Both Big Brothers are Watching!

Apparently, looking at the roof of your house from a satellite camera picture is just not a close-enough shot anymore. The latest competition between Google and Microsoft is [The Battle of the Creepy 3-D City-View Applications]. Yesterday, Microsoft launched its Live Search Maps, which give you the chance to see three-dimensional, photo-realistic views of New York City buildings and landscapes. And Google users will soon be able to see 180-degree photographs of the streets of Manhattan and pieces of the outer-boroughs.  For a year and a half, Google has used a company called Immersive Media to send drivers all over the place in Volkswagon Beetles with 11-lensed cameras on top. They captured our stomping grounds at a speed of 30 frames per second, amassing [2,000 miles of footage in NYC alone](http://www.nysun.com/article/55501?page_no=1).  Google has stated its plans to update the images periodically, so don’t fret—if you left some embarrassing laundry drying on your fire escape, it will likely only be a couple of years before the pictures available to one and all on the glorious Internet are swapped for newer ones.

Photo courtesy of [BitBoy on Flickr]