What is Google Street View:

The newspapers are full of it so I suppose by now everyone knows what “Google Street View” is and what it does.
But, for those who do not know, “Google Street View” is a free service offered by Google which gives us the ability to view 360 ° pictures of streets at street level. In the beginning, it was only available for U.S. cities, but now, it is also available in Belgium and the Netherlands.

There have already been several protests against this service, since it would be an invasion of privacy. But honestly, I don’t care a damn, if someone sees my house.
Indeed, one does, when they walk in my street.
But, what I care about is, if my car is seen outside a pub, when I am supposed to be working. Then, I should not be going to the pub.
There are further implications as well.
On Thursday, I also heard a cop on the news, claiming that “Street View” would be useful for burglars.
Its routine for politicians to try to convince people about something.
But, the cops are doing the same thing, in this case, which is something new.

Lets continue with the “Google Street View” course.
It may not be useful for you, but perhaps, it might be handy for a burglar 😉

Opening Google Streetvieuw

To open “Google Street View”, we get connected to the Internet, as usual, and start the “Google Maps” service.

To surf to “Google Maps”, we have various methods.
One way is, go to maps.google.com

A second way is, go to www.google.com (1) and click “Maps” (2).
Whichever way it is,  you get to Google maps.

Once you’re in “Google Maps”, enter the address in the space provided (1) to see the street view of the place you want to see.
Click on the “Street View” (2) button and it will take you into the heart of Brussels, the Great City.
For the rest of this short course I will close the “Navigation pane”, so that we get to see more of “Street View”.
Just click the left arrow (3).

Ok, once the address is entered, press the Enter key on your keyboard.
“Google Maps” displays an indicator (1) at the address we entered in the “Search bar”.

The only thing we have to do to view the “Street View” of this place, is to drag the orange “guy” that is found above the zoom lever (1), to the location indicator.
That is the pink ballon with the A in it (4).

When you click and drag the orange “guy” on the map, you’ll see that certain streets appear in blue (2), and others remain white (3).
Those in blue, can be seen in Street View, but not those in white.
Google hasn’t captured these streets on camera, or they would have been displayed.
When you click and drag the orange “guy”, and release the mouse button, this guy will position himself in the street on which you released the mouse button.
So you do not need to drag the position indicator (4). You can release it whereever you want.
When you release the guy in a place where no street view is available, this guy is automatically placed back in his original position. That is above the zoom lever.

When you drag the guy across the map, thumbnails of the photos are displayed (5).

If you release the guy, or rather the mouse button, then you end up at the “Street View” of the particular street or square.
As you can see, in the picture below, I arrived at Parklaan in Sint-Niklaas.

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