A9.com Maps

This site is: "Better than cream cheese and bagels, Better than honey on bread, Better than champagne and pretzels, Better than breakfast in bed, Better than chili rellenos, Better than chocolate eclairs, Better than hothouse tomatoes, Better than fresh Bartlett pears, Better than dining a la carte, Or simply gastronomic art, Better than anything except being in love." Music by David Wheat. Words by Bill Loughborough, 1962 Made popular with different lyrics by Al jarreau. From A9.com maps web site: Palo Alto, Calif. – August 16, 2005 – A9.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), today launched "A9.com Maps," a new service that shows users an interactive map and corresponding street-level images in a single interface. A9's BlockView™ technology brings traditional maps to life by combining driving directions and other convenient mapping tools with street-level images of millions of places and their surroundings. The fully-functional A9.com Maps beta is now available at maps.a9.com. "We're making maps slightly less abstract and closer to the real world," said A9.com CEO Udi Manber. "With A9.com Maps you can actually see pictures of where you're going and places on the way there." A9.com Maps starts like other web-based maps by asking users to type an address (or two addresses in the case of driving directions) and providing an interactive map in return. But the similarities end there. In addition to the map, A9.com Maps users have a wide variety of tools to learn how to get where they want to go and what the sights will look like on the way there.
So how we we use this with kids? Well, like I tried to do with Naphtali earlier this summer, it gives you an easy way to access images of the blocks that the kids live on-as an impetus for writing neighborhood/home stories. You can also view what other neighborhoods look like and make inferences of what life is like there. It can also be obviously used for mapping activities. You can print out a blank map grid and have the kids paste the images of the houses where they belong. Discussions of which house is north or south of another would have real meaning. Lots more..