In case anyone missed it, Google Maps has added Street View to the Tampa area.

Street View is a way to "get on the ground" with any current map or satellite view you may already be enjoying, and has been a part of Google maps in many large cities like New York for some time now. Google apparently creates these maps by utilizing Google cars that drive the streets automatically capturing and digitizing images from a specially crafted 3D camera. If you want the complete low down on Google Map Street View, they'll happily explain.

You can now take a tour of the Teco Line Streetcar Line from the comfort of your own home, even naked!

This is the streetview looking up Franklin Street - the point of focus in the Whiting Street expansion.

This is just an awesome addition to local Google mapping, and another nod in Tampa's great relationship with their mapping team.

If you're interesting in starting at the car barn, this should do the trick.

• Google Street View, beginning at Teco Line car barn
  

Once there, click "street view" and enjoy.

Also, the NEW Hillsborough Center Webcam

And, there's yet another way to enjoy the streetcar system remotely. It seems that Hillsborough County has installed a fantastic little webcam that allows for a high degree of selective viewing by each web visitor, and, which can focus on the Channelside streetcar station.

A zoom view of Tampa Tribune Streetcar Station

Ideally the streetcar will one day have a webcam of its own (I have an idea I'm butting around for that), but in the meantime, those who want to see the streetcar in streaming action for themselves can rely on this. Camera control appears to be 90 seconds per session. And, of course, there are a lot of other things you can zero in on at whim.

• The Hillsborough County Center webcam is here.