Google Street View

What's new guys? Right now I'm just chilling a bit after spending over 8 hours in a bus, kinda tiring, the movies were alright, but there's always a certain point where you get all tired up of looking at the screen and for whatever reason, you spend way more time looking at the road outside… trees, rocks, clouds, whatever you can find and you immerse in your own thoughts, to the extreme where you may not remember a thing you saw, since all looked so familiar. Maybe an iPod might be our best friend in such experiences.

Anyway, I had a meeting in this building, which I never saw before, and in certain city I never visited, but believe it or not I knew exactly where to go, what to do, where to eat and finally visited one or two tourist spots around… but how did I do it? I knew exactly how the building looks like, needed no further directions to get a meal or to snap a couple of good shots. A new best friend helped me out… Google Street View.

Probably you've heard about this free service provided by Google, if not, let me break it down for you: Street View is a service seamlessly embedded to Google Maps, and what this service does is to provide you with fully detailed pictures of the surrounding as if you were driving on the street. Whatever public place you can see from you car in real life, you can see it from your computer… pretty cool huh?

Just go to google maps, grab that yellow fella from the zoom scale in the upper left and drag him to the exact spot you want. I showed this to my dad and he, for the lack of a better word, sort of freaked out. He understood right there the full potential (both good and bad) of the Street View. No need to say all the kindness this service brings to our lives… need to go to a friend's house you hardly remember the address to? No problem, just follow the streets and as soon you recognize certain details, you'll see the porch and the door in no time. What about the other way (sort of my case)? I just had an address, just type it down and you're there… is that easy? Yes, it is.

And, like you've heard before, is like taking a tour without standing from your seat. Wanna visit other countries? No problem, you can ride the streets of Spain, England, France, Canada and many others just dragging and clicking on your mouse. Downsides? Well, from my point of view what this does is simply making public knowledge, well, more public. I mean, if you have directions or an address (which are public) you can view now with no effort the real place (again, which is public). People who mean harm to us might take advantage of this tool, but is just like -for example- a hammer, which it's also a public tool (you can go and get one from the store) and you can either build a house or hurt someone… decision is up to you. Same with Street View.

Regardless is a fantastic tool you can access from you computer and you should definitely give it a try (if you haven't already). What's your favorite place on Earth? You can watch it as if you were right there! Leave all your comments right below and you can also attach the links to the places you like the most there… keep enjoying your week and see you next Monday!