Good Idea, Poorly Executed

Last week I came across Amazon's A9's Yellow Pages. They recently launched a new feature: when you search the yellow pages for a business, you get the address and phone number, as well as a picture of the store front. The idea is very cool: if I'm going to a business I've never been to, a photograph of the front of the store would be very useful. You can even pan the pictures to "walk" up and down the block.

Which got me thinking, Mapquest should do the same thing with turn-by-turn directions: photographs of landmarks and turns would be incredibly helpful.

And, in some cases, it works quite well. Check out the Deluxe Bar and Grille, near where I used to live in Seattle...

Apparently, A9 did this by driving around major cities with a GPS system and video camera. Then, in automated fashion, they pulled stills out of the video based on GPS location, which they matched to addresses. They're really quite proud--they have even posted a page "explaining" how they did it (it's light on details and heavy on marketing).

The implementation is pretty poor, though. I had to search long and hard before I found the good example I cited above. Here are what I tried first:

• Dick's Drive-In, on Broadway in Seattle. Seattle landmark burger joint.
• Palm Restaurant in Boston
• Capital Grille in Chestnut Hill, MA that looks a lot like Borders
• La Rosita Restaurant in Manhattan (this one is my favorite)

In general, I found this to miss much more often than it hit (though they do get credit for nailing Taqueria Cancun in the Mission). I wonder if they tested this feature before releasing it. If they did, I wonder what their acceptable quality bar was.

Granted, it's a hard problem. What happens when Deluxe moves out and Joel's Bar and Grille moves in? I'm guessing that the address is the primary key for the picture (as opposed to the name of the business), so when you look up Joel's Bar and Grille, you'll see a picture of the Deluxe. Unless they plan on updating the entire set of pictures every few months, which is probably too expensive...

Technology is difficult to get right and I certainly forgive companies for giving it their "best shot" in the first version (after all, I worked at Microsoft). Until it catches up, just take my word for it that there's a great Cuban restaurant behind that truck in Manhattan.

joel