If any of you out there are like me and find travel and geography fascinating you probably already know about this. But just in case you haven't heard yet Google has an amazing newer feature built into their maps called street view. The Google Street View cars capture images via a camera mounted on top of a standard passenger car with eight lenses. They drive through cities, towns and the countryside capturing the landscape just as you would see it in a car. During the first year and a half of photo capture in 2007/2008 they used lower resolution pictures which are just "ok" but absolutely nothing like the stunning newer images of the last year. Unfortunately what that means is for most of the USA, Australia and Japan are in lower resolution but the rest of the available international street view is simply stunning! The good news is Google is currently reshooting Australia in hi-res and is also slowly updating the USA pictures. Dallas and Miami are now in hi-res. Canada was recently added to Street View, I drove "virtually" all the way through Saskatoon, Saskatchewan over the weekend. Last month over the course of a few evenings during some down time I drove through Prague in the Czech Republic starting from a random far suburban location, all the way into and through downtown Prague and out to the airport. It was simply amazing. Then I did the same thing through Milan, Italy. There was so much detail in these images that I really feel like I know what its like to be in these very different cities. You can move through these cities at approximately 20 miles per hour <br
Here is an example, Google allows you to embed street view right into another website, such as aw.org. Here is simply a random street in Toronto that I plopped down onto and started driving. <br
Do this <br
#1 Take your mouse and click in the center of the picture below
#2 Using your arrow keys (mac or pc, it doesn't matter), click the up arrow to drive forward the down street. With each click you move forward
#3 Now use your left and right arrow keys to turn your head around,
#4 Move forward down the street in the either direction of the white line, when you get an intersection turn left or right depending on which way you want to travel and continue forward in that direction. <br
In a bit I'll post more about how to use the Street View "Peg" man to drop down onto a map and drive the city. <br
Super Cool eh <br
<iframe width="1000" height="750" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/sv?cbp=...708&v=1&panoid=HbJtwIf-fwTvzSmerScgGQ&gl=&hl="></iframe>
<small>View Larger Map</small>
Here is an example, Google allows you to embed street view right into another website, such as aw.org. Here is simply a random street in Toronto that I plopped down onto and started driving. <br
Do this <br
#1 Take your mouse and click in the center of the picture below
#2 Using your arrow keys (mac or pc, it doesn't matter), click the up arrow to drive forward the down street. With each click you move forward
#3 Now use your left and right arrow keys to turn your head around,
#4 Move forward down the street in the either direction of the white line, when you get an intersection turn left or right depending on which way you want to travel and continue forward in that direction. <br
In a bit I'll post more about how to use the Street View "Peg" man to drop down onto a map and drive the city. <br
Super Cool eh <br
<iframe width="1000" height="750" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/sv?cbp=...708&v=1&panoid=HbJtwIf-fwTvzSmerScgGQ&gl=&hl="></iframe>
<small>View Larger Map</small>
