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The secret door to Google's hidden world

Google Street View hides a lot of buried treasure of gorgeous interactive panoramas of places captured by the Street View cameras -- website Secret Door lets you in.

Michelle Starr Science editor
Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she hopes to get you as enthralled with the wonders of the universe as she is. When she's not daydreaming about flying through space, she's daydreaming about bats.
Michelle Starr

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Google Street View hides a lot of buried treasure of gorgeous interactive panoramas of places captured by the Street View cameras -- website Secret Door lets you in.

It used to be just a cool mapping tool to check that you were standing outside the right address, but Google's Street View didn't take long to expand off the roads.

With Google Collections, the service is showing users life under the ocean, the Amazon rainforest, the Swiss alps, and even the wonders of the world.

Combined with Photo Spheres -- that is, the Android project that lets users upload their own experiences to Street View in panorama form -- there is a lot of Google's hidden world to explore from the comfort of your home.

But you might not be able to find it all. Cue Secret Door: a website that opens a door to a random interactive panorama from the Street View collections. It really brings a sense of both magic and childlike discovery to Street View discovery -- like Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree, you're never entirely sure what land you are going to end up in.

We're holding out for The Land of Do-As-You-Please.

Try it out below, or visit the website here.

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Via www.fastcoexist.com