you shoot them, but that's not how you get great pictures. Once people know you are taking their pictures they usually act very differently, and usually not in the way that made them interesting enough to photograph in the first place.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
MSN Live works fine in Firefox (under Windows) as well - both the "birds eye" view and the 3D feature with texturized buildings. It does require a plugin though which probably is Windows-only.
- Peter Brodersen; professional nerd
After reading the Shape of the Future speech by Charlie Stross, about how many of us in the future will carry a GPS-enabled, internet-connected video and audio recorder, I am wondering if this sort of technology will find its way into a Google Maps "street view"-like interface. It would be very interesting to be able to click on a person on the street map and see/hear what they are experiencing, if they "opt in" to the system of course. For instance, you would be able to see a riot as it occurred, or watch the ball drop in Times Square, or witness any event in real-time. Virtual vacationing would be possible just by clicking on various people, wherever you want to be, and "living" through them vicariously. Alternatively, you could click on a street address or intersection and have it cycle through the views of people in that region. That way you could tell if it was raining, congested with traffic, etc.. This would also solve the problem of the information being out of date...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Believe us, we all care very deeply.
Believe us, we all care very deeply.
What we need is parking.google.com which is a further development in maps, where google maps any and all available parking spots, lots, and garages in any given area. Often times finding your way around is not even the hard part...finding a place to put your car is.
Unfortunately, poppies aren't a recognized symbol for that in the US, so they don't have the same easy out for our memorial day as they're using for the others. While they should definitely try harder, their reason for not having done so yet is at least a little more valid than you make it sound.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Did I mention the zoom function is neat too??
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Actually, as cool as the "birds-eye view" is, Microsoft already did this exact thing (street-level view) last year... Although it looks like they haven't touched it since launch:
2 8/540724.aspx
http://preview.local.live.com/
http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2006/02/
I was physically chased down by three young men just two days ago when I was taking pictures for my work in an empty industrial area downtown. I was assaulted years ago under similar circumstances, and I expected the worst. Instead, they harrassed me for photographing a buidling they didn't want me to photograph (a soup kitchen that includes transitional housing for the poor).
They claimed to work there, and were obviously ignorant of laws regarding photography in public places. I didn't try to educate them, just kept walking, handed them my card, and was soon picked up by my driver.
Which type of behavior is more rude, problematic, and socially unacceptable? Legally operating a camera in a public place (which in my case is necessary for my work), or a group of strangers confronting you with hostility because they don't like what you're doing?
News photographers and videographers have been murdered in the line of duty (it happened twice in Somalia). The greater harm is not documenting something in public, but verbal/physical assaults on people who do.
This is a regular problem for me no matter how deferential or considerate I am. I am confronted both in the US and abroad, even by people I'm NOT photographing because they don't like what I am photographing. The idea that permission is either legally required or "socially necessary" should be dispelled.
Having said that, candid photography is better when you don't get the a subject's consent, and posed photography is better with the subject's consent, but this is more about good photography than good manners.www.cgstock.com
There is a way to get around taking people's photograph without their permission. My knowledge on photography is very little, but if they just lengthen the exposure time for the camera, only the static buildings will show up (I think). I don't know if this will work for digial cameras though. Maybe they can just photoshop everybody out or take photos at 3:00 am. Just superimpose a daytime sky on the background and play around with the brightness setting.
Demand java and flash and a quick computer - Microsoft and intel loves you!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
When will they update the satellite images? There's an awful lot of new roads popping up where I live that don't show up on the satellite images. These images are useful so I can see some landmarks to look for while driving and what the turn/lane markings are before getting there.
People chasing you and assaulting you is a pretty big indicator of a social norm. I'm not defending the action, I'm merely pointing out that the norm exists and you violate it at your own peril.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"Social norms" don't take precedence over people's human rights, though. I was assaulted earlier because I was the wrong skin color for the neighborhood I lived in at the time. I had a right to live there, regardless of any "social norm".
The first amendment right to free speech says a person can take a photo in public no matter who objects. Assaulting that person is against the law, and harrassing them shows a lack of respect for their rights.
ALL serious photographers are harassed and receive complaints for taking photos, no matter if they got permission in advance or what they are photographing. I got permission from a U.S. military information officer to photograph a relief operation, yet another officer still threatened to take away my camera because he didn't get the memo. The only way to not upset other people is to never take any photos or video and never write any articles. Short of that, someone will always be upset, which is why freedom of speech and of the press is protected.
www.cgstock.com
This seems to have been just added to normal Google maps.
Pittsburgh light rail (T, Trolley) stations now seem to have active schedules.
This link is near a station. Click on the station and it will show you when the next trains depart. Clicking on "view more upcoming departures" does not seem to give any new info.
I submitted a story about the "bird's eye view" function on maps.live.com, it's much more useful in my opinion. It seems to cover more places and you can rotate to see things from whaterver direction, N, S, E, or W. The angled view lets you see things like how the face of a building looks.
Cheap storage VM.
http://www.davidsterry.com/streetview http://www.laudontech.com/StreetView/streetview.ht ml
http://www.streetviewr.com/