] Fly from space to your home town. Visit exotic
] locales such as Maui, Tokyo, Rome and Paris.
] Satellite imagery makes it real. Explore restaurants,
] hotels, parks and schools. Think magic carpet ride!

Indeed. This is one of Google's new aquisitions, and it is hella cool. You start out floating over a picture of the earth built with satellite images. You can tilt and rotate. You can zoom in. In urban areas you can typically zoom in close enough to see cars. You can type in a street address and it will fly you there with a very smooth animation. You can also tilt your camera when you are close in and see topographical features in 3d. The grand canyon is particularly interesting in this regard, especially if you tell it to exaggerate heights. All the images come from the net so they'll be updated over time. Wow.

This is the map of the future.

[ Pretty neat. I used to play with TerraServer a lot... this is a cool (major) evolution of that. Of course, there is no Mac client yet... which sucks.

By the way, anyone notice that Cambridge, MA has a resolution of 3 inches? There's a lot of 1 ft. res areas, but it would seem the collegians in Cambridge may have required better pix for something or other.... i'm curious as to why now. -k]

Keyhole