WebProNews

Twenty-four cities have had A9 trucks rolling down their streets, photographing building fronts for the A9 Maps search engine.

Fargo, ND, made it onto the list of major cities getting the Block View treatment from Amazon's search engine, A9. The company has dispatched specially equipped trucks to take pictures of buildings as they pass by.

Oh yeah, they included places like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago as well. According to Pandia.com, A9's efforts will help that company as it begins to sell ads for Yellow Pages results. Those ads could be complemented by "click to call" links; searchers could instantly connect via VoIP to a business.

And the street level photos would be a boon for people who need driving directions. It's great to know where you're going, but even better will be seeing a picture of what you should expect to find at the end of the trip.

A9 has taken roughly 35 million pictures of those cities. Bigger rivals like Google and MSN have been implementing satellite photos into their mapping solutions. But A9 feels a street level view will be more useful to users.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.