Google Maps has recently come out with a new tool. If you go to Google and click on maps, you can enter an adress, town, zip code, or just zoom to an area. It has long had a satellite view to see the area with a hybrid feature to overlay the streets.

What is new this time is the street view. Someone has driven around town taking constant pictures. Now you can select a point and actually see what it would look like if you were standing there. You can zoom, rotate, and tilt as well as move forward or backwards on that street.

This very powerful tool is only available on the major streets and is only in about 5 cities. Las Vegas is one of those cities. Once you see the power of this tool you will understand why it is not completely up to date. For instance, it still shows the Stardust standing. OTOH, this could be used to help find a restaurant, hotel, entrance to building, etc. And some of the pics are more grainy than others. I still find it a lot of fun.

This pictures work on java script. If you are running an antique computer on a slow connection, you might have problems. Otherwise, I reccomend that you give this a shot and see if you can find potential for it or just have fun looking around.

The other 4 cities with this feature are New York City, Miami, Denver, and San Francisco.