Bird view

Posted by Michael Krantz, Google Blog team

Okay, we know we're always saying that this product and that product are cool, but seriously: Google Maps are cool. And in the few weeks since we added Keyhole satellite imagery, we've enjoyed watching netizens inventing ingenious ways to play with Maps, and thought we'd share a few of our favorites.

We'll begin with a sampling of our favorite views. The Photoshopped White House roof is soooo last week, but the airplane graveyard may never get old. We're impressed by Dave's work -- but even more so by Luecke's. And of course, people are always finding a few surprises.

But the real jewels are the various Google Maps collections. This is a nice aggregation of views, and the Google Sightseeing blog might eventually be even better. This guy's marriage of Google Maps and Craig's List real estate ads had our engineers saying "Wow." Speaking of engineers, our own Nelson Minar came up with this visualization of where people did the most Maps searching on April 6th. And on the high art front, the Memory Mappers are creating nothing less than a new literary form. Cool.

P.S. Go Sox!