Street Viewer for Google Maps...

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Have you checked out Google Maps Street Viewer yet? If you haven't, it's a 3-D map function from select cities that shows you what it looks like if you were driving or walking on the streets themselves. It was launched to much fanfare almost exactly a year ago.

Personally, I pretty much ignored it after the first day, since I don't live in San Fran, Denver or any of the six original cities. However, since the debut, Google has quietly been adding cities to its uber-cool map feature. While they still haven't made it to my current living place for even the regular maps (which I've mentioned before), they did recently add Manchester, NH to their lineup. Manchester is New Hampshire's biggest city, but only has about 150,000 citizens. So, apparently to not waste their time in the Granite State, Google added surrounding communities - including my hometown of Auburn. That's my parents' house in the picture. One of the car's is mine (I used to park it on the lawn when I kept it in storage), the ones actually in the driveway belong to my family that still lives there. I have no idea who the other cars on the lawn belong to and that yellow school bus up on blocks in the back belonged to a roving, homeless, evangelical preacher that set up camp for a couple weeks.

I've found myself spending (no, wasting) time slowly clicking through the streets, trying to see if I can spot a neighbor out in their yard or driving by in their car. So far, I haven't come up with anything good (I was kinda hoping to spot my mom walking our dogs or something), but I keep checking back when I have some down time from watching lint collect on my floor or detecting patterns in TV static - you know, the usual things I do around my home/office.

Every time I finish clicking down a road or find myself trying to peer around the corners of houses, I feel a little bit like a Peeping Tom. I'm staring at people and their homes without their knowledge, taking my time to peruse their windows and yards and checking out the make and model of their cars. Wow - that sounds even more creepy written out like that.

Real-to-life-everything is the wave of the future. And there's definitely an advantage to show someone what turn-by-turn directions look like. However, it's going to take me a bit of time before I feel totally cool about Street Viewer.

But since the function isn't going to go away (more towns are being added practically daily), I guess I just gotta keep being a Peeping Tom until that weird feeling in the pit of my stomach goes away. Maybe it's guilt, maybe it's because the milk in my fridge is dated June 1st. Only time will tell...

In the meantime, check out some fun Street Viewer images at streetviewr.com.