This comprises three bicycle wheels, a mounted Street View camera and a specially decorated box containing image-collecting gadgets. It also comes with a very athletic cyclist in customised branded apparel. The Trikes are not only a low-emission means of collating street-level imagery, it is doing with the Street View Toyota Prius cars, but they also help the company collect imagery in places inaccessible by cars.
Roshene Singh from South African Tourism said, "We are only too happy to join forces with Google to bring our country's diversity to the world in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The new Trikes will help showcase even more of South Africa's unique travel offering, and we look forward to enthusiastic voting from the public.”
Stephen Newton, head of Google South Africa, said, "This has been a hit for tourism around the world and now we want to make it even better for showing off South Africa's history, nature and culture. The Trikes are designed to go down footpaths and tracks to collect images of areas of natural beauty or tourist sites.
We want it to be a really fun, new aspect of the website, users will be able to virtually tour historical monuments or scenic locations before visiting - or check out which side of a football stadium they need to be on before leaving the house."
Trikes will only be in South Africa for a limited time during the summer and the images will be processed and carefully stitched together, a technological process that can take several months. They will be made available later in Street View on Google Maps.
As well as its consumer appeal, South African businesses will also benefit from the Street View technology by embedding Google Maps directly into their site for free, helping them to promote a chain of hotels or increase awareness of a local library or restaurant.
Voting for favourite sites is at www.google.co.za/trike or from mobile phones www.google.co.za/mobile/trike.
