Less Reasons To Leave Your Apartment

Why leave you apartment to see a city, when you can see everthing from your desk using internet mapping software? I know, we are not there yet, but the speed at which these mapping tools develop is breathtaking. In recent days we saw the the announcement of Ask.com's (formely Ask Jeeves) better maps with

walking directions, dragable location pins that automatically recalculate directions, the ability to right-click on a spot on a map to add it to a route, aerial photography that can be combined with regular street views, and the ability to print aerial shots for a fee.

We also we heard of the amazing new street level pictures on Microsofts Virtual Earth: you can click on the map in selected cities and see what would look like to stand on the ground at this position. They even created a game like interface in which you can drive around in the city, showing actual images of the city. Granted - A9 did this first, but Microsoft seems to have a much higher number of images.