While many spend hours scouring Google Earth looking for topless sunbathers, aeroplanes or mountain climbers Google’s new Street View maps will be so much more fun! See my post earlier in the week for more information.

Here’s some of the best so far:

• Steve Job house
• The geeks outside Google offices
• Someone who looks suspiciously like he is breaking and entering
• The faces of people in an adult book shop
• A drug deal
• A ghost
• (Which would explain the presence of Mystery Inc)
• A sweet Ferrari
• Which unfortunately is not the one getting this parking ticket
• And of course two obligatory bikini shots - bikini1 and bikini2

I also found a link to a Police Investigation - but it has been removed by Google already - the first of many I would suspect.

For those that have not seen this yet, check out this new feature on Google maps: link here

Google maps now include street level photos that you can navigate along. Click on street and then navigate using the arrows. Unfortunately, Street View as it is known is only available in New York, San Francisco, Miami, Denver and Las Vegas, but it will awesome when it available everywhere — how long does it take to photograph the whole world?

Product manager for Google Maps, Stephen Chau explains some of the cool applications:

“We can see all sorts of uses, I just moved to a new apartment, and I used Street View to check out the neighborhood…. You can preview the location to see if the real estate listing is accurate — is it close to public transportation, and so forth. There’s a sightseeing aspect to it that way… It could also be helpful if you’re trying to find that great little Italian restaurant downtown whose name you forgot. If you don’t know the name, you can’t exactly look it up, but if you can retrace your steps, virtually, you may find it and be able to zoom in on its sign.”

I have justed looked at the almost finalised design of a large web project I am involved in and all of a sudden a stylised map has been introduced as a means of navigation. In this particular site, the map probably works - except that I hate stylised maps on websites that are meaningless. You see so many website maps, say of where a hostel or hotel or even office is, that show the building on a map with a couple of streets around it - but they are completely meaningless. A traveller simply can not make head or toe of where the property is in relation to the city, public transport etc.

I believe that everyone should consider using something like the Google API if they are going to put a map on their website, unless of course your design can create a good looking map that is useable. Maps should be able to be zoomed, at least a relative perspective of the location.

This little rant is no less applicable to maps of countries. Say you have a couple of locations in Australia and a couple of locations in NZ. If you draw the stylised maps in scale a traveller will get the misbelief that Franz Josef and Queenstown are only a short hop - after all they are so close together on the map relative to Sydney and Brisbane (no regard for the bloody great mountains in between). Alternatively, if you don’t draw them in scale you get the reverse perception - Sydney to Cairns looks about the same distance as Wellington to Auckland.

It is not a case of under estimating the intelligence of the traveller - simply recognising that they have no comprehension of the sheer size of Australia (or in the case of local maps, the fact that Auckland is not some small flat city easily walked around) or winding and undulating nature of New Zealand roads. Maps on websites should reflect this vital travel information.