Smile, New York – it’s time for your close-up.

In the past few days, a gray four-door sedan with 360-degree panoramic cameras on its roof has been roaming the city’s streets, photographing sidewalks and buildings. It is on a mission for Google, creating a virtual streetscape for Street View, a feature of the Google Maps Web site.

The Google car has gained near-mythic status, in large part because it is easy to miss, even with its odd rooftop adornment, as it moves like Pac-Man through the city grid.

In recent days it has been glimpsed in Manhattan; earlier it was seen in Brooklyn.

Sightings are most frequent among those who make their living or spend their days on the street. Among those reporting it have been bike messengers, cabdrivers, panhandlers, FedEx workers and doormen.

Anthony Cepeda, 40, was working outdoors on Tuesday afternoon when he saw it on 32nd Street near Second Avenue. A bike messenger from Harlem who identified himself as Poe, 23, said he had seen it twice in Midtown during the past few weeks.

The car, with small Google insignias on the sides, is itself a popular target for photographers. New Yorkers have posted snapshots of it on blogs and on the Flickr Web site. The car is missing a hubcap; one online photograph showed a laptop computer between the front seats.

Jeremiah Moss, who runs a blog called Vanishing New York, posted a photograph of the car on 21st Street near Ninth Avenue. Mr. Moss said he spoke to the driver, who told him his next assignment was in Dubai.

Google officials are eager to preserve the car’s mystery status. They would not divulge the car’s route, but they did say that the car was in New York City for about a month, photographing streets in all five boroughs.

A Google spokeswoman, Elaine Filadelfo, would not say whether there was one car in New York or several. She denied a request for a ride in the car, saying the company did not want to risk exposing the “proprietary technology” used by the cameras.

Street View allows users to explore streets via panoramic street-level photographs with 360-degree views.

Stephen Chau, Google’s project manger for Street View, said each Google car had a global positioning device, used when the images are stitched together.

Users can see cars, pedestrians, homes, stores – basically anything on the street the precise moment the Google car rolled by. Google uses special “face-blurring technology” and sometimes obscures license plates.

A reporter for The New York Times spotted the car last Tuesday at a stoplight on West 15th Street near the West Side Highway and asked to ride along. The driver declined.

Google began its extensive photographing of New York City in 2006 to gather images for the May 2007 introduction of Street View, which brought a detailed rendering of New York and four other American cities to the world.

But in a city that changes in a New York minute, things have to be updated. On the current Street View, the news on the zipper in Times Square is outdated. A French film called “Blame It On Fidel” is listed on the marquee at Cinema Village on East 12th Street, although Jacob Weiner, 23, a ticket window attendant, said the film had stopped playing there long ago.

More than a year after the May 2007 debut, Google sent the car back for updates, Ms. Filadelfo said. Now it is back a third time, she said. The updated images are to be uploaded in one sweeping upgrade within a year.

The camera cars – and the wacky quotidian scenes they capture around the world – can be found in a quick YouTube search.

In countries with stringent privacy laws, including Greece and Germany, the Street View project has faced legal obstacles. In England, villagers have chased after the car, seeing it as an aid to potential burglars.

In New York, Norman Siegel, the civil rights lawyer, said he was concerned that Google was “compiling a database on New Yorkers who are simply walking in the street.”

“We have to make sure New York does not become an Orwellian city, but we seem to be moving in this direction,” he said.

Ms. Filadelfo said Google offers an option on the site that allows users to ask for the removal of specific images, which Google reviews. “The spirit of Google Maps is not to tie in a specific person to a specific place,” she said.

Street View displays detailed photographs of many bridges, tunnels and airports and other areas considered sensitive by law enforcement authorities after the Sept. 11 terror attack. A browser can “drive” through the Holland Tunnel, over the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges and through Kennedy International Airport.

Paul Browne, a spokesman for the Police Department, would say only that the Google cars had not raised any concerns.

The cars have created sufficient buzz that there is now – of course – a Web site, streetviewfun.com, devoted to tracking the car. Its creator, Peo Sandholm, 36, lives in Sweden.

(LINK to NY Times)