Amazon Yellow Pages

(Found out about this from Willo's blog)

This is pretty cool.
Check out amazon.com's new Yellow Pages.
I typed in my zip code, and it showed me all of the restaurants and stores in my neighborhood. Not only did it have the name and information about the restaurants & businesses, but it also has photos (which is the coolest part). You can actually "walk" down an entire street that these businesses are on: you can see the businesses, houses, and even random people walking along the street. (I keep looking for any pictures with Dick or me walking around our neighborhood. You never know!)

Here's a blurb on how they did it:
The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is “Block View,” which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.

The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient. Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 20 million photographs. We are driving and at some point hope to cover the whole country.

Here's the full explanation of the process.