I have no idea how long it will stay there, but for map-o-philes the ad box for Windows Live that sometimes appears in our ad bar is kind of cool. Yesterday I was curious to see how much of California they had loaded into that little ad so I scrolled the window halfway up Canada’s Pacific coast before I got bored and gave up. I guess they can put the entire planet into one of those.
Today I scrolled it over to Area 51, which feels like kind of an accomplishment to do freehand in that little window. Think you can do it? Post any other map fun, or call me a dork, in the comments.
***Update***
The ad appears to be gone and I can’t get it back by reloading. Oh well, here is the service they were advertising. It isn’t as cool as the ad was because the ad let you seamlessly navigate by moving the mouse to the margin of the box and then it scrolled for as long as you left it there. The service itself is a PDF-style grab-and-drag, which is choppier and kills the feeling of doing a low-orbit flyover. Oh well. When I said ‘random’ I really meant it…
Zifnab
You’re a dork in the comments.
Zifnab
:( It whitewalls before you can hit China.
Dave
Dorky, yes. Fun, sounds like it.
Is there a link for the ad or is it totally random.
Tim F.
Well, it was there. Of course now I can’t get it back…
Tsulagi
Hmm, maybe I’m a dork too, but I don’t see that ad window. Not right now anyway.
In the spirit of dorkiness, if you like maps and wonder what others in different countries might be talking about, try Newseum. Polar bears seem to be on the front pages of a couple of German newspapers.
Keith
If you mean the ability to pan the map around, they’re not loading the entire map onto the page at once. This is AJAX (asynchronous Javascript and XML), which deviates from the standard request/response page load architecture of a regular web page by allowing discrete portions of the page to send requests for more data without the whole page reloading. It allows web-based apps to work more like desktop apps.
ThymeZone
{ voice of Hank Hill } I tell you what, I did the Windows Live 3D Map/Image thing look at my neighborhood, and all I can say is, it’s the first time in a lot of years that a computer screen has left me flabbergasted and jaw-dropped.
I mean, I can see objects in my backyard that are not much bigger than cats, and fly around the house and the block at 500′ and see all the neighbors’ yards too, as if in a helicopter. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. Because of the detail I can just about tell you the week that the photos were taken, which was less than six months ago.
I wish I didn’t have to worry about crazy Internet stalkers, I could fly you right into my yard and pop open a beer for you right now.
Zifnab
Just remember, everything comes down to poo.
ThymeZone
Windows Live maps, images and 3D flyarounds are available for free (including the necessary downloads) and if you live in one of the metro areas for which they currently have jaw-dropping detail, you are in for a shock when you fire it up.
Start here.
Tsulagi
Yeah. Getting in touch with my dork side, I’ve spent hours (not THAT many) with Google Earth. I can even see my car in my driveway. Actually used it once to decide which hotel to stay in another country. Zooming in will give you major street names in some countries.
Dave
Zif that’s freaking hysterical.
I found this creepy
This showed up in my inbox today as well
Punchy
Tim, you’ve been out-dorked.
Fledermaus
Well perhaps you could pay them to put it back :p
The Other Steve
Wow! They’ve got my house. Granted, the roads still don’t show up on the map, but the imagery is there. (Don’t understand why 3 years later the roads don’t show up on a map)
Krista
Can’t see my house on it, which isn’t surprising. But on Google Earth, I can see the tiny little creek that borders my land on the east side, so that’s pretty cool.
demimondian
I can out -dork even that. At my Last Place of Employment, the man in the office next to mine wrote the original implementation of XmlHttpRequest in MSXML 2.0 (which is the basis for all AJAX implementations — Firefox and Opera copied IE, not the other way around.) The guy two down tested it. And the guy on the other side did most of the design.
Rex
I work in real estate analysis and development and we use local live for work all the time. As ThymeZone said, the imagery available for urban locations is awesome…like viewing a building from a couple hundred yards away in almost any direction. Simply incredible.
Bombadil
zillow.com is pretty cool as well.
demimondian
zillow is very cool. I think Google should consider buying them — they’re buying everything else on Earth.