14 DAY TRIAL // If you use Google Maps enough, you’re probably familiar with Pegman, the little orange man figure you can use to find Street View images and move about the map. Now, he’s become a lot more useful.
Dragging him over the map will not only reveal areas where Street View is available, it will also show the places where user photos, from the likes of Panoramio, Picasa and Flickr, are available. This way, you can navigate the world through photos even if the Street View cars haven’t gotten to that particular location, which is true for most of the places on Earth.
“As of today, [Pegman] has a new trick up his sleeve. He’s becoming our official photo tour guide, helping you not only navigate our Street View imagery where it’s available, but also helping to highlight the amazing geo-located photos the Panoramio photo community has contributed, as well as public images from Picasa and Flickr,” Dennis Tell, software engineer at Google Zurich, announced.
“There are images from pretty much every corner of the globe, so there is almost no end of sights and scenes to keep you busy. When you drag Pegman, you will now see small blue dots to show where user-contributed photos are available,” he explained.
If you’ve used this tool before, there’s nothing to surprise you. You drag Pegman from his comfortable place on the Google Maps interface and fling him about the world to find a spot you want to see in Street View. Now, you’ll also see dots representing user images. Depending on the zoom level, the more popular places are highlighted.
For example, if you’re seeing an entire continent, you’ll get a few interesting locations for every country. Hovering Pegman over one of the blue dots will show a photo of the location and the name of the place. Dropping him on the spot will reveal all the photos users have uploaded for that particular location. It’s a small update, but it probably exposes the photos to a lot more people, which can only be a good thing.