I recently discovered the high-quality street view experience of Mapjack.com, and learned that their virtual experience extended beyond the roads, and onto narrow alleys as well as even indoors.
That beats Google Street View which has so far been limited to vehicle-mounted panorama cameras as seen here.
Having heard that Mapjack’s street-view rig was wearable, I was determined to find pictures of their setup. After a bit of flickr diving, I hit the jackpot…
On the left is a photograph of whom I believe to be the “mapjacker” (hat tip warzauwynn). You see him complete with his wearable computer setup, overhead panoramic camera, video monocle, and a Playstation controller at his waist. Recently the military mentioned that game controllers make for ergonomic input devices. Here’s a closer image of the “mapjacker” captured by davidyuweb.
The capture even shows the junction he was at, so I went on Mapjack to find the actual panorama captured by him. Aside from a time difference between both images, I believe what you see on the right is exactly what was being captured by him that day.
As expected, Mapjack experienced the same ethical and privacy issues as Google. Just check out the images they had to remove from their trip in sin city Pattaya, Thailand.
If they ever need more cyborgs to capture the lay of the land, I’d gladly help! Definitely wish I could build one.
