MapJack, surpasses Google Street View

MapJack is an application similar to Street View, though it exceeds by a good amount of functionality. Of course, as it is not from Google, nor manage this amount of millions, there is no guarantee it will survive to an acquisition or to the economic crisis.

It is a development worked on the Google API and is based on the nice idea of a character named Jack, so that “see what Jack would see”, a little better than Google’s character that seems more like a hit man on the street; now see the advantages of these artists.

Better handling of the panoramic

The upper viewer is built on the Adobe Flash viewer, and has better resolution than Google’s views. The zoom has a good approach and can control the distortion caused by the perspective view.

Here are many features to control brightness, contrast and image quality, also the projection can be controlled. You can also hide the visual aids and the grid of images that make up the landscape.

Better tools

The development shows three frames (frames), but the best they have is that it can be dragged the vertical and horizontal edges, allowing dynamically updated.

At the top there is an icon that lets you view the latitude, longitude, approximate height, date of the image and when clicking toggles between the address and url.

Then the other tools of the corner let control the next viewing, return to previously viewed maps and control the image. Although the best is on the Jack’s figure that has a viewing cone, which can be manipulated with a simple drag and in a dynamical way changes the top view above.

While these tools are quite good, it has some aspects which do not make it so popular or that pose a future not very well defined:

There is no censorship

We can not call this an advantage, because although the perverted can devote to find girls on the lawn of San Francisco’s parks, the fact that it has not implemented draft to the vehicles’ plates and people faces may eventually impact on a demand which will end with the poor Jack.

Little coverage

Until now, there are only cities of the United States and Thailand; although according to the creators’ hope to reach more places soon including Europe. While Google does not have so much coverage we can say, it is lately showing its desire to enter seriously on making inroads in Europe. This is the list of places that MapJack has already implemented

 USA, Lake Tahoe  USA, Oakland  USA, Palo Alto  USA, San Francisco  USA, San Jose, USA  USA, Sausalito  USA, Yosemite National Park

 Thailand, Ayutthaya  Thailand, Chiang Mai  Thailand, Hua Hin  Thailand, Krabi  Thailand, Mae Hong Son  Thailand, Pai  Thailand, Pattaya  Thailand, Phuket

There is no clarity in business model

With the exception of the hot spots and hotels on the road, it does not have much information regarding traffic, niche market and advertising opportunities. While there is much to do about this application, the competition at web map’s level is complicated and much depends on the traffic it moves. So unless they start selling good ideas they will die because nobody lives of beautiful views. Perhaps this last disadvantage is the result of not being the golden hands of Google and ends up being acquired by a mapping giant with a couple of dollars per eye.

Anyway, it seems to be a very creative idea, we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt to see how long can survive in this way, without making money.