By
David Rencher / Richard Millins
.
Published: Fri, August 15, 2008 - 10:22 am
Last Updated: Thu, September 04, 2008 - 4:38 pm
Want a digital view of the streets in Downtown Mobile or the Bay Views of Fairhope or your own house?Now you can dial up ground-level, 360-degree images of those spots on your computer.
Google added Mobile, Spanish Fort, Daphne and Fairhope to the growing list of cities where it offers Street View, a photographic tour of nearly every street in the region, with vantage points such as those of a person walking down the street of choice.
The wraparound shots are not satellite or aerial images. They are street-level snapshots from that location, collected by specialized vehicles contracted by Google to collect the images.
Hundreds of square miles of Bay area roads are in the system, and more likely will come as Google enhances the feature.
Here's how it works:
When users type an address or company name in Google Maps or Google Local, a map of that spot appears. A small button called "Street View" appears next to other features such as "traffic," "satellite images" and "terrain." Any street with a special blue highlight has images captured.
As users click on the Street View button, a window appears with images from the street in that spot. Moving the mouse button left, right or up and down moves the image in any direction, including straight up.
Users can scroll the images for views such as those of a person walking down that street.
The vehicles that collect the images have digital cameras and Global Positioning System sensors to pinpoint the locations.
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So far I have not seen any bodies in the intersections of downtown, so I guess they got the pictures on a slow week.