 Street View arrives in SA
By Tallulah Habib
Hours of productivity were probably lost today as Google Maps Street View South Africa went live. Aside from helping tourists find their way around SA, locals now get the chance to see how beautiful their country really is, from close up.
To find a place on Street View, all you have to do is type the address into Google the same way you would if you were writing a letter. Google Maps will come up and you will see a little orange man by the zoom button, which you can drag onto any street on the map to see what it would look like if you were standing there. You can rotate the view by dragging it, zoom in by double clicking and click on arrows to explore.
 “The picture quality is absolutely amazing,”
says Lee Pace, a Johannesburg computer science teacher. “I have looked at Street View on Google Earth but it is much more difficult to find things and the quality of the photograph is not nearly as good! I have been doing Google Earth with my kids at school.
They are keen to find the school and their houses but it is quite difficult to identify the house from the air so this will definitely be on the menu as soon as we get back to school after the holidays!”
Despite the clarity of the pictures, Google has deliberately obscured faces and number plates to protect privacy. The pictures also only feature what is visible from public roads.
Street View South Africa is the first on the African continent and is available in English, isiZulu and Afrikaans.
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