Google Street View: 3D maps

You can see every corner of New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles in three dimensions on the planes of Google Maps

"The privacy only exists inside your head." This sentence of veteran actor Will Smith Gene Hackman in the movie "Enemy of the State" could serve to illustrate well the situation in any Western city. Thousands of cameras, satellite, fixed or attached to vehicles, track and record the streets until the last square meter of our cities. The reason? Google is determined to make a map "online" in the world in three dimensions.

Google Maps: Internet and computer 

Google Maps, which is offered free on the Internet, can see in "satellite mode" aerial photographs anywhere on the planet except a few areas considered possible terrorist target, such as military bases America has around the world, the White House or the Pentagon.

The sparsely populated places like the desert of Monegros or some islands of Indonesia, have a resolution discrete since its uniformity does not require more detail. But big cities can be seen with a stunning resolution to the point of being able to distinguish a car, the roof of a house, a tree or a sheet hanging in the sun. This technology, based on images taken from space by satellites overlaid with detailed maps of all populated areas.

The Google Maps service gains in power if the surfer is downloaded to your computer the program Google Earth (which installs most of the information on the computer's hard disk so that you can move the images with real feeling be flying by the planet). And the experience is further enriched with Google Sky.

This program, including Google Earth, used to visualize the space, zooming in on constellations and star clusters, with a resolution equivalent to that which could be obtained only a decade ago with the best ground-based telescopes. It is even talk of an upcoming release of Google Oceans, to explore underwater funds.

In all these services, new ones are added periodically surprising to those who install or first-time visitors, as Panoramio, an application in which users put photos and information of interest on the maps. Others allow to locate information on the map private business such as restaurants, hotels and shops.

The result of adding the different layers of information (graphic, photographic and data provided by users) is becoming astonishing and allowed Google to become much more than a web browser. He is now able to seek services on the map to the user, and also charged for it. In this line, the next step to perfect his method is to show the streets of major cities around the world in three dimensions.

The strange black cars

This is where those strange black cars lately Google are seeing through some streets of Seville, Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid. They have a kind of articulated arm on the roof and a panoramic camera with eleven lenses. They are touring the Spanish cities photographing every corner, every window, every doorway ... Before they have done the same in middle Europe.

The services offered by Google so far, to be amazing, only allowed to play in the streets and cities in two dimensions, the service Google Street View adds the third dimension to the images just black cars are capturing from the streets, which run over a and again for weeks.

Then, at the headquarters of Google images mounted on the maps so that they are accessible to a mouse click that open sandwiches on the computer screen. These snacks offer a continuous view of the streets, as you would see a pedestrian or driver of a vehicle.

Google Street View is available in the maps of some U.S. cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is expected to also be available for European cities in the coming months.

Utilities Google Street View

Google Street View has several utilities for users. The most obvious: when looking for a trade, a room or a house to rent or buy, and you can see the map, aerial photo and also a continuous image of the facade, and the whole street. Even the whole neighborhood.

In this way the user can get a quick overview of how to get to the right place, how is it exactly, or what kind of neighbors would expect in a particular area. The same is true when you are thinking about choosing a university, be with friends in a bar or at a table at the restaurant that has not been before.

The service, of course, also has sparked some controversy: some people have been surprised to see his face in the images of Google Street View. The company, to avoid discomfort, has begun to blur thousands of faces. Anyway, there are netizens who are dedicated to the service track in search of the most striking images ... And, despite its obvious utility, Google Street View also raises the side of the Network gossip and results can be seen: burning cars, young sun, divers walking on the street in full sun, and even a boy at the time when the bicycle falls down.