A9 Launches A9.com Yellow Pages

New "Block View" lets users virtually walk streets and see businesses

[christopher w]

A9 jumps into the e-yellow page business with some pretty cool new technology (in the cities where it is available...

A9.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN), today launched "A9.com Yellow Pages," a new service that helps users find and discover local businesses in a completely new way. The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is "Block View(TM)," which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings.

Full press release here [home.businesswire.com]

Good example here [amazon.com]

[moltar]

This is insane. How did they do it?

[walkman]

brilliantly done IMO.

[moltar]

They actually have an explanation [a9.com] on their site.

[christopher w]

Yeah - it is really amazing. Plus it looks like they were able to automate a lot of it and do it in a short time frame. They are going to be fun to watch in the coming months if they have other surprises like this up their sleeves.

[moltar]

So far they cover only a small portion of US, not big of a market, but of course, this is only a start!

[Holmes]

Check out MetroBot, a much nicer implementation if you can do without the pictures.

Note that because of imprecise GPS a lot of the pictures don't line up with the businesses anyway.