If you’re lucky enough to own an iPhone or an iPod Touch then you’ll be delighted to hear that Google Sightseeing is now fully optimized for handheld sightseeing!

Just dig out your iPhone on Touch and point Safari to http://googlesightseeing.com/¹ to get the optimized site.

We’ve simplified the site layout to make it much easier to read on the small screen and reduce the download size for when you’re using the EDGE network.

The newly optimized GSS also integrates with your device’s built in Google Maps application, so you can now pinch zoom your way around the latest Google Sightseeing sights!

Lastly, we’ve also created a “Web Clip” icon, so you can add Google Sightseeing to the home screen for one-touch access!

We’d like to hear your feedback on the new site, so please either comment here or send us an email.

It’s special day here at GSS, as we’re letting one of our most loyal readers join us as a member of the writing team!

We’d like you to all welcome Rob Witherow, who we’re sure you’ll already know, as he’s usually the first person to comment on every post

Anyway, we’re looking forward to seeing what interesting posts he brings us in the future. His first entry is coming up now…

If you think that, like Rob, you might have what it takes to write for Google Sightseeing then please get in touch! We’d be especially interested in talking to those who are fluent in another language alongside English.

As 2007 draws to a close we present our choices for the best posts of the year.

Best Mystery

There were numerous contenders for the most confusing or bizarre images, but our pick is the Mystery Plane Outline, as even the generally accepted answer, that these are small rocks arranged in the shape of a plane, still begs the question: “But why bother?”.

Best personal project

In February we were impressed with one man’s attempt to single-handedly recreate a cruise ship in his front drive.

Lamest World Record

The Largest Wooden ship in the world from April easily wins this prize, due to having a less-than-exciting title and the fact that the specially built ship has never even been in the water!

A special mention also goes to the German towns squabbling over who has the most unintentionally leaning building.

Our Brains Hurt Award

Getting our heads around the Island and Lake recursion from September’s Island Week 2 was almost too much, but I think we get it now…

Best Smallest Thing

We loved the idea of the world’s smallest parks from January, but the world’s smallest municipal park was just too darn small to see from satellite! Fortunately, Google now have a street view shot of it.

Best World’s Most Enlarged Thing

In the last year we’ve featured many, many sights that claim to be the “World’s largest something” but our pick for the Best Largest something is the World’s largest fingerprint.

Best Imagery

Undoubtedly the most amazing images to be found in Google Earth are the African Megaflyover project aerial shots, and the best of these images were highlighted in November’s Google Sightseeing Safari.

Best Blurry Pictures

Some of the aerial images in Google Earth are amazingly high resolution, but not high enough for our tour of miniature parks across the globe, which ended up as a list of blurry blobs that sort-of look like the Eiffel tower.

Best Landart

The ancient Incan geoglyph of a cat is fantastic, and much more intersting and attractive than kfc’s logo stunt.

Most Ignored Warning

A few days after we posted this year’s April fools joke: “Live Satellite Images in Google Earth” we updated the entry with a banner warning users that it was a prank and there are no live images to be seen. Did anyone read that? Of course not! We still get a new message almost every week from someone who fell for the joke and wants to know where the live images are.

Most In-Depth Post

For a long time it had no decent imagery, so during Island Week this year we really went to town on our Easter Island post, and managed to condense 2,000 years of history into a mere 600 words.

Best Large Type

The rooftop message “Welcome to Cleveland” isn’t very interesting at first glance, until you realise that the message is over 400 miles away in Milwaukee!

So that’s our picks of the year, but with over 250 entries in 2007, what were your favourites?

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2008 – see you all next year!

Today’s the last day of work before our much needed Christmas break, so things will be quiet over the next week as we spend time with our families, eat too much food and celebrate Hogmanay.

So we leave you with our most christmass-y sights of the past.

Merry Christmas to all our readers!

A last minute imagery update of the year has appeared in Google Earth.

By my count the eighth update this year, Google have continued the recent trend of announcing the update with a scavenger hunt. Read the Latlong blog for the full hunt or try the comments on Gearth Blog for more direct instructions.

Get suggesting!