Here is a fun new offering from Google. You just have to love these fun loving rich guys, always coming up with something new.
You have probably used Google Maps before to find a location or plan a travel route. Now you can make custom map "places" lists and associate them with other objects of your choosing.
The easiest way for you to see this is using the newer photo albums, at the bottom of the pictures you will see a "Map" link. This takes you right to a Google Map! You can then zoom in or out as you want!
Not all albums will have this, but most will take you to the city, some will take you directly to the location! Try it out on the "Detroit Science Center" photo album.
I am working on adding a "Web-2" interactive photo album using this. Check out my progress. For an interesting perspective be sure to turn on the "Satellite" option (top right) to see the terrain where the pictures were taken. I am not so into "Geo-Tracking" that I tag all my photos with the latitude and longitude information (which actually would be pretty awesome, but lots of work to do since I do not either have a fancy DSLR camera that does it, or even a GPS unit to capture the info from. You can use other methods, and I have done it, but for large amounts of pictures it is quite a bit of work. Enjoy what is here though.
The REAL fun begins when you add Google Earth to your computer. Now you can fly from location to location with a click of the mouse. Even Superman is not as fast!(Maybe The Flash is, but definitely not Mighty Mouse.
If you have a reasonably new computer to run it, I suggest giving it a try. It's free and it's fun.
Once it is installed, from the Maps page above you will see a "KML" button (top right area) click on it to open Earth with the same links. Have fun looking to see what trash is in your neighbors back yard. (If you don't already know!)
Enjoy, George