Fresno Famous

I like the "Street View" feature on Google Maps. I use it a lot,
especially when talking to friends and other folks about downtown
revitalization. I like to SHOW them what I’m referring to, and "Street
View" is a convenient way to do that. Unfortunately, we have a big
piece of downtown that is inaccessible to cars and thus wasn't
documented by Google's camera cars: the Fulton Mall.

So I started searching around and discovered that in addition to their
fleet of camera cars, Google also has camera tricycles. The trikes are
being used to document certain university campuses and national parks
in the US. One can only hope that Fulton Mall will be photographed at
some point, but I decided not to wait.

While researching panoramic images, photo map overlays, and keyhole
markup language (the stuff that runs Google Maps)... I discovered a
web site called RealPlaces.com. This site allows you to create your
own simple “street views,” using a collection of still photos. It's
not panoramic, and it’s lacking in certain features compared to Google
Maps, but it’s very easy to use. So last Wednesday, after the
D.R.U.M. meeting, I took a walk down the mall and shot around 250
photos from various angles and created a "walking tour", ala Google
Street View.

You can see the results by clicking here:
http://www.dumbdrum.com/fulton/. It's not perfect, and I plan to
tweak it a bit more... but hopefully this can be a useful tool for
those visiting the mall or those interested in downtown
revitalization.