Live Maps Improvements

If you haven't used http://local.live.com/ yet then you should. If you've used it before but haven't tried the birds-eye view then check it out! They've just announced several new cities which have been mapped for birds-eye imagery including Toronto, Utrecht, Geneva and more. I created a Shared Collection for Utrecht that has some of the cities landmarks. Go here and click the Birds Eye button. This page explains how to use the functionality, but it's pretty simple. Once in Birds-Eye view you can drag the map around to navigate or zoom out to map-view and move around from there, then back to birds-eye. You can also change the angle of view with the compass shaped control.

If you don't want to navigate around yourself then checkout some collections other people have created. Collections.live.com contains a full directory of featured collections with walking tours of Dublin, Amsterdam and other destinations. BirdsEyeTourist is another way to travel from your own computer. This technology is just going to get more advanced and soon I think we'll be able to go pretty much anywhere virtually and even add to these collections with our own media and photos.