Could Bing’s “Streetside” trump Google Street View?

Regular visitors to this blog will be aware of how interested I am in the various online mapping systems that are out there.  This time last year, we took a first look at how Glasgow looked on Google Street View and hypothesised about where Google would go next.

Fasten your seatbelts folks…Bing have launched a demo version of their new Bing Streetside mapping system and it looks awesome.  It’s probably going to be in beta for some time – at present they’ve just got Vancouver and Seattle added but the features look amazing.  Stuff like being able to look up at the sky and see star formations from any location and the use of Photosynth technology to integrate Flickr photos in Bing Maps could only just be the start…  In turn, this makes it a much richer experience than the ’vanilla’ Google Streetview.

Downside (and with Microsoft, I guess there always has to be one) is that the current demo only works if you’ve got a Windows machine….

Don’t let that deter you from checking out the clip…