As I have been playing around with Virtual Earth / Live Local and its APIs recently, I came across this interesting technology preview: http://preview.local.live.com/ - what this site presents is street-level photos corresponding with a given location in Live Local, taken from a roving camera van outfitted with an array of cameras and GPS.
The idea isn't entirely new- here in Pennsylvania our DOT has an online VideoLog that is linked to a web-based GIS application: http://www.dot7.state.pa.us/ividlog/video_locate.asp - it provides front, rightward and leftward photos. What amazes me with the Live Local implementation is that they have significantly more density with respect to the distance interval between photos.
Personally, I could do without the cutesey race car cockpit thing the Live Local team has going on... but the navigation and ability to turn and look to the side is interesting.
On another note, Rick Hallihan reveals a peek, caught in a picture window, of the roving van hard at work for Microsoft on his blog:
If you see an odd-looking van running around in your neighborhood, say CHEESE... You definitely won't miss PennDOT's van:
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applications, blogger, design, developer, earth observation, geo, Geospatial, gis, gps, imagery, Live Local, livelocal, mapping, microsoft, msdn, spatial, virtualearth
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The new live local vehicle is a little less covert. You can see pictures here: http://onemanshouting.com/tech/IfYouSeeThisTruckSayCheese.aspx