I started my research and was impressed with bing maps initially but as they revoked their 3D maps feature, I ended up using Google maps for my solution. For the last couple of days, I have been thinking of making a sophisticated dashboard with live maps (all 3D, 2D, street view), tracking live positions of the camera, streaming video on the side with a whole lot of other information and settings to customize the dashboard view. Staff authors are listed here.I work for a company 'Momentum Technologies' in Australia which provides real time video streaming solutions. Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. But 3D view in Street View might occasionally be offered as “Easter Egg” surprises. Google tells us 3D view in Google Maps and Google Books is only being offered on April Fool’s Day this year, April 1 - and from midnight to midnight in each time zone.

Here is a picture of how it looks on Google Maps: Postscript by Barry Schwartz: The Google blog announced this new 3D street view feature. Postscript 2: The Google Book Search blog now has confirmation of the new feature. I suspect this will rollout further on April 1 to more people.

I’ve not been able to replicate this, myself - to get the small “3D man” icon to appear and enable a 3D view. Postscript: The Next Web has a screenshot showing a 3D view in Google Street View, so apparently that’s coming. I’ve got a science project to help finish! I also wonder if we’ll see it on other Google properties like Google Maps, as I suspected. I don’t think this is an April Fool’s joke, but we’ll see. But find a pair of glasses, and then you can judge for yourself. Of course, I can’t show you the 3D view I can see with the glasses on. And for something like this Life Magazine cover, it worked pretty good:

I looked again through Google Books and found this 3D view option everywhere I looked. When viewed with the glasses I was given (standard paper 3D ones), sure, I guess it’s a little 3Dish. See the “View in 3D” link? Click on that, and you get this: Hmm, was Google Maps going 3D? Or maybe an April Fool’s joke? But helping my son with his science project tonight, I came across a possible answer - a new 3D view in Google Books. Earlier today, a Google PR person gave me a pair of 3D glasses at the Where 2.0 conference and said I’d need them tomorrow.

Google earth 3d viewer