Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality

by Bill Kilday

Later that afternoon, John left the conference to take a work call, and I walked around, carrying my box of dwindling T-shirts and CDs, and encountered another demo with equally dubious commercial prospects. The company’s founder, a friendly Chinese national, manned a small table at the rear of the exhibition hall. Unlike most participants at the conference, he was excited to meet someone from Keyhole and to show me what he was working on. A Keyhole subscriber, he opened up EarthViewer and flew down to San Jose, California. He had a folder of KML placemarks represented as dots along a boulevard in downtown San Jose. Then he showed me that if you clicked on a placemark dot on the map, an info bubble window popped open, and inside of that window was a picture. He told me that it was a photo of that exact location on the map taken from street level. I was amazed: I had never seen such a view. Also inside the pop-up window, next to the photo, arrow icons pointed in different directions. He explained: “You can click on the arrows and it shows you a picture of the street in four different directions.” The experience allowed you to fly down to street level in Keyhole EarthViewer, click on an icon on the map, and then turn in any direction to see the view of that location. “How did you get those pictures?” I asked. “I mounted four cameras with GPS on top of my car.” He pulled up a photo on his computer of his Chevy SUV with what looked like a disassembled mutant cyborg lawn mower ...