After watching the Mapplets YouTube clip I found another clip showing the new Street View feature (which has been available for a little while now). It’s available at the usual Google Maps site when you’re zoomed out, over the USA (sadly it’s not available for any other countries yet).
Once you’re there, clicking on the Street View button at the top shows some camera icons (not that many at the moment) and choosing one allows you to enter a 360 degree panorama mode. That, by itself wouldn’t be ground breaking, after all, you may have already seen some impressive panoramas using Panoramio which are available from within Google Earth. The thing that’s amazing is that you can move around the area (highlighted as blue glowing roads) either by dragging the little yellow person around the map or, even better, by clicking on guidelines within the panorama, walking you along the roads.
Panoramas seem to be available for every few metres along the roads, which is very impressive.
Here’s the YouTube clip which pointed it out to me… nevermind about the guy in the lycra :o)
