Google just released a new version of Google Earth at earth.google.com. It’s slightly different from a navigation standpoint, but one of the nicest new features is the “Street View” which helps our customers to put their vehicles’ activity in context.
Here is a picture of many thousands of our vehicles which we track, most of which are red (it’s Sunday & everyone’s been parked > 1 hour). What’s new are these little camera icons in major metro areas, which appear when you turn on “Street View” under Layers on the left.
These cameras indicate that street views are available for that area.
Now when you want to know where someone is (or was) stopped you can see more than just an overhead image:
Here is one of our resellers named John and he’s parked at a large warehouse with many pools set up. I happen to know it’s Paddock Pools in Phoenix since that’s where we got our pool.
But John is there right now, & if I wanted to see this “as if you were there” you just click on that camera on the road to “zoom into” a real picture:
Clicking on “Show Full Screen” brings you into a 3-D picture where you can look around by dragging the world whichever direction you need:
If you want to go down the road a bit you can just click on a new camera icon which represents another photo.
Now you can look at the same building but from a completely different angle:
And when you click on “exit photo” you can then show where the various photos are along the road to pick the best one for your investigative needs…:
All very cool and powerful capabilities, I’m sure this will shed some light on where drivers are taking their lunches for some of our customers…
In addition, you can always turn on “Bars/Clubs” under “Places of Interests” under “Layers” for a comprehensive listing along-side the cameras (they show up as martini glasses) to get a feel for what restaurants/bars are located near driver activity:
There are almost an unlimited number of street photos, and it’s getting more comprehensive, so start making use of this information within your organization.
Rob