Today we’re embarking on a brand new journey.

After long negotiations with Britain’s national mapping agency, we’re extremely pleased to announce that from today the website previously known as Google Sightseeing is to become ORDNANCE SURVEY SIGHTSEEING.

Ordnance Survey is one of the world’s largest producers of maps, and from now on we’ll only be linking to their highly detailed printed maps, and pointing out interesting features represented by a vast array of different icons.

We plan to feature footpaths, cycle paths, topographical sightings, water features and much, much more!

One of the most exciting features we’re bringing to you today means that each time you click through to our map, you’ll need to decide whether you need to see the OS Route, OS Road, OS Tour, OS Landranger, OS Explorer, OS Explorer Active or OS Landranger Active map! You’ll also be able to set the scale of the map at this point, but you won’t be able to change your mind again later.

Users of our map page API should be aware that as of today, latitude and longitudes will no longer work in the query string, and all lookups must instead be performed using an OS Grid reference. Additionally, all KML files will henceforth become GML format, and all previous files will cease to work.

Of course, using all this OS map data isn’t free, so we’ll be expecting all of our readers to chip in some cash to pay for the maps.

We’d like to thank you all for your support over the last four years, and sincerely hope you’ll continue with us on the latest leg of our journey towards inevitable Geographic Nirvana.

Update: Due to overwhelming popularity of the new site we’ve already burned through all our venture capital and “Ordnance Survey Sightseeing Inc.” are now bankrupt. The administrators are planning to revert the site to “Google Sightseeing” on April 2nd, 2009.

Yes people, it’s finally here. UK Street View has arrived. We will update this post as news develops! UK news agencies looking for comment can get in touch via our contact form

Street View has arrived here in the UK at long last, and Google have given us imagery in many parts of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Additionally, Street View is now available in the Netherlands for the first time, and while they were at it, Google has added several new cities in France and Spain!

Coverage is extensive, and covers all of the UK’s major cities. Both of the GSS HQs in Edinburgh and Oxford have coverage, and London has an absolutely staggering number of blue lined streets!

In Edinburgh the images appear to have been taken mainly during the Edinburgh Festival, which explains why there’s lots of odd looking people around.¹ You can see the seating for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in place on the Castle Esplanade.

Here’s London’s seat of power, Downing Street, showing off their awesome security measures, which has been captured alongside all of the other standard tourist sights like the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

In Belfast, it seems that the famous Northern Irish political murals aren’t safe from Google’s face-blurring software!

The Netherlands has also received a large helping of Street View today with coverage of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Here’s the “Coffee Shop Extase” and Sex Museum:

Other reports are coming in of new Street View imagery in France (including Calais and Le Havre), Spain (including expanded coverage or Barcelona), Northern Italy, and expanded coverage in numerous US states.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest news, and new Street Views throughout the day.

Google Maps Mania has a good selection of London sights to see, but what else have you found?

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the launch of our first foreign language translations of Google Sightseeing, when we launched Google Sightseeing Français translated by Julien Gremillot, and Google Sightseeing Italiano translated by Alexei Popov.

Many congratulations to Julien and Alexei, who have both now translated more posts than there are days in the year!

Since then both sites have grown considerably – proving very popular with their readers, and both Julien and Alexei have started writing their own unique posts too.

In addition to French and Italian now have Google Sightseeing Deutsch translated by Jenni and Joel Fuchs, who are working really hard to bring Google Sightseeing to the German speaking world, and Google Sightseeing Nederlands which has been recently re-launched by the able team of Karel Gillissen and Willem Hage.

Recent highlights of our translators doing their own posts have been Julien’s French version of our Top 10 Rudest Place Names in Britain, entitled Top 10 des noms de villes grossiers en France, and the Jenni and Joel’s rude German version – Top 10 Unanständigste Ortsamen in Deutschland.

Of course we’re not done with our quest to bring satellite sightseeing to the world! Over at Google Sightseeing Español we’re currently looking for a new Spanish writer to continue the excellent work Eduardo Moreno began and If you’re a GSS reader who is fluent in a language other than English, perhaps you’d like to get involved? We’d love to hear from you if you think there’s a case for bringing Google Sightseeing to your mother tongue!

Over the weekend Google rolled out another major image update to Google Earth. Frank at the GEarth Blog is tracking the updates, and has so far spotted changes all over the place!

Scotland, China, Africa, South Korea, Mongolia, Iceland, Sweden, France, Norway, Turkey, Brazil, Bangladesh, Italy, Uruguay, Qatar, Canada, England, Argentina, Maldives, Greenland, Mexico, and the US states of Wisconsin and South Dakota.

Not too far from the GSS Scottish HQ, the new imagery has revealed this set of giant footprints, one of which appears to have become a rather effective van trap.

Update: Twitter user Mantolwen, who sent us this link, actually went along there today and took some photos of the footprints, as they’re still clearly visible. Thanks Mantolwen!

Elsewhere in Scotland we can see the some superb images of the previously featured Falkirk Wheel, which is appearing on Google Earth for the first time, and I also found my own car!¹

Not all of the images are of improved quality however – presumably because more up-to-date images are the thing desired by your regular Google Earther.

However, GEarth Blog also reports that there has been a whole slew of new historical imagery added in this update, covering even more of the globe than the new updated images.²

So what new sights can you find near you?

Thanks to Frank at the Google Earth Blog and @Mantolwen on Twitter for the giant feet!

FINAL UPDATE: We’ve now found enough writers and aren’t looking for any more submissions at this time. However we will post another post in the future if we should require any more help!

Google Sightseeing has been running since April 2005, and in that time we’ve posted over 1,550 entries.

Due to real-life commitments however, we often don’t get to spend as much time exploring the world as we think our readers would like us to, so we’ve decided to recruit more paid writers to join us on the team here at Google Sightseeing!

Although we rely on user suggested sights for inspiration, each entry is individually researched and personally hand crafted by the author. Therefore successful applicants will have a genuine interest in the subjects we write about on Google Sightseeing, and of course excellent written English skills.

Do you think this might be you? Then get in touch through our contact form for more information!