Dude, There’s My Car
In my humble opinion Google Maps is a pretty sweet online mapping service. It’s all about uncluttered interfaces and, for the most part, useful driving directions. When it first came out I blamed it for getting us lost a few times, but they’ve been pretty spot-on lately.
One new feature they’ve added in metro areas (like Raleigh) is Street View. Google actually paid some people to drive around all the streets in a given city and photograph everything. They then stiched it all together and tied it to Google Maps so you can not only see an overhead map, you can actually see what’s there at eye-level (or what was there when the camera-car drove by). For a long time they only had big, big cities like NY and LA, but more recently they’ve added medium sized cities like Worcester, Massachusetts and Raleigh, North Carolina.
I checked out the street where I park my car most days for work, and saw the Celica right there! It’s a nice feeling to have my ride semi-imortalized on the internet.
They haven’t driven through our town yet, but maybe some day they will. Sometimes it feels a little big-brotherish, but for the most part it’s exciting stuff.
March 16th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Our home town in MA is on there, too! Including the family sign that has since been stolen!
March 16th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
What are the odds that you’d see YOUR car on this! It is a cool site and have used it at work. Showed the bosses and they were impressed
March 17th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Yea, this is even more spooky: http://nedward.org/2007/12/12/google-maps-boston-street-view/
I’m actually caught by the camera, when we were having a tag sale.