Ok, this may not be cool to everyone, but as someone who worked on early GIS systems, the stuff Google is doing with GIS systems continues to amaze me. Here is the most recent addition.
Go to http://maps.google.com and search for a major US City, like New York. (Note: this doesn’t appear to be everywhere yet)
You will notice a new button, called Street View. Click on this. Now, zoom in on a section of the city and look for the streets that are outlined in a blue color. You should see a little yellowish/orange colored icon in the shape of a person. You can left click and drag that person onto any street outlined in blue.
Here is the cool part. When you do this, a window opens in Google Maps that shows a picture of that street. Even cooler is the fact that you can rotate your perspective in the image and look in any direction from the position on the map.
For fun, try this. Go to Times Square on the by clicking on this link. Follow the steps above and look at an image from that location. You can rotate and zoom from that location and see all of time square. Pretty incredible. Oh, and did I mention, the maps are now showing 3D info, how cool is that?
