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:

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.