Florida's 825 Miles of Beaches Are Coming to Google Map's Street View

By Kyle Munzenrieder 
New Times Blog

Courtesy of Visit Florida

Have you ever wanted to take a trip down one of Florida's beaches without leaving your computer? Well, that's kind of sad, but starting next year you'll be able to.

Visit Florida, the state's tourism and marketing arm, has teamed with Google to use their street mapping technology to capture all 825 miles of Florida's beaches. The trek is almost over and next year you'll be able to take that virtual beach stroll.

We've all seen those Google cars with those intricate 15 lens camera systems hoisted on the roofs, but you can't drive on many of Florida's beaches. So instead Google engineers trained a two-person Visit Florida team on how to capture the images by strapping the camera systems to their backs. Oh, and by the way, it's Florida's money, not Google's, that is paying for all of this. The total cost is $126,000.

The team so far has traveled about 50 miles a day since July and are still walking. The project is scheduled to be completed today when the final team walks down South Beach and reaches South Pointe Park.

Of course, we just feel sorry for the flabby guy visiting from Ohio who decided that this trip would be the trip he decided to experiment with a Speedo and whose image will now be immortalized on Google Maps.

Google has completed a similar project mapping the Grand Canyon, but this is the first major beach project coming to Google Maps.