Some Screenshots

Below are two screenshots of the EyeStride Facebook App… the first is the “Maker” which allows people to quickly and easily create GoShows the second is the “Viewer” for exploring GoShows.
Maker:

Viewer:

EyeStride is in the San Francisco Chronicle!

I was recently interviewed by Anastasia Ustinova, a San Francisco Chronicle staff reporter, for an article about the F8 conference.  The article appears in today’s SF Chronicle business section, you can also read it here.

Anastasia asked me about the upcoming launch of EyeStride’s Facebook application and particularly how we plan to compete with thousands of other applications on a platform that is rapidly evolving, possibly in ways that will hurt application developers.

As the article says… I’m very optimistic about EyeStride’s Facebook application, we have a highly engaging product that adds value to the Facebook experience by giving people a unique way to share their photos.  With EyeStride users go beyond sharing albums and into what we call “GoShows,” a combination of sideshows and maps that allows them to tell the story behind their photos, rather than just upload them.  I’ll post screenshots a bit later today to visualize things a bit.

I think the article turned out very well and its great to see EyeStride in the Chronicle!

Its Been a While

More than one year has passed since the last post on EyeStride’s blog, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been active, lets just call it going into stealth mode.  That’s all going to end very soon!

Back in July of 2007 we launched “Tour Experience Previews” to show what our vision for the EyeStride experience is.  Since that time a lot has changed and although the core EyeStride concept of user created walking tours that blend geography and photographs is still a part of our product, our approach has changed dramatically…

• The product is now entirely web based
• We’re initially launching the product as a Facebook application
• Mobile platforms will be very important for us (more on that a bit later…)

We’ve simplified the product, made it more fun, easier to use and much more social.

Tomorrow I’m going to F8 to see Mark’s keynote and meet some fellow Facebook app developers.  Before I do, I’ll post some screenshots of the EyeStride Facebook app and share some details =)

Street Level Demos Launched :)

We quietly launched demos of our street level virtual environments (tours) a few weeks ago and have been receiving some very good feedback about what we’ve created. Check out the street level tours that we’ve put online thus far, only a few samples but they give a good idea of what EyeStride is all about: http://tours.eyestride.com

We worked hard on this so its a pleasure to see that people like what we’ve made, but also great to hear some of the criticism so that we can make some small improvements prior launching the private alpha test in a month or so. We’re working hard on a new portal that will allow you to view and interact with the street level photo environments that other EyeStride users create, as soon as we have some of the pages built I’ll post screenshots online. Please send me your thoughts about the street level demos that we launched, all thoughts and ideas are greatly appreciated michael@eyestride.com

Check out a few of my favorite demos that we launched:

• Hollywood 
• Budapest 
• Golden Gate Bridge
  

Its interesting to compare this demo tour with the Google street view version of the Golden Gate bridge, really gives a sense of the difference between user generated and automated approaches to street view.

ENJOY!

A Small Preview

Hey Everyone!
Its been a while, but the EyeStride team has been working hard on launching some sample tours. At the last minute we decided to change the design for the tour viewer and had to rework some of the features to fit and add a few new ones. We also experimented with Amazon’s EC2 only to realize that the virtual servers were too slow in processing tours, so we had to rethink our hosting solution as well. Despite the delays, I anticipate that next week you’ll be able to explore some of our sample tours. We’ll start with tours of some hotspots Los Angeles and San Francisco and roll out a few others a bit later (I’ll be traveling and will be sure to make a few tours that show my journey). Here is a preview of what the tour experience is going to look like (its a design file so it has lorem ipsum text, but it should give you a good idea of what the final product will look like). Can’t wait to get everyones feedback once it launches:

Over 100 Strong

Over 100 people have signed up for the EyeStride alpha test, we’ve also received lots of email with product and marketing ideas which are very cool. EyeStride seems to have struck a cord with many who have seen it, which is very encouraging since we’ve done virtually no promotion thus far and already people are finding out and signing up.

Hope to see everyone soon for the alpha test =) Happy Holidays!

Rooftop Ads Takeoff?

In what has to be one of the “wow” advertising ideas of the past year, businesses started putting ads on their rooftops to target people exploring maps online. The concept is simple, paint your logo or any other relevant message on a large enough rooftop and eventually Google/Yahoo/Microsoft satellite images will be updated and will capture that message. It may not seem like a big deal given how big the earth is and how small even the largest rooftop is, but if you take a look at this satellite map ad for a target store in the Boston area you can see that it does a fantastic job of differentiating the store from others in the “Gateway Center”.

I think this is pretty cool approach and has potential for big retailers, stadiums or any other business with a large enough roof It also shows me that advertisers are recognizing the importance of online maps and are struggling to find ways to exploit their potential. Thats where EyeStride comes in. We’re building a way for any businesses to tie its physical presence to online maps by building virtual tours of their locations. You can think of it like zooming into a map until you’re standing inside the store and walking around, exploring the business before you actually go there. We think it has a lot of potential for any businesses that is location based, whether thats real estate, a restaurant or even that same Target store!

Here is the aforementioned Target ad and one from KFC & a frightening one from Firefox:

You can read more about the KFC ad and even see a video of its making here

The Firefox crop circle scares me a bit, at least it reveals where the alien demographic stands in the IE vs. Firefox browser war.

Google Earth Shakes up Politics in Bahrain

Yesterday I saw an awesome article in the LA Times about the effect Google Earth had on politics in Bahrain by exposing some of the opulent mansions owned by members and insiders of the ruling Khalifa family. When Google added higher resolution satellite images of Bahrain, the massive estates that were previously hidden behind walls became exposed to the masses.

With the help of one of Bahrain’s most popular bloggers Mahmood Yousif thousands of people were able to get instructions and access images allowing them to compare their meager existence to that of the ruling class. This all happened to coincide with parliamentary elections, which occurred for just the second time since limited political reform began in 2001.

Its amazing to see how quickly change can happen with the help of technology. Reading this story made me wish EyeStride was done and could be used to make a tour across Bahrain that shows some of the mansions and palaces at street level and compares them to ‘average’ houses… soon For now check out this satellite image of what seems to be a nice place in Bahrain, most likely its a resort and not a palace, but it looked good to me. If anyone spots other interesting places in Bahrain from Google Earth let me know and I’ll post them here.

EyeStride @ Silicon Valley Open Doors (SVOD)

Recently EyeStride presented its product at the annual Silicon Valley Open Doors (SVOD) conference held in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum. This isn’t exactly “fresh” news since the conference took place from the 17th-19th of November, but we couldn’t resist…

This was a significant milestone for our company since no one had ever seen the product or heard much about the business prior to our presentation at SVOD. The feedback we received was very encouraging, lots of people came up to us asking about the product and where the could download it, very cool =) We hope to launch the private alpha soon and see all those wonderful virtual tours start flowing in!

Check out this picture of me (Michael Balyasny) on stage presenting EyeStride:

By the way if you’re interested in the IT business environment of the former USSR (Russia, Ukraine etc.) you should come to next year’s SVOD (SVOD is an acronym but also means ‘congress’ or ‘gathering’ in Russian). Its a great way to see what startups and established tech players in Eastern Europe are doing.

Museum of Modern Betas

EyeStride was added to the ‘gallery’ at the Museum of Modern Betas. If you haven’t seen MOMB check it out, its a great place to keep up with the latest web/tech startups. There are no articles or reviews here, just homepage screenshots and one sentence descriptions, so you decide what’s cool and what isn’t.

Check out our listing at the MOMB