I am waiting for google maps to be more interactive and in depth.
I don’t know about you, but I want to do the hybrid view of my area and see what restaurants, stores and shops are nearby.
This would also be great for traveling. Just hop on the internet, look at your general are and scan.
Sure, you can search for individual things “theaters, city, state,” “restaurants, city, state,” etc, but you may miss out on something you didn’t think of. When you can cruise up and down a street for businesses without leaving home, that is great technology.
Yes it is. There are loads and loads of overlays that can be placed over the map data, especially if you live in the States, much of it defined by other Google earth Users. It’s far more powerful than the browser based Maps.
Wow, just ran Google Earth and saw how they’ve presented the Darfur genocide showcase. It’s well worth having a look if you’re not aware of what Google has done. Superb.
This displays real-time traffic reports drawn from the BBC travel desk RSS feed.
For example, jjimm would be able to select Oxford on the left-hand column and
quickly find out that some local roads are closed for water main repairs. This is only a beta service, but is kinda neat.
Also, once you’re in Google Earth, you can zoom in on an area and just type in search words in the search window. Like “post office” and you’ll get all the post offices in that particular area.
It’s different than the overlay selections in that it doesn’t find ALL the post offices on the entire map, just in the area you’re zoomed in on.
Yelp.com is a great tool that is sort of like what you are asking for. User-supplied reviews for anything and everything, just throw in a location and browse around with the embedded Google Map to find things nearby.