If you’ve ever used Google Maps (which I assume you have), you will know all about Street View. But did you also know there are many cool, funny and useful Street View mashups that let you do more than just view the street? Personally, I’ve always heard these Google street view mashups existed, but never really took the time to check them out. After exploring some really cool Google Earth mashups recently, I decided it was high time to see what could be done with Street View.

I’ll tell you this - I wasn’t disappointed. Turns out you can do anything from playing games to reading tweets right on top of Google Street View. The only downside with most of these services is that they require Flash, and some also work better in Chrome. Aside from that, you’re in for an adventure!

Streetview Zombie Apocalypse

google street view mashup

Streetview Zombie Apocalypse is a game played on top of Google Street View, which challenges you to run away from zombies in your own neighborhood, or any other location you choose. You start by entering a location, and then proceed to navigate your way around the streets, trying to escape the zombies. And they’re quick. You can’t see yourself on the map, which makes it a bit hard to get oriented, but all the red tags you see on the top right corner are zombies. Stay alive as long as you can!

Note: the game is highly experimental, and might crash at any time. It also works better on Chrome, but I’ve managed to get it working on Firefox as well.

Peugeot RCZ View

street view mashup

This is not much more than a Peugeot commercial, but it’s a really cool one. in RCZ view, you get to drive a Peugeot RCZ sports car on any route you choose. Well, you don’t actually get to drive it, but you get to sit there and feel as though you’re driving it. Just enter a starting point and a destination, or choose one of the provided routes, and watch the magic happen. I didn’t expect much from this one, but it’s actually cooler than expected, especially if you pick a route you know well. It is stop motion, but it’s fast enough to feel almost real!

Stweet

street view mashup

Stweet is an artistic mashup between good old Twitter and Google Street View. Choose a city from the dropdown menu, or enter your own location at the bottom. Stweet will then show you a geo-tagged tweet, with a Street View image to match. Stweet refreshes automatically every few seconds, so you can sit there and watch tweets appear on top of places you know, or entirely new places you’ve never been to. A fun little project that gives you a glimpse into other people’s lives through more than just text.

Global Genie

street view mashup

Global Genie is a Street View mashup that takes you on a journey to different parts of the world. From the list on the right you can choose the continents that interest you most, and then click on “Teleport” to let Global Genie carry you off to some random spot. You can set Global Genie to automatically update every 10 or 30 seconds, or teleport yourself manually. On the bottom right, you can see your location on a map, to get a better idea of where you are. Great for discovering places you’ve never seen before, without the hassle of actually looking for them.

Geosay

google street view mashup

Geosay is an interesting project, which connects things people are saying on Twitter, Foursquare and other places to locations on a map, and yes, to Street View. When you first look at Geosay, the concept is not very clear, but you soon start discovering what people are saying very close to where you are, and that’s when it becomes interesting. Simply let the app use your current location, or enter a location manually. Geosay will present a map of the place, along with what people are saying near that location. You can click on “Streetview” to look at the actual places.

There’s another neat trick you can do with Geosay, and that’s looking at landmarks from Wikipedia. To try this, find a Wikipedia page of a landmark you’re interested in, and then paste the following in your address bar:

http://geosay.com/#!wikipediastreetview=[URL of Wikipedia page here]

This will usually show a street view of the landmark, along with what people are saying around it. Pretty neat!

Discover More Places

Didn’t get your fill?  Do you want to discover more places using Google Street View? Check out these 6 Websites To Do Some Virtual Globetrotting With Google Street View.

Let us know in the comments if you know of some other cool Google Street View mashups we missed!