Google Street View: See Where You're Going Before You Get There

Have you checked out a great feature of Google Maps called Street View? Google Maps Street View provides 360° panoramic street-level views and allows users to view parts of selected cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas at ground level.

Google's just announced 12 new cities added to those available in Street View: Juneau (Alaska), Boise (Idaho), Salt Lake City (Utah), San Antonio (Texas), Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill (North Carolina), Manchester (New Hampshire), Kansas City (Missouri), Milwaukee (Wisconsin), Albany, Schenectady (New York).

Besides being fun, there's a lot of great uses for Street View - maybe you want to see where the parking lot is at a new restaurant, what the terrain around a Metro station is or perhaps what property in an area you want to locate your business in looks like.

One caveat is that the imagery in Street View is (at least not yet) real time. Much of the imagery used in Google Maps Street View could be a few years old such as I found in the image to the right of our favorite local grocery store here in the NoHo Arts District, home to SADA Systems, Inc. The photo shows HOWS Market (the location of a great in-store wine tasting bar by the way) still under construction; probably about 18 months ago.

Here's a video showing how Google Maps Street View works: