October 11th, 2007
Hey Google Street View, that's my driveway!! Here's what you should do next
Google Street View has just added six new cities: Chicago, Portland, Philadelphia, Tucson, Phoenix and Pittsburgh.
One of them, Portland, Oregon, is my home town.
While my hilltop condo community and my own abode (referred to by the X-chromosomal unit as “The Blogger Cave” is not specifically depicted in Google Street View, the driveway to the hillside most certainly is. Hey you are looking at it.
I realize this is a start but what if Google Street View took images like this and let site visitors search for businesses within specific distances of pinpointed locations, and then offered optional balloons pointing to the physical locations of these businesses?
I mean, within just a few hundred feet of this driveway there is an alternative pharmacy, a great breakfast place, an Italian restaurant, a place for facials, an overnight shipping service, a supermarket, and my hair salon (hey Josie, hey Melinda).
And what if balloons for these participating (read, AdSense) businesses contained phone numbers that when clicked, would generate a Google Talk box with “call this business” clickable phone numbers or email addresses that would generate Gmails?
There are also ways to tie such functionality into social networking. “Write a review of this business…”
Just a thought…
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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