A VIRTUAL stroll along Oxford’s historic streets and a snoop through almost every neighbourhood within the ring road is now available online.

Google’s Street View system was launched in the UK last week and offers users the ability to roam around the city on a computer screen.

Oxford is one of 25 UK cities to be included in the latest update to the free service, which was launched with coverage of five US cities in May 2007.

Millions of digital photos were taken by swivelling cameras mounted to the roofs of Google cars as they painstakingly mapped most of Oxford’s main roads and side streets last summer and autumn.

Images showing the dates of concerts at what is now the O2 Academy, in Cowley Road, East Oxford, show the filming was done last June.

Some users will be able to spot their own cars or even images of themselves, but Google said it had used automated software to blur people’s faces and car number plates. However, the launch has not been without teething problems.

The Internet search engine company admitted the technology had accidentally blurred the faces of some statues and horses — and in Oxford, Magdalen College was initially spelled with an ‘e’ on the end – the spelling used by Cambridge University’s Magdalene College.

Ed Parsons, Google’s geo-spatial technologist, said: “Street View has been hugely popular with our users in Europe and worldwide and we're thrilled it's now available in the UK for so many great cities, enabling users to see street-level panoramas of major city roads and look up and print out useful driving directions.”

Google spokesman Laura Scott said the question of privacy had been taken very seriously.

She said: “Street View only contains imagery that is already visible from public roads and features technology that blurs both faces and licence plates.

“In addition, any user can easily flag images for removal that he or she considers inappropriate by clicking on ‘Report a concern’.”

Cartoon character Wally, from the Where’s Wally children’s books, has been hidden in one location in the UK for users to find.

To try out the system, see maps.google.co.uk/help/ maps/streetview/ tairs@oxfordmail.co.uk