[Naren]

Has anyone tried this? It's awesome. For anything in the US, you can zoom in really close. I tried Japan and you can zoom in up to a few miles, but after you get in closer than that, there are no pictures and you'll have to change to a detailed map. But if you try "aerial," it's pretty impressive. You can do "bird's eye view" for a lot of places too. I'm guessing they get most of their info from satellites.

http://local.live.com/

To see where I live, just type "Itabashi-ku, Tokyo, Japan." (you can zoom up 4-5x. For someplace like Toledo, I could keep zooming in as much as I wanted) It's awesome. For those of you who do look that up, I live along "Kawagoe kaido." Technically if you zoom in so there are no more pictures, click on "road" and you'll get a "eh" road map (not bad, considering this is a US site, mainly designed for Americans. Horrible if you actually wanted to use this site to get anywhere or to find a specific address or something). Aerial is the coolest, though.

[Metal Ken]

if you check out google earth, its kinda the same thing but you can get just as close in japan as you can in america, and several other countries as well (Basically, if its really populated, you can get a good picture of it)

[Shannon]

I was able to zoom in to the exact intersection in which I live.

[Naren]

Originally Posted by Shannon

I was able to zoom in to the exact intersection in which I live.

I was able to do that to my house in the US as well. I just couldn't do that in Japan. I could only get into the general vicinity (10-30 mile radius).

Originally Posted by Metal Ken

if you check out google earth, its kinda the same thing but you can get just as close in japan as you can in america, and several other countries as well (Basically, if its really populated, you can get a good picture of it)

I'll have to try that. This Windows Live Local impressed me. I just clicked on it and it started out in Florida, so I slowly moved my way up to Michigan/Ohio and then I zoomed in and out into my parents' house and thought that was cool, so I typed in "Itabashi-ku, Tokyo, Japan" and it took me right there. I tried to zoom in, but I could only get so far. I'll check out that google earth next.


Edit: I downloaded Google Earth and checked it out. It definitely beats Windows Live Local in terms of worldwide detail (detail in the US might actually have to go to Windows Live Local), but didn't have much information details outside of the US. For example, in Windows Live Local, I could type in any of the 26 wards of Tokyo and be taken specifically to that ward. In Google Earth, I could type "Tokyo, Japan", but that's the most specific I can get. I can't type in "Shinjuku" or "Shibuya" or "Akihabara." One cool thing is: on Google Earth, I was looking at Tokyo, then typed "Lambertville, Michigan" and was taken directly to my house in the US. I looked a little further and found my best friend's house. The weird thing was that the pictures of Tokyo were taken in the summer time and the pictures of Lambertville were taken in the winter (snow EVERYWHERE). Kind of odd, but I guess with that many pictures, you can't take them all at the same time.

[Metal Ken]

I was able to locate a bunch of friend's places with ith.. interesting thing is, it has bookmarks for a bunch of weird places (IE, Taj Mahal, Some Sahara Sand Dunes, Reichstag, and a bunch of other famous buildings i cant remember)