Google streets – now in Sweden and Denmark
Until recently Google streets has not been availible for Sweden and Denmark. There has been local sites with a similar function, like http://hitta.se/gatubild. But now you can also use Google streets for your virtual tour to Sweden and Denmark. Not only the large cities but also smaller villages and country roads can be seen in Google streets.
To use Google streets go to maps.google.com, find your place of interest, click and hold the little orange man that stands just above the zoom handle and put him down on the street you want to visit. Streets with photos will get blue borders when you lift the little man and you can of course only put him down on such streets.
To protect peoples integrity faces and car registration signs have been blurred. The photos seems to been taken during the summer of 2009 so the visit to Sweden and Denmark through Google streets will give you a warm summer feeling (which feels nice especially right now in the middle of the winter).
Many people seems to know what the Google Street car is doing when it passes by with it’s strange thing on the roof. Apart from capturing people in different situations there are now a phenomena called Google waving. That is people waving at the camera or doing other strange things, like flipping it the bird when it passes by. There are entire websites dedicated to this kind of pictures, like http://www.streetviewfun.com/, http://streetviewgallery.corank.com/ and http://fun-google-streetview.blogspot.com/.
While cruising around in Google streets I found my cousin in her garden and I ran into some strange bugs a couple of times. Like going straight through houses and jumping back and forth between to parallell streets in Stockholm when I just “walked” straight on. I guess Google will iron that out sooner or later.
Another cool thing is that if you have an iPhone and installed the Google app you also have access to Google streets. Start the Google app, select Maps. When you set the needle on a map and the left part shows a little man in a red circle there are street images availble.
Point at the little man and the street view will appear. Off you go! Just point at the arrows to move. Turn or tilt by dragging the image.
Visit Google streets at http://maps.google.com.