Traveling the world sans pants just got a lot cooler. Google’s Street View has always been a great way to see panoramas of streets from all over the world. Today they’ve added some great improvements.
Instead of having to inch along streets using those evil forward and backward arrows, you can now use their spiffy new “pancake” to get around. Check out this short video to get the lowdown.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
kinda gives new meaning to “i see london, i see france…”
that was hysterical. you must be old like me!
Google maps allows anyone to be a world traveller. I took a trip on old Route 66 once from Chicago to LA once on Google maps. The gas mileage was unbeatable. =)
This is so cool! But I’m from Canada, and it doesn’t do it here.. So sad~.
COOL !!!!
I love paris!
Really neat !!
This is such a great idea. In the past i have only used streets to find places near my home. Nice hack.
Well, NOW I’m embarassed! I’m viewing YOUR website in my boxers!
I have been ‘flying’ around the World for several years now, using Google Earth, which also has ’street views’.
http://earth.google.com/
I have always enjoyed looking at maps of all kinds, and when I ‘discovered’ GE it was like being given the keys to my Mom’s ‘53 Buick Roadmaster for the first time! FREEEEEDOM!
I use GE to mark places from my past, places I hear about in the news, places I’d LIKE to visit, etc., etc.
GE now includes closeup views of the ocean bottoms, Mars, the stars, and most recently views into the past, where you can watch a location change over time!
Plus there are THOUSANDS of images you can view that people who have been there have placed for your enjoyment! You can add your own, too!
You can put a ‘push pin’ anywhere you’d like to mark a spot, then add any information about that spot. You can save your ‘Places’ to archive them ‘in case…’ (it’s a PC, after all!). You can compile a group of ‘places’ and then ‘fly’ to them in a sort-of video progression.
I’m compiling a series of spots (including pictures that I’m collecting from searches online) that we visited back around 1976 that took us into Death Valley through the Panamint Mountains. We actually stopped for directions at THE MANSON RANCH (yes, Charlie may have been the bearded guy I spoke to through a barbed-wire fence *gulp*). It was about 10,000 miles from NOWHERE over almost impassable dirt trails (not roads), and we had already gone down some inclines that we could NOT have gone back up in our old 1963 Ford Econoline 2-wheel-drive van!
…and on and on!
Oh, wait! I don’t think it is available for Mac users, is it? Sorry!
…hah! Yet ANOTHER reason to ‘live’ with a PC! And for me it is possibly the BEST reason to use a PC.
Google Earth IS available on the Mac.
That’s GREAT news, Michael! It certainly wasn’t available for Macs when I first found it several years ago.
I spend almost as much time cruisin’ around Earth as I do commenting and replying in your blog! LOL