Surface = superficial. Streetside = sick!
UPDATE: Thanks to Grant for this link to a video demo of Photosynth (the concept I refer to below). It doesn’t get sicker than this…
Two emails went flying around yesterday. One about Google Streetside and a follow up about Microsoft Surface.
My reaction to Surface
Kiosks 2.0 (because kiosks 1.0 were so great)
It was pretty easy to predict video billboards the day that LCD screens became available. Being able to get movie times from a movie billboard (note: not a concept I saw in the Surface demos) is something I’ve been waiting for, for a long time. This “vision†of “surface computingâ€, to me, seems like a very limited, one-trick gimmick. I think paper thin screens will be far more useful and ubiquitous. I seriously doubt that surface computing – in the sense of a dedicated table - will ever go mainstream. Some underlying concepts are likely to persist – ie, some types of gestural interactions, device synching, but those aspects of Surface are no any way revolutionary or unique to this product.
My reaction to Streetside
It’s stunning. Incredible implementation. Absolutely gobsmacking. I was able to look in the doorway (and window) of my old apartment in San Francisco!!
I went down the street where my old office was and I didn’t recognize it since I haven’t been there in 5 years and things have changed. Very trippy.
And it just works. Click around a few times and you know how to use it in all its glory. Yet, it’s quite sophisticated. Amazon did some streetside mapping that was kind of cool, but Google’s implementation is absolutely jaw dropping. The shear scale of data, the elegant game-like interaction, the speed, the depth, the dynamic contextual layers.
I worship Google.
The only thing I wonder about is the usefulness – whether it’s really worth the effort. It’s an extremely cool experience, I can see a few practical uses, lots of impractical uses, but compared to Gmail or even just street maps, I’m not sure there’s such a big pay off beyond bragging rights and cool factor.
However, combine it with a mobile phone and GPS – then I could see it being extremely powerful. Combine Streetside with Microsoft’s dynamic 3D stitching – then I could take a picture with my camera phone and in realtime it gets posted to Google and it’s a form of personal memory mapping and user generated real time mapping. Google could pinpoint where I was, when I was there, and even show me the photo. If, years later, I meet somebody who was at the same place at the same time then we could see how our paths literally crossed. Of course, there’s all the geo-tagging opportunities (this restaurant was rated by your friend Joe last week, there were 3 late night muggings in this alley in the past week).
Posting your comment
Wayne | June 5, 2007 @ 4:49 am
I was chatting with somebody from Goog about google earth, about how it seemed that it was more of a wow-cool improve the cred and brand, rather than useful and profitable thing. The point you make above. He said that they make a nice chunk of change from TV stations using it to illustrate news stories (when they zoom in to a location). Not anything like Adsense chunk of change, but a decent business. I guess when you are sitting on that much capital, you can try all these crazy big ideas and there’s a chance they will stick in some niche market.