Spatial Search Mapping Technology

...a restaurant's homepage (which is perhaps the online equivalent of a sign) anymore. It's considering the whole thought process a normal human being goes through in real life.

On the Bing Search Blog, the Bing Maps team explained, "First, you Explore: you orient yourself. You get a feel for what's around and figure out your environment. Next, you Discover. Using your senses and visual cues you try and make sense of your surroundings. You look at storefront signage, street signs, and other clues to let you know where you might want to go to get your task done. Finally, you Decide: you take in and process all of the input around you to try and make the best decision . . ."

To help with these steps, Bing will introduce an application known as Streetside Photos. The tech is supposed to match geo-tagged Flickr photos to normal Streetside imagery, allowing users to view places at many different times of day and under a number of different conditions. Early examples look quite impressive.

Then here's another interesting step forward: the Bing Maps team promised, "From our Local Lens to Twitter, we're bringing data back to where it can help you discover what's in a physical area."

Finally - and this has the potential to be the most jaw-dropping update of the bunch if it's implemented on a large enough scale - the Bing Maps team stated, "At TED we also demonstrated live Webcam feeds perfectly which enables real-time video to be overlaid seamlessly on street-level imagery, adding another dimension to the mapping experience."

So spatial search is shaping up to be a rather fascinating field. It's possible that Bing has a lead on Google and Yahoo in it, too.

Tag: Bing, Spatial Search

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