Windows Live Local demos street-side views

Microsoft today posted a preview of the street-side imagery it will be using in Windows Live Local. It’s a little funky to use. I had better control using the keyboard than the mouse, an experience shared by Adena over at All Points Blog. A nice in-depth article is posted at ExtremeTech, including a fairly detailed discussion of how Facet Technology produces the imagery. The imagery displayed by Microsoft will initially cover only San Francisco and Seattle, even though Facet Technology has an extensive imagery library. Another site offering street-level imagery is A9, but they only show store fronts, and don’t offer the driving perspective. Right now, all this technology is more like crude video games and eye candy for cartography freaks. It will be interesting to see how these products are monetized and integrated into location-based services (LBS).

Related post: 3-D buildings on your GPS screen?