FELT your first proposal to your girlfriend didn't have that panache when you asked her to 'buy an HDB flat together'?

While you think about proposing again for style and effect, this is what self-confessed geek Michael Weiss-Malik did: He used Google Maps' online gallery of street-level panoramas to propose to his girlfriend, reported Mercury News.

Images for Street View are captured by roving vehicle-mounted cameras, and being in the right company at the right time, Mr Weiss-Malik, a Google software engineer, was inspired.

Learning that his company was planning a drive-by of their Mountain View headquarters in California to capture a street-level map, Mr Weiss-Malik hiked up to the location and held a home-made sign imploring, 'Marry me Leslie!!'

After the images went online, he launched MarryMeLeslie.com on 5Aug, and posted an e-mail address for his sweetheart.

'When she woke me up, she asked why there were all these strangers e-mailing her telling her to marry me,' Mr Weiss-Malik said.

But according to his comments on the website, Mr Weiss-Malik said his girlfriend, Miss Leslie Moreno, had already agreed to the marriage - he proposed to her in April.

Despite that gutsy attempt, he felt that the original proposal, though heartfelt, was 'lacking in pizazz', Mr Weiss-Malik added on the site.

'So I did what any Silicon Valley geek would do: I decided to upgrade to Proposal 2.0.'

Despite the joy Google's Street View brought to the lives of the soon-to-be newly weds, it's not always a fairytale ending for this technology.

In Pennsylvania, a couple sued Google for US$25,000 ($34,500), alleging mental suffering after Google snapped photos of their house and pool.

Within days of the technology's introduction in the Bay Area of San Francisco, Google's rolling camera cars photographed a man urinating against a Highway 1 road sign, a pair of coeds sunbathing on Stanford's campus, and two men engaged in a full-on fistfight in San Francisco.

Despite all that, Mr Weiss-Malik said he's 'comfortable' with the technology. He and his fiancee plan a May wedding.

This story was first published in The New Paper on August 8, 2008.