Resource Techniques launch Google Street View

As part of our continued commitment to new and existing customers, Resource Techniques release new enhancements to our web products for Real Estate Agent clients. Existing clients will automatically benefit from the new technical enhancements and will be in place from the 3rd April. These enhancements are part of our ongoing development strategy.

On Friday 3rd April 2009 our web site technology will be upgraded to our latest version that will include the following features:

1. Google Street View

Google Street View stitches together photographic images of public roads and major landmarks in British cities to create a three-dimensional map that web users can click on to explore.

The 3D images have been captured over the last year by special patrol cars with roof-mounted 360-degree cameras, which take pictures of every street and road in the city. The faces of people captured in photographs are automatically blurred so that they cannot be identified, while car number plates are also rendered illegible.

So far 25 British cities, including Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Oxford, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Southampton, Swansea, York have been recorded by the camera cars. Google said it would roll out the technology to other UK cities in the coming months and so it is not currently available across the whole of Britain.

The British weather had thwarted some attempts to map cities. The camera cars need dry, sunny days in order to capture footage, and relatively clear roads in order to take photos at the appropriate intervals. As such, there are some gaps in the maps. Notably, Buckingham Palace, is not yet available in Street View.

When you are on a property on your website, if it has an icon 'Street View' next to the Google Map icon, to the right of the images, that will tell you if Google Street view has covered that postal area. As and when Google Street View cover and release more areas, they will automatically become available on your site or that property . Whilst Resource Techniques have worked quickly to get this latest tool on your site, it is new to Google and so we cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of Google Street view.

2. My Saved Property' user area

This allows users to save properties they are interested in to their own log in area for quick access at any time.

It is accessed by a managed area that allows the user to log in, manage(add, edit and delete) their email alerts and save any properties they are particularly interested in.