Taufiqology

Stuck at home? Grounded? Don’t worry, you can still sneak out without anyone noticing…

…With the help of Google Maps Street View. If you have ever heard of Google Maps and Google Earth, you’ll know that it gives us a stunning birds-eye view of our planet from satellite images. But getting down to human-eye level has not really been catered for.

Google’s Street View fixes that by using lots and lots and lots of still photos to give us an eye-level view of the major roads in several US cities. That means you are actually looking at a 360 degree view of the current location, in the comfort of your own home! It truly is amazing.

Simply head to one of the Street View cities - say New York - highlight the Street View box and you will see a little orange character appear, ready to be your visual guide on the ground.

Click on him to see all the surrounding scenery and then why not take him for a walk - everywhere outlined in blue is Street View territory. Use the arrow keys or drag the mouse to navigate your way around. You can rotate through 360 degrees and double-clicking zooms in.

One warning though: do not even try Street View if you have a slow connection because the photos will take ages to update. Nevertheless, if you have got a blistering connection, you have simply got to check this out, even if you have got no practical use for it.

There is a light-hearted video tutorial to get you started. It is incredible to think how much work must have been involved - mapping San Francisco alone involved compiling more than a million images.

But of course, Google’s nemesis Microsoft have a few tricks of their own up their sleeve. Microsoft’s live maps uses aerial images shot from an angle and from nearer the earth’s surface to supplement its core satellite maps. So, whereas a satellite map gives you a rather flat view, the other aerial images add real dimension to the image, and shows off incredible detail in images.

Whichever one you try, they’re really solid web applications… not forgetting fun!