Google street views

Gradually, Google cars and vans are photographing every street in major cities and towns throughout the US. Soon it will be the turn of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the like.

So what is a Google Street View? According to Wikipedia:

Google Street View is a feature of Google Maps and Google Earth that provides 360° panoramic street-level views and allows users to view parts of selected cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas at ground level. When it was launched on May 25, 2007, only five cities were included. It has since expanded to more than 40 U.S. cities, and includes the suburbs of many, and in some cases, other nearby cities.

… Google has stated that its ultimate goal is to provide street views of the entire world, although the company has not disclosed in advance the exact dates when any particular locations will be added.

There’s a neat little demo of how they work:

Some people have WAY too much time on their hands and have spent hours studying the images from Google Street Views and have created websites containing some of the ‘interesting’ things they have found. You too, could spend hours on these sites. For example:

• http://www.gstreetsightings.com/
• http://streetviewgallery.corank.com/

Of course, there are major privacy issues that Google Street View brings up that we humans have never had to encounter before, but that’s for others to debate…