The Google Maps of the Week

It is becoming fairly common now to use Google Maps Street View in online promotional campaigns. This week Google Maps Mania reviewed two very good examples of how Street View can be used to engage the attention of potential customers.


The Prius Plug-in Virtual Drive is a clever online campaign to promote the capabilities of the Prius Plug-in Hybrid car.

The campaign uses a combination of Google Maps and Street View to show how far Toyota's hybrid car can travel on any journey in EV mode (Electric Vehicle) before switching seamlessly to the HV mode (Hybrid Vehicle).

To use the app the user can enter any starting point and any destination.The first part of the journey, which would be completed in EV mode, is shown virtually using an animated series of stereographic Street Views of the route. The second part of the journey, which would be in HV mode is shown on a Google Map.

If you want to see more impressive experiments with Stereographic Street View then check out the axamples on the streetview-stereographic code page on Github.



Foot Locker and Converse have also created a clever Street View game to help promote their brands. The game involves wandering around the streets of London, Paris and Milan searching for hidden Converse Pro Leather Vulcs.

Converse Street Ready requires the user to virtually walk the streets of the three cities following the visual clues to the hidden baseball boots. As you play the game you are rewarded with free downloadable tracks. There is also a grand prize of a trip for New York up-for-grabs for one lucky winner.


Low cost airline Flybe has released a nicely designed Google Map to show where their planes fly from and where you can fly to.

You can select any of the airports marked on the map and view a visualisation of all Flybe flights from that airport. If you select one of the displayed destinations you can click through to view prices and even book your ticket.

The map makes good use of the Styled Map option in the Google Maps API to create a map that reflects the colours of the Flybe livery.