It’s amazing and scary at the same time. This picture is my sister’s street. I’ve never been anywhere near her house, street, city or state but suddenly – with a couple of clicks – I feel like I know the place well.

With Google Map’s ‘Street View’ you can now get 360 degree views of most main streets in major cities in US, France, Japan, Australia. I can walk down the street and turn down other streets. It really is amazing. I spent an hour last night just ‘walking around’ downtown Tokyo, New York and Australia (found a really beautiful town). It’s quite an experience. The images are sharp, you can move around. It’s kind of like a film I watched a few weeks ago called ‘Jumper’ where the guy could traverse space and time. By thinking of a destination he’d be there in a blink. For now, this is the closest we’ll get. But man, it’s good.

I can’t resist it any longer. It’s shiny and curvy … flashy and slick … colourful and useful … and FREE (on some 20-year, £150 per month O2 contract).

There’s a marketing segment for my type of people. People who resist new technology, especially when it’s really new. We look on in disbelief at the queues of tech-setting customers outside high street stores, looking to get their hands on the next gadget that will super-speed / streamline their lives. I once dismissed the internet as another of these ‘fads’ until it suddenly dawned on me that it was here to stay. Oh, well … we all make mistakes [he says gazing wistfully at the shiny iPhone image - even their images are shiny!]. And wasn’t Bill Gates alleged to have once uttered the words: “640K is more memory than anyone will ever need”. Maybe. Probably not. Anyhow, my point is … I’ve changed! I’m a changed person. I embrace technology, widgets, gadgets, web apps, social networking, web 2.0, web 3.0, web x.0 …. whatever it is, I embrace it. Now … where’s the end of that iPhone queue.