Tired of waiting for Google to deliver on their promise to bring Street View to Canadian streets? Wait no longer! Well, unless of course you really want Google to do it. But if you’re fine letting a local company do the same thing, with fullscreen capabilities, extremely high res photos, and even a body cam to capture the pedestrian-only areas (i.e. around Whistler), then you’re in luck! Canpages has developed a Street View add-on to Google Maps, and they’ve already covered many of the popular areas around Metro Vancouver and beyond!
To make a good thing even better, the maps still display great business listings so you can find what you’re looking for whether it’s the nearest laundromat, or a new restaurant for date-night dinner – only rather than seeing it like a big tack on a map, you can now take a look from street level to find exactly where it is, and what it looks like. This a super fun and enjoyable process too, especially using the fullscreen mode (pictured above) which offers options to adjust image brightness, sharpness, projection/angle, to zoom in/out, and more.
In addition to these features, the app also has a very easy to use interface. Click on or near any of the blue lines on the map, and you’ll be taken to a street view of the nearest recorded street. From there, you can drag the blue view cone of the street view icon guy and the image will adjust in realtime to face whichever direction you choose.
Similarly to the Google Street View, you can also nudge your way along a street by clicking the blue dots (the closest pad will take you to the next photo, but you can reach ahead a few pads to jump a little further). Maybe a cyber trip down to English Bay will tickle your fancy?
Another great thing about the Canpages Street View is the coverage they already have online. Rather than being limited to the downtown core, the system reaches into Stanley Park, around Vancouver, out to the airport in Richmond, up to SFU on Burnaby Mountain, even to downtown New Westminster, where condominium projects are still barreling along. (and don’t forget Whistler!)
With such an easy to use interface, high quality images, and integration with the Canpages listings, I definitely suggest checking it out if you have a few extra minutes this weekend. Simply head over to Canpages.ca, enter in a category of business you’re looking for, and browse the streetscapes of Metro Vancouver to your heart’s content!
(please note this site is, in fact, not canpages, so searching for your street on my blog won’t give you any results)
