Getting lost was never this much fun. Nor was exploring alternate routes to a destination. As we wander through streets noting down little details that lend character to our towns and cities and look at what is brought together as a world map, the World Wide Web opens numerous options for us and many others to map the length and breadth of the world - one street at a time, all with one click. This thanks to umpteen websites and mobiles playing host to online maps.

“Online maps are a great way to see panoramas of streets from all over the world and the improved tools on website including overlaying user photos and the ability to view Street View in full screen gives it a new prospective,” Manik Gupta, Geo Products Lead, Japan & Asia Pacific, Google, tells us with Google Earth’s Street View navigation, you can travel to a new place just by double clicking on the place or object you would like to see. Here, while you can enjoy a three-dimensional view and shuttle from one side of a river to another to see a faraway building. “This is a great way to travel virtually to several places all around the world,” Gupta talks about millions of users, who regularly use the services of the website that maps 210 countries and has high resolution imagery coverage for over half the world’s population.

From finding hotels, restaurants, ATMs, banks and several places of interest to noting down transit directions to places of interest, there’s lots one can do. “Via this, friends travelling together are able to even make spontaneous plans by tracking each other’s locations on their cell phones,” chips in Rahul Kapoor, a BCom final year student, who via Blackberry’s Global Positing System posts the position map to his friends. “My friends can also track me to the last five meters if they want,” he tells us.

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