brian's blog

Amazon's today launched a pretty slick addition to location-based searches within their A9 search engine. They've driven cars around 10 U.S. cities snapping up over 20 million digital photos so that when you search for, say, a local restaurant, you can not only view its storefront, but also virtually "walk" up and down the street.

Here's a page introducing the technology, and a search I performed myself for Wild Ginger in Seattle.

As cool as this is, a few big gripes:

• It's difficult to be sure what direction the camera is facing; there should be an indicator on the MapQuest map. I think this is the sort of make-or-break feature that will severely limit the engine's usefulness if it's not there.
• Similarly, when you "walk right" and "walk left" on the street, an indicator on the MapQuest map should show you in which direction you're moving
• A9's interface is powerful, but terrible. It takes too long to learn.