A snapshot of the virtual car
An interactive website http://www.driveme.in has been launched, providing a virtual experience of driving through city streets. driveme.in is a local search service designed to help people find, explore, enjoy and share their favorite places online. A unique combination of entertainment and utility, driveme.in brings a virtual “drive-through-
driveme.in covers street imagery of over 600 Kms of Pune city in India. It provides useful facilities to registered members, such as posting flags, whereby people can mark places and help others know the place even better; people can record and share paths with others that can be played back. So you need not explain how to reach your home from your friend’s home, just drive virtually and share! You can even take a snap and upload it, so you can now show your friends how your home, or office looks like. And the best part is all this is absolutely free!
Registered members can buy for themselves such e-addresses, using which they can mark places on the streets and distribute so that others know how to reach the address through automated landmark based driving directions. The unique feature of such e-addresses is that the same address can be mapped to several places. For instance, a bank can have an address called ATM, which could be mapped to several of their ATMs at various places. Subsequently if a user looks up for the driving directions to this address, the driving directions to the nearest ATM from the present virtual location would be generated.
driveme.in operates on a unique advertising model where advertisers can place balloon based text messages over the street imagery at designated locations, and build their own campaigns. These advertisements are not automatically context sensitive; this presents an opportunity to the advertisers to identify the context from the imagery, for example, traffic, and place their advertisement suitable for that context.
driveme.in can be a useful tool for visitors to get accustomed to the area they wish to visit as well as to local residents in finding out what they are looking for. The associate model presents an opportunity for individuals to generate self-employment through its advertisement program.
