Google has a geospatial technologist - oh yeah


Lots on mobile and travel from yesterday's EyeforTravel@WTM session - consumers not ready to book a holiday, you can't just stick up your website and hope for the best, the launch of Google Android and location-based services are working best...

It got us thinking back to a session run by Google last week on what it has been working on. Getting lost will soon be a thing of the past with our children's generation probably the last to experience. Soon we'll all be carrying a device to help us pinpoint where we are.

Teams from the search giant spent the summer driving round cities filming street level scenes.

On a PC you can now bring up a map, find a hotel, read a review, check the website, get directions to places nearby, find the nearest cash machine and see what the street where the hotel is really looks like.

Cities across Australia and North America have been covered as well as five in France and some in Italy and Spain.

Google's resident geospatial technologist Ed Parsons said the search giant is looking at having the same capability available on the desktop on phones.

A version of Google Earth has already been launched on the iPhone and once you combine that with Panoramio and Wikipedia, the traveller on the move can start to build up a good picture of their destination.

The Google Android phone already has a built in digital compass, a maps application and Wikitude - a third party application, which puts labels on pictures telling people what they're looking at.

It's all there now and after days getting lost at WTM we could do with some of this for the ExCeL exhibition centre.

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