EveryScape maps local businesses from the inside out

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There’s some buzz today about an online mapping service called EveryScape, thanks to a profile of the company by ABC News. Like Google Maps and Microsoft’s Live Search Maps, EveryScape lets you look up addresses and driving directions on the Web and offers photos of the places you’re going. But the twist: EveryScape lets you go inside some of the shops and restaurants. For example, if you look for Marion Meyer Contemporary Art, a gallery in Laguna Beach, you’d see a photo of the storefront -- but also a button that lets you go inside the shop (pictured above).

EveryScape has a big uphill climb trying to compete with the likes of Google and Microsoft, which get more Web traffic than just about anyone on the planet. The service launched in beta in October and so far covers only slightly more than a dozen cities (including three in California: Laguna Beach, Beverly Hills and San Francisco).

The Waltham, Mass.-based company dispatches independent contractors to snap pictures of building exteriors and to try to persuade local businesses to let them photograph their interiors. It’s good marketing, so some businesses do agree.

But we have to admit that letting cameras in for digital mapping makes us think of this classic video, ‘Google Maps (Part 1 of the Googling),’ by the L.A.-based comic film troupe the Vacationeers. Keep looking over your shoulder while using Google Maps...

-- Chris Gaither