Just as Garett anticipated, Google today announced that they have added a Street View feature in Google Maps at the Where 2.0 Conference.

With Street View, you can virtually explore city neighborhoods by viewing and navigating within 360-degree scenes of street-level imagery. It feels as if you’re walking down the street!

The video above (by Google) demonstrates how to use this new feature.

Google currently offers imageries of San Francisco (Golden Gate Bridge), New York (Time Square), Las Vegas, Miami (South Beach) and Denver, but more will come in the near future.

Impressive! I hope that they would make the transition between two images more smooth. :)

In addition to the Street Views, Google also launched “Google Mapplets“.

Mapplets are mini-webpages that are served inside an IFrame within the Google Maps site. You can put anything inside this mini-webpage that you can put into a normal webpage, including HTML, Javascript, and Flash. Google provides a Javascript API that gives the Mapplet access to services such as manipulating the map, fetching remote content, and storing user preferences.

You can learn more about how to make your own Mapplets here.