Google recently launched Street View for Google Maps, which integrates a street level view into the map. You can view some of the streets in San Francisco (click street view in the upper right hand modes).

The technology, which was an acquisition from Stanford, allows you to virtually drive down city streets. They apply blurs and 3D mapping to the images that makes for a seamless and smooth navigating experience.

Currently, they have good coverage of San Francisco, including most of the major streets in the entire SOMA district. This brings us one step closer to being able to virtually walk down any street in the US without the computer.

Now, if only they had a real time view so that I could figure out where all the empty parking spaces are next to my apartment before leaving work.

Yesterday night was the first NewTeeVee Pier Screenings. I got the chance to cover it as the official GigaOM photographer. The night turned out to be fabulous, and I got a lot of great shots in, including some long exposure photos like the one above. You can also view the whole set on Flickr.

Tomorrow is the first NewTeeVee Screenings hosted by the fine people at GigaOM. They’ll be showing and judging online videos on a massive 16 by 12 foot screen.

Here are more details:

The NewTeeVee and Metacafe Pier Screenings summer series will be a live extension of NewTeeVee.com, showcasing online video technology and content in an outdoor movie screening format. Community-chosen selections of the best web videos from the Pier Screenings website will be projected on a large screen on an outdoor pier in San Francisco.

The event includes judging by the audience, with commentary from our own American Idol panel of Nick Douglas of Look Shiny, Irina Slutsky of PodTech, and Jackson West of NewTeeVee. In addition, we’ll conduct an interview with a surprise guest who’s uniquely qualified in the area of episodic video success.

And yes, there will be popcorn and other movie-esque treats. It’s free to sign up, so what are you waiting for?

Today, Google announced a change to the Google Personalized Homepage. It’s now called iGoogle. Apparently, Googlers have been calling it that for a while.

In the end, not really exciting, but, I’m thrilled to finally know what that damned “ig” stands for in the url. Here’s to more useful Google gadgets being made.