The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is “Block View,” which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.

The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient. Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 20 million photographs. A9.com is driving and at some point hopes to cover the whole country....

Current List of Cities Having Block View Images

• Atlanta
• Boston
• Dallas
• Chicago
• New York City (Manhattan)
• Denver
• Los Angeles
• Seattle
• Portland, Oregon
• San Francisco and the Bay Area

John Battelle gives more info in his blog and a full article.

(BetaNews), another Mozilla developer joins Google:

With at least two high-profile browser developers under its belt, rumors have begun swirling about Google's future plans with the Mozilla platform.

Darin, a former IBM and Netscape employee, is a "module owner" for the Mozilla project and is in charge of cookies and permissions, as well as Mozilla's networking library. As did Goodger, Darin promises to remain devoted to his current work, despite monetary backing from Google.

Darin Fisher announces in this blog "Following on the heals of Ben's annoucement yesterday, I thought I'd post that I have joined Google as well. Like Ben, I will still be very much involved with the Mozilla project and community :-)"