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Google Enhances Street View With User Photos

Posted by kdawson on from the pick-your-point-of-view dept.

Google has launched a competitor or counterpart to Microsoft's Photosynth, which employs user-contributed photos of much-photographed sites to supplement the street-level view in an immersive way. Google's offering is called simply Navigate through User Photos, and unlike Photosynth — which requires Sliverlight and therefore is not available on Linux — is implemented in Flash. This YouTube video (also embedded at the link above) offers a quick tour of the new feature, which can use photos uploaded to Panoramico, Flickr, and Picasa.

5 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Re:uh silverlight works in linux by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Moonlight has two drawbacks:
    • Moonlight is perpetually a version behind Microsoft Silverlight, resulting in Silverlight apps displaying only "your Silverlight plug-in is outdated".
    • Outside Microsoft, a major use for Silverlight is to stream video with digital restrictions management to make it significantly harder to save to the viewer's PC. Free software is fundamentally incompatible with this DRM.
  2. Brownies by l00sr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...unlike Photosynth — which requires Sliverlight and therefore is not available on Linux — is implemented in Flash

    I'm thinking of making some crack brownies that are delicious and unlike pot brownies--which have pot in them and are therefore dangerous--have crack in them.

  3. photos by owlnation · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hope there's someone vetting the pics. One of the most annoying aspects of Panoramico, is that there's more than a few narcissists who post pics of things like "our dog Benji at the beach," rather than an informative pic that will enhance the Google Earth user-experience.

    Still... if no-one is vetting the pics, there is a LOT of fun to be had with this.

  4. Re:uh silverlight works in linux by sopssa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But that's only the Linux developers fault as they're lagging behind on the specs. The specs are out there to code it, you can't really blame MS for it.

  5. Re:uh silverlight works in linux by pherthyl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sure you can. If Microsoft wants to replace Flash then they damn well should be supporting Linux. If they don't then they shouldn't be surprised that some people will avoid Silverlight. It's not the communities' job to do Microsoft's porting work for them, just like Adobe doesn't expect the community to write a Linux flash client.