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I don't really understand the use case.

I feel like if I'd be a potential buyer of such a camera I'd also be in the position to install many cameras in many places and get a better perspective.

What's this give you? Passive iris scanning at a distance maybe? An ability to read people's phone screens? What's the problem this is solving?




It’s a snapshot of a moment of time. I think we all agree it’s useful to have photos of different places from different eras, right?

I mean at its most fundamental level, this is a future historical document. It’s easy to imagine why that is “useful” or “what problems it solves.”


You raise an excellent point: looking back in time at street photographs is fascinating.

e.g., https://1940s.nyc/map


Exactly!


I'd love a sky cam that could find me an open parking space.


And the likelihood of you getting it before someone else who exhibits looking-for-parking behavior.


Think way more boring. On that page linked above, towards the bottom they show various construction project management integrations and use cases.


This is the real enterprise use. I've worked on multiple Earth Cam integrations on NYC high rise construction projects. Honestly wasn't fun to integrate, and the integration (at least in 2008-2016 were all over Java. They might have updated since then, but the purpose was mostly for "toy" integrations so that condo purchasers could watch the construction on their new multi million dollar home years before they get to move in.

I'm fairly certain it was never really used by customers, but the executive team LOVED it, so any time the API failed (usually needed to upgrade the API client because of a breaking change), it was an all hands on deck and a middle of the night/weekend patch.




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