Street View's great for catching a superhero pub crawl freeze frame. But what if you could follow them down the road? Microsoft's Street Slide lets you do that very thing.
Street Slide frees you from the "bubble" that Street View traps you in. And based on the video above it actually feels liberating; I never knew I was looking at the world from inside a snowglobe until I broke out of it. The panoramic layout lets you navigate up and down the street, while the newly available screen real estate at the top of the screen displays business logos, building numbers, and other navigational tools.
Obviously a project like this takes some time to put together. While the demo's impressive, Microsoft's currently only got 2400 panoramas—covering 4 kilometers of streets—covered. But someday, if they decide this project's worth investing in, I may be able to take an evening scroll up and down the streets of Monte Carlo from the comfort of my living room. [MIT Technology Review via Engadget]