Turin, March 3rd 2008 - SEAT Pagine Gialle, the European leader and one of the world’s main players in the field of multimedia telephone directories and hi-tech Internet services, has announced the expansion of  PagineGialle Visual, the innovative visual search platform used to geolocate information on people, companies and businesses by means of high-resolution maps and orthophotos.

With PagineGialle Visual it is now possible to use the On the Road mode to visit 109 Italian towns and cities, covering a total of almost 9,300 Km, and take a virtual walk along streets and through squares, discovering unusual itineraries from a completely personal perspective. The locations covered by the On the Road service include major towns such as Pisa, Mantua, Udine, Bari and Siracusa, but also smaller centres such as Vigevano (Pavia), Alassio (Savona), Villasimius (Cagliari) and Moncalieri (Turin), as well as tourist areas such as the Amalfi Coast and Lake Iseo.

“PagineGialle Visual represents the largest Web project currently running in Italy. Thanks to our ongoing commitment to this project, Italy today is the most photographed and mapped country in the world”, as highlighted by Paolo Cellini, Internet Executive Vice President SEAT Pagine Gialle Group. “PagineGialle Visual makes the navigation experience even more meaningful, thanks to the ability to explore the area with a precision and richness of content never achieved before. For businesses and public bodies, this tool is an exceptional opportunity for helping people to get to know the area, for promoting tourism and providing a profile of themselves in a completely new manner.”

PagineGialle Visual has approximately 100,000 visitors a day, with more than 300,000 toolbars downloaded to date. The platform has required investments of tens of millions of euros, and is supported by a proprietary georeferencing system (LBS) developed in house. On-line data exceed 50 terabytes for an average band usage of 40 Mbs a second. A team of about 20 Italian programmers and system engineers are working on the project.

PagineGialle Visual offers three main visual modes:

• the aerial view, which can be used to search amongst the 20 million individuals and 3.5 million businesses contained in PagineBianche and PagineGialle, viewing the results on the map or aerial photograph of the area. The orthophotos are provided exclusively by Telespazio for SEAT Pagine Gialle and reconstruct the area in a spectacular manner since they can be overlapped perfectly with the street map. Using an advanced representation system, visual research can even precisely identify every single street number, whether these are plazas or landmark buildings, or shops and company offices.

• On the road, used to travel virtually along the streets of 109 Italian locations, following photographic routes from a subjective perspective, at man height. This mode can be used, for example, to stroll through the town and see monuments and historic buildings, but also to do a bit of window shopping for a future shopping trip.
To view in On the Road mode, a PC is recommended with the following minimum configuration: Windows XP operating system, Pentium 4 3.0 GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+ processor, System memory (RAM): 1GB+ RAM memory, 512 Kbit/s connection, graphics card with 3D functionality and 32 MB of VRAM, display with 1280x1024 resolution, 32-bit 16.8 million colours, Adobe Shockwave Player 10.2.

• 3D navigation, used to fly above Italy and the altimetric reconstructions of the area and main towns and cities. Further to an agreement with CNR, PagineGialle Visual makes it possible to virtually reconstruct the landmark areas of Rome, from the Imperial Fora to the Via Appia and Via Flaminia.
To view in 3D mode, a PC is recommended with the following minimum configuration: Windows XP operating system, Pentium 4 3.0 GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+ processor, System memory (RAM): 1GB+ RAM memory, 512 Kbit/s connection, graphics card with 3D functionality and 32 MB of VRAM, display with 1280x1024 resolution, 32-bit 16.8 million colours, Adobe Shockwave Player 10.2.


The PagineGialle Visual content also includes real-time weather and traffic updates, as well as information on property adverts, events, exhibitions and shows, with the opportunity to book hotels and accommodation on-line.



SEAT PAGINE GIALLE GROUP
The SEAT Pagine Gialle Group is the European leader and one of the main operators at world level in the sector of multimedia profiled advertising, offering “print-voice-online” directories, high-tech products for the Internet and for satellite and ortophotometric navigation, as well as complementary communication services such as one-to-one marketing.

SEAT Pagine Gialle has been engaged in information services, and search and communications tools for over 80 years. It is a success story based on a brand that is familiar to everyone, a sales network employing over 1,700 persons, a technology that is constantly evolving and a database that includes 20 million households and 3 million businesses, and a wide range of products guaranteeing a real integrated system of communications to about 600,000 Italian customers. A total of 63.3 million volumes distributed to the homes and offices of Italian subscribers (2006 figures), 32.5 million enquiries through the directory assistance service (2006 figures), and over 307 million hits on online directories (2006 figures) connect people and businesses, bringing together needs and solutions and promoting economic exchanges.