Google has an update for its very own mapping service, Street View. The much requested time stamp feature has been added to images found on Street View mapping service, which will help users to see how recent the images of that area are. A Street View user can now see the month and the year shown at the bottom left hand corner of each image on the site, which represents when the photo was taken.
Google Street View Senior Product Manager Kei Kawai said, “Professionals such as historians, architects, city planners and tourism boards—as well as regular users including travelers and home-buyers—can now get a sense of how fresh the online photos are for a location that interests them.”
This might not help everyone around the globe, as things usually do not change year after year. But in case of an uncertain event, which can change the scenario, like in case of a life-changing natural disaster such as the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, local communities can be transformed into rubble in the blink of an eye.
Importantly, the before and after images would help researchers and scientists extremely in studying the effects of natural disaster. For those who are interested in it, can look forward to a dedicated site, which has been created by Google, for people who are interested in seeing how life-changing the tragic events were for people living in the affected areas.
Kei Kawai had a detailed explanation in a company blog, which read, “after driving more than 44,000 kilometers through the affected regions, 360-degree panoramic imagery of those areas is now available through the Street View feature in Google Maps. The images can also be viewed via a special website called “Build the Memory,” where you can easily compare before and after shots of the towns changed by these events.”
This was noted as many people have cried over their memories every year, as a natural calamity strikes Japan, every now and then. The cataclysmic damage caused by the 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan in March has been powerfully captured through 360-degree panoramic photography at Google Street View.
Another company blog was noted by Ken Tokusei, specifying that Google began the project in July. “Many photographers felt the disaster couldn’t be captured in just one photo or with a single camera, but immersive, 360-degree panoramic images can help people—especially those abroad—better understand the scope of the destruction,” he noted.
One example of the amazing view can be seen as below:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&vpsrc=0&layer=c&cbll=38.442917,141.446121&panoid=iWXV0ROJHBfLkiQ7y5qbyg&cbp=13,131.82,,0,-0.76&source=embed&ll=38.442917,141.446121&spn=0.006966,0.009645&z=17
Noting the effort behind the working, it was noted that to create its shocking panorama, Street View’s camera-equipped cars traveled more than 27,340 miles through the streets of ravaged cities like Sendai and Kesennuma, as well as the roadways of coastal communities in the Tohoku region of the country.