Hey has anyone checked out the new Google Maps
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl
Type in your address, then click on the photo
This is getting scary

No photo for my address.

No Photo for my hovel either.

Kimsland, maybe your place is going to be featured in "Better Homes and Privacy Invasions" magazine.

Sweet - I knew they were merging these two services together, but didn't think it would be this cool.

Did not see a photo to click on. I did click on the satellite image and they are still using the same, tired satellite photo that I first saw in 1998 when Terraserver (from the DEC AltaVista folks) first came out. I guess that a small town in RI is not on the hot list for pictures. :-)

I should have mentioned to click on "Street View"
But I don't believe that absolutely all addresses have a photo, but in some areas every address has one!

I want to know who took all these photos. I would have made sure my house was looking better at the time too.

Streetview does not work for me. Tried that first.

I have read/heard that there are roving vans of Google photographers that mostly hit major metropolitan areas (though they could be spreading out to the burbs by now.) In fact, in the past couple of months, there was a mini-scandal in the news because one of the crews was mistakenly allowed into a military base and the photos made it to Google maps and it was a security breach. Many red faces on that one.

I typed in the intersection where I live, and the pic comes up very nice showing my corner. Of course, the trees have leaves on them, so you cant actually see my house, but you can get a glimpse of the driveway. If I use the address, it shows the house 3 doors down, lol.

This is one of those things where us outside of the huge population centers/areas of the world don't get much recognition. Its entirely understandable because if you can server 20 million people in 400 sq miles vs 100,000 in that same area you are better off with the 20 million. But areas in the midwest US and much of the west outside of 50k+ towns won't get recognised for many years to come.

So.. Just because your house got hit up by the google cam van, doesn't mean everyone has google looking at their front door.

There's a picture of my house on there which was surprising. We live about half an hour out of the main city.

mine came up. a 360 view from a spot on road in front of my neighbors' homes. i can see my wife's car in our driveway.

we are not really 'outside' the city. the city is big, and fades into vast suburbs.

this would be great if you were trying to shop for a home before moving - you could see if a house for sale had all junked-up cars up and down the street, and how the yards are maintained in the area. you could keep entering addresses for adjacent streets to get a feel for the whole neighborhood.

Hey imagine when the government says we have to have cameras in the house !

Now that will be George Orwell's 1984 Big Brother is watching you !

'I want to know who took all these photos. I would have made sure my house was looking better at the time too.'

The Russians or Chinese took the sat pics and sell them to Google.

Why they would take those pics is, of course, a mystery.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

You can use your mouse to move the screen around and zoom in too
I'll stop replying here now!
Anyway, I'm now getting stuck into Photosynth: http://photosynth.net/ (another strange phenomina)

This is amazing and scary. I typed in an intersection near where I live, and hello......there it was.
Don't be surprised when they add live video streams.

I think NASA may still be flying a SR71 and some TR1s (U2). I don't know what this all means, I'm just a injecting the daily dose of paranioa to get the blood circulating.

lol cool its gettign real scarryy

it´s really scary ......