Google Maps Street View, MS Live Search Maps 3D

My friend Dimitry has a post detailing the newest Google Maps feature - Street View. As the name implies, you can see an area at the street level as opposed to up above with traditional satellite views. At the moment, Street View is only for Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and San Francisco. Update: Google Maps also has a new feature called maplets, which are like Google Gadgets placed on your map as Kristen Nicole says.

In addition, Microsoft rolled out their "Live Search Maps 3-D" feature, starting with New York, Austin, Cape Coral, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Savannah, Tampa and a few other notable cities.

Microsoft® Live Search Maps will today begin offering three-dimensional, photo-realistic views of New York City buildings and landscapes, with perspectives that few people — apart from Superman — have ever seen. The free online service will provide a unique look at many of New York’s iconic locations, along with local listings, ratings and reviews and driving directions to help people easily find, discover, plan and share relevant location information that is important to them on the Web.

Play around with the new features at maps.google.com and maps.live.com respectively. If you're wondering how there can be two new map feature announcements from both Google and Microsoft on the same day, it's all part of the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference going on today and tomorrow in San Jose, California.