The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Google Maps hits the streets

New ground-based city views wow the crowd

Free whitepaper – Optimizing the data center for cost and efficiency

Google yesterday announced the immediate availability of "Street View" - ground-level, photographic panoramas of Denver, Las Vegas, Miami and New York which allow Google Maps surfers to "navigate around a city, 'virtually' walking the streets, checking out restaurants and landmarks and even zoom in on bus stops or street signs to make travel plans":

A Street View image of the Brooklyn Bridge on Google Maps

As well as trumpeting the new facility, Google pointed developers in the direction of Mapplets, "mini-webpages that are served inside an IFrame within the Google Maps site".

According to the blurb, you can "put anything inside this mini-webpage that you can put into a normal webpage, including HTML, Javascript, and Flash".

While the code jockeys get busy knocking together illuminating Mapplets content, the rest of us will soon be able to enjoy extended Street View coverage of "other metropolitan regions", a Google statement promised. ®

Free whitepaper – Guidelines for specification of data center power density

Don’t Miss

Windows VistaWindows 95 to Windows 7: How Microsoft lost its vision

Comment Behind the taskbar

Ubuntu teaser Ubuntu's Karmic Koala bares fangs at Windows 7

Review Shuttleworthian scrap

AppleChange your views: OS X tags exploited

Mac Secrets Apple windows insider

JavaSun preps cell-phone Java plan for netbooks

OpenWorld 09 Modules not globules