The popular Internet service Google Maps can guide you to the Upstairs on the Square restaurant in Cambridge. Google Maps' Street View feature will even show you a picture of the street outside the restaurant. But Google Maps can't show you the interior.
A new mapping service from EveryScape Inc. of Waltham does just that. With the click of a mouse, a user glides through the front door of Upstairs on the Square and gets a 360-degree view of the colorful decor.
EveryScape chief executive Jim Schoonmaker thinks thousands of businesses around the world will pay for this kind of exposure, and millions of Internet users will want to use the service. That's why he says his company has a fighting chance against the Internet's most popular search service. "I'm quite confident that if we have world coverage of interiors and exteriors, people will leave Google and come to us," Schoonmaker said.
A host of venture capital firms, including Dace Ventures, Draper Fisher New England, and LaunchPad Venture Group are betting Schoonmaker is right. They've invested $11 million in EveryScape since 2004, including a $7 million infusion in March.
Still, Randy Giusto, an industry analyst with IDC Corp. in Framingham, is skeptical about EveryScape's prospects. "There might be demand for it in certain locations - government buildings, certain shopping malls," Giusto said, but unless a lot of companies sign up to have their interiors mapped, traffic to the site, EveryScape.com, will be limited.
"It's got to hit a critical mass for it to derive value for the consumer," he said. EveryScape might be better off selling its technology to established online mapping companies, Giusto said, such as Google, Microsoft Corp., or Yahoo Inc.
A Google spokeswoman said the company won't comment on plans for its Street View.
To get his pictures, Schoonmaker will count on independent contractors to drive the world's highways. "Destination ambassadors" will be given "ownership" of geographic areas, and will be paid by the mile for creating new photo maps, he said.
For example, the Baltimore area belongs to David Franklin. He recently completed the required training course for destination ambassadors. In a couple of weeks, he will start laying claim to his new domain by driving its streets, snapping pictures on the way. It's a two-person job. One ambassador drives, while the other operates a quartet of digital still cameras mounted on the roof of the car. Franklin, 50, and his assistant will be paid about $10 a mile. There are 2,000 miles of streets in Baltimore and Franklin estimates another 5,000 miles for the suburbs, so he could earn up to $70,000.
"That's kind of neat - driving around, getting paid to drive," said Franklin, who described himself as an affluent former computer entrepreneur who doesn't need the money. He signed up as a driver because he likes the idea behind EveryScape. "I saw it as a really neat business model, as a progressive company, and a cool product," Franklin said.
Once an area has been mapped, EveryScape will pitch local businesses on the benefits of having their interiors photographed by a freelance professional photographer.
Both interior and street photos are relayed to Waltham, where banks of server computers stitch the still digital shots into seamless panoramic images. Much of the underlying software was developed by EveryScape founder and chief technology officer Mok Oh, who holds a doctorate in computer graphics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Once the computers have done their work, users can cruise up and down a street by moving a mouse. Businesses that offer interior tours are marked with special icons, which users can click for a quick look around.
Mary-Catherine Deibel, co-owner of Upstairs on the Square, said about one-third of its business comes from private events like weddings and corporate dinners. Deibel said the EveryScape interior shots make it easier to show off the restaurant to potential customers.
"It was exactly what we were looking for and more," Deibel said.
Deibel won't say how much she paid for her panoramic advertisement. "Let's just say it was definitely nominal," she said.
Schoonmaker said the cost of panoramic ads will vary from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the business's size. While Upstairs on the Square is a small venue, EveryScape has also shot panoramic interiors at larger locations like the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco and the Breakers resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
Despite the sentiments of observers like Giusto, Schoonmaker believes the world is large enough to support many online mapping companies, including his own. "We don't believe one company, even if it's Google or Microsoft, or even one country, is big enough to take on this challenge," he said.