January 27, 2005

things that make you go whoa.

Here’s Battelle on the new yellow pages search from A9:

In short, Manber & Co. strapped GPS-enabled digital videocamera-cum-terabyte server rigs to the top of a bunch of SUVs, and drove them around the commercial districts of major U.S. metropolitan areas, recording what became composite still pictures of entire cities, one address at a time. Tens of thousands of miles later, they had more than 20 million images of over 14 million businesses in 10 cities, and they aren’t done yet.

Based on this shot of the Sony Metreon in San Francisco, the trucks were most likely roaming Baghdad by the Bay sometime in August 2004…

Update:  via Kottke, this fellow found himself in one of Amazon’s photos.  That didn’t take long…