Google Street View updated to include Hartwell

Google's revolutionary, and sometimes controversial, Street View system has been expanded to include all the streets in Hartwell, as well as most of the UK.

The "new" imagery is quite old however - about a year old for Hartwell.

What is Street View?

Street View takes Google Maps to a new level, allowing you to visually explore and navigate a neighbourhood through panoramic street-level photographs.

How do I view Street View?

Street View imagery appears as the lowest zoom level in Google Maps (maps.google.co.uk). Search for your postcode, and where images are available on the map the pegman icon on the left hand side will be coloured orange. To access the images, you can drag the orange "Pegman" icon on the left-hand side of the map onto a street outlined in blue. You can move up and down streets, or look around in 360 degree panoramas.

Street View imagery is also available on Google Maps for mobile devices - eventually Google plan to release a free satnav using the imagery, so that you can see directions on real photos of your surroundings.

What about Privacy?

Personally I think Google Street View is an amazing tool, and will lead onto even more amazing and useful applications in the future. However not everyone agrees, and privacy is a bit issue.

Google's website gives the following information on privacy:

• Public access only - Street View contains imagery that is no different from what you might see driving or walking down the street
• Street View images are not real time - Our images show only what our vehicles were able to see on the day that they drove past the location. Afterward, it takes at least a few months to process the collected images before they appear online.
• Individuals and license plates are blurred - We have developed cutting-edge face and license plate blurring technology that is applied to all Street View images. This means that if one of our images contains an identifiable face (for example that of a passer-by on the pavement) or an identifiable license plate, our technology will automatically blur it out, meaning that the individual or the vehicle cannot be identified.
• You can request removal of an image - We provide easily accessible tools allowing users to ask us to remove any images that feature inappropriate content (for example: nudity), or to remove any picture that features the user, their family, their car or their home.

You can find out how to request removal of an image at http://www.google.co.uk/help/maps/streetview/privacy.html