Google Streetview Postcode Thumbnails
Following my explorations of Google’s undisclosed Street View Images API, I’ve put together a handy little webservice that mashes up postcode geodata with the Streetview Images API.
It’s handy in that it let’s you directly request a streetview thumbnail with nothing more than a postcode. The format of the request looks like this:
http://geo.jamiethompson.co.uk/streetview/[POSTCODE]_[WIDTH]x[HEIGHT].jpg
As far as the postcode goes either strip out the space or escape it. The maximum dimensions are 416 x 208 pixels.
Example:
http://geo.jamiethompson.co.uk/streetview/SW1W9TQ_416×208.jpg
As you reduce the thumbnail dimensions the image gets centre cropped accordingy. For the least distortion it’s best to use a very small portion cropped out of the center as Google do with the streetview thumbnails on Google Maps.
I’m interested in possibly taking this further with canvas and JavaScript. I’m fairly sure that if the maths behind it were figured out you could, via cylindrical projection, un-distort the panorama to provide a natural 360 degree panorama.
That’s one for the todo list though.
Posted in Web | Tagged with: api, geocoding, Google, postcode, Streetview
October 1st, 2010 at 10:21 am
Nice work, just the thing I’ve been looking for…
stumbled!
October 19th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Looks interesting. I may be able to use this on a property website I’m working on. Does anyone know how to plot on street view using just the postcode?