Googly Eyes Watching You

We talked about this Wednesday night: Google Maps has continued to refine their map-making skills... and get even MORE up close and personal. I'm not sure how many people are aware of this.

For example, recently in The Daily Tarheel, there was was an article about a new experiment (perhaps ill-conceived) in pedestrian crossings on the edge of UNC campus near the physics building. There's a neat-o 360-degree image of the intersection in question, which you can navigate right on the page. But that technology isn't confined to intersections like this.

Suppose we take the apartment complex where I used to live a few years ago:

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(This isn't a photo pasted from Google Maps; it's a live embedding of the map on the blog page.) You can click the '+'/'-' buttons to zoom in and out, and you can click-and-drag or use the directional arrows to move the view. Click the 'X' to make the address box go away.

However, did you know that you can also now do this?

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The directional arrows or click-and-drag now allow you to look up and around as if you are standing on the street. If you mouse-over the image so that the white arrows appear, clicking on the white arrows takes you in increments up and down the street.

Or, if you type "Open Eye Cafe, Carrboro, NC" into Google Maps, you will get this:

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and if you then click on the "street view":

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