Blue Dasher, the next Immersive Media?

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Monday, March 31. 2008

Blue Dasher, the next Immersive Media?

Joe Francica noted Blue Dasher the other day when we chatted. The company has come out of the shadows in conjunction with CTIA and is the heart of an article in the Miami Herald. Welcome to another player in the "photograph my street and put it on a website/mobile/nav device arena! Already in: Immersive Media, Everyscape and others. Blue Dasher will offer up in photo ads for businesses, but outside that, I'm not sure of it competitive differentiator.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Remote Sensing at 07:39 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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A few observations on what's different here from IM, Everyscape/Mok3, etc:
- first to be tightly integrated with Virtual Earth
- first street address labels on buildings (said to be there, but not clearly shown in demos)
- strong routing tools (some demos in new Google StreetView API)
- first to use a car icon at the observer's location (with the exception of Microsoft's Tech Preview http://preview.local.live.com). Kinda makes sense since the observations were made from a car.

Your question is valid though, what differentiators will turn into a measurable competitive edge in this emerging mass market space?

#1 Tim Case on 2008-04-01 07:58 (Reply)

After visiting their web site, here you have what I noticed:
1) shorter distance between photos (10 feet average vs 40 IM and Google) - enables video like experience. User don't have to click in order to move down the street
2) exact address/photo, as already described.
3) Route with photo - user can see the intersections and turning points and get familiar
4) Inclination correction - offers a closer experience to reality
5) Smoother transition between photos than IM and Google. I think it is because they have their own viewer while Google and IM both use Macromedia's
6) pretty powerful platform for contextual adds (floating or fixed billboards can display any kind of media in creative forms/formats.
7) offers APIs to use the photos in any device. Can you imagine a cell phone with a GPS application that shows you photos? and a search engine that also displays photos? It is going to be easier to check points of interest without spending gas and time while on the road

for all the above and because they promise to cover all streets in a given metropolitan area, not just hot spots or main avenues,I'd say they are a new value proposition in the marketplace.

It would be great to see a table comparing existing offerings of street level imaging with deeper details, including business models.

#2 Jorge on 2008-04-02 08:23 (Reply)

Immersive Media appear to have been the first to market but they've been left in the dust by everyone else entering this space who provide better image quality and far better APIs and features for best user experience.

Issues about equipment stability and cost of collection and storage also permeate this industry. Google remain far ahead of the pack with their Point Grey LADYBUG cameras and user interface.

We'll all be buying spherical cameras from Wal-Mart within a year or two and this won't seem so special at all.

#3 Ralph T. on 2008-05-11 13:12 (Reply)

The new companies such as Blue Dasher who are now coming to market appear much more product-focused than the first gee-whiz-look-at-me technology developers who started this sector.

Ultimately everyone new or old here is only going to carve out their own little niche market (or close shop) since Google owns the Brass Ring and no one is going to take it away from them.

#4 Jorge2 on 2008-05-16 14:49 (Reply)

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