August 16, 2005

A9 Officially Launches Maps Service; Block View Imagery Added for More Cities

If you've come across the story today about A9 launching a map service and it sounds familiar, it just might be. About 6 weeks ago I blogged a couple of comments about the service becoming available and included a link to an overview by Greg Linden.

So, what's really new at A9 today? "Block View" imagery has been made available for a few more cities:

Salt Lake City, UT
Sacramento, CA
Long Beach, CA
Reno, NV

Btw, in April ago I posted that Block View imagery for Fargo, ND had been made available and was puzzled why, up to this point, a small town was included when A9 had been focusing on collecting and making available imagery for larger US cities and metro areas.

So, why Fargo? A couple of weeks ago A9's CEO, Udi Manber, told Danny:

"The reason we have Fargo is one of the engineers lives there. He took the equipment home and did the whole place in a day."

So, I'm thinking that if you don't have an A9 engineer living in your small town, don't expect to see Block View imagery anytime soon. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at August 16, 2005 10:25 AM