Story from Mercury News
Mountain View Internet juggernaut Google is using a camera-equipped tricycle to photograph off-road locations for its Street View service, and it's asking for nominations of places the Street View trike should visit.
"Some of the country's most interesting and fun places aren't accessible with our Street View car," Google senior mechanical engineer Dan Ratner explained today on the company's official blog.
Google engineer Dan Ratner rides on the Street View
trike at Shoreline Park in Mountain View.
"My day job is working as a mechanical engineer on the Street View team, but I do a lot of mountain biking in my spare time," Ratner continued. "One day, while exploring some roads less traveled, I realized that I could combine these two pursuits and build a bicycle-based camera system for Street View."
Google already has photographed California sites including the Monterey Bay Bike Trail, the Santa Monica Pier and the San Diego State University campus to improve Google SEO for maps.
The company is accepting suggestions until Oct. 28 at www.google.com/trike for other U.S. locations to photograph — including parks and trails, university campuses, pedestrian malls, theme parks and zoos, landmarks and sports venues.
Google said it will need to work with property owners to use the Street View trike to photograph privately owned or operated locations.
