I just discovered (via a link on my fflist), what appears to be M$oft's
answer to Google Earth and Google Maps.. I'm fascinated -- particularly by the way that the imagery for certain Sheffield landmarks is obviously slightly older than Google's for the top-down view (early Spring 2002 or 2003 instead of summer, at a guess), the "bird's eye" version is much more current, maybe as recent as this summer. By the same token, while the view of the vicinity of my apartment shows the old hospital still mostly intact -- whereas Google has it half-demolished now -- the bird's eye version shows the new building nearly finished.
MS's previous attempt at a mapping site,
TerraServer, seems to have been abandoned in 2005, still covering only the USA, but now links to the "Virtual Earth" site.
