Riding With the Urban Mappers

From Wired News:

“I didn’t think it could be done,” says Tim Caro-Brice, a Stanford University graduate student and pioneering member of Amazon.com’s A9.com project team. Barnaby Dorfman, A9.com’s vice president, laughs and taps the accelerator. A nondescript sport utility vehicle eases down a Palo Alto street, and the rest may be search engine history.

Dorfman and Caro-Brice are part of the small team responsible for the block-view technology A9.com launched this spring, which allows users to virtually stroll city streets to get directions and identify local businesses. The vehicle they drive is a prototype for the mini fleet currently crisscrossing the United States in a photographing spree, racing to put a visual Yellow Pages online.

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