Playing around with Google Earth isn't enough for you? Take a look at Google Maps new feature - Street View. In selected portions of major cities you can get down on the ground and check out the view from street level. Not only can you see store fronts, houses, trees and people walking by but you can zoom in enough to see oil stains on the street, license plates on cars, panhandler's signs and pigeons on the street.
Yesterday evening I posted a comment in the Open Thread mentioning Google Maps new feature - Street View. When I first saw the feature last night I thought: "Holy Crap! This can't be for real! Can I actually check out the view from the Golden Gate?!"
But sure enough I could walk down most of the streets of San Francisco and check out a 360 view:
Naturally, the first thing I did was to check my home address and was slightly disappointed that I didn't recognize the person walking down the street. I would show that picture, but honestly I would feel a little bit uncomfortable doing that.
However, this feature only seems to be available in portions of the San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas, New York and Miami metropolitan areas.
I'm partially thrilled at the new feature. Not only can check out some places I haven't been in - such as Miami beach...
...or the outskirts of Las Vegas...
..but already I've found a useful ability for this new feature. As I am currently looking for a new apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area, I've been checking out the Street Level views of prospective apartment buildings. One apartment building that looked nice from the interiors shots on the Craigslist posting, looked quite ugly when I checked out Street View. I wasn't too excited about the place and when I saw the neighborhood I took it off my 'see list'. At least I don't have to waste my time going to an apartment I don't want to live in.
To be honest, I spent a lot of time last night just checking out the view from as many locations as I could - the Golden Gate, Broadway in New York, the Strip in Vegas. Then I started checking out the addresses of people I knew. Though I didn't find anything particularly interesting, I did stumble onto many residential streets where I could zoom in enough to check out the license plates of cars parked in front of homes. (This pic has been reduced so you can't see it here, but you can see it full size on Google Maps)
I personally don't know what the privacy implications are, maybe some lawyers can chime in. It seems that every picture was taken by driving around on a car so I doubt any laws were broken as everything can be seen from a public right-of-way. Still, I can't help but have mixed feelings for this. On the one hand, it's fun to be able to see so much but on the other hand, it almost feels like spying when I check out some quiet neighborhoods.
What do you think?