google earth maps street view

Google Street View Update – Smart Navigation

The Google Street View interface has recently had some “Smart Navigation” improvements made to it which have certainly been a welcome addition to the service as beforehand as good as we thought it was here at Zath, it could still get a little annoying to use for any extended length of time.

Google Street View (UK)

It’s been announced that Google Street View is coming to the UK!

The first cities in the UK to be included as part of Google Street View will be London, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh – Google cars equipped will the special cameras for this task have been out and about in these areas in the past few months, so it’s expected that the images captured will be implemented in Google Street View for the UK by Spring 2009.

UPDATE: Google Street View is now live in the UK and features images of 25 cities – a full list of the cities featured are contained on that page too.

UPDATE 2: It’s only taken around a year, but now Google Street View covers most of the UK – try looking up your local area, chances are you’ll be able to look around it now!

In case you haven’t heard of Google Street View before, it is basically an addition to Google’s already impressive mapping services which form their online Google Maps website, Google Maps mobile software, their Google Earth desktop software application and Google Earth iPhone App. This added feature of Street View means that as well as seeing a location in map form and from a satellite view, you can now ‘go down to street level’ and navigate around using a 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic interface that allows you to travel virtually around an area.