TIM FAULKNER — It appears Microsoft, with their "coincidentally"-timed press release announcing 3-D imagery in Live Search, was hoping to steal some of Google's thunder earlier today since it was widely speculated that Google would be announcing new features today at Where 2.0, the location-focused conference. Word of Google's Street View and a beta of Mapplets, map widgets, has largely negated that preemptive press strike.

The Zillow real estate site won me over from day one by mapping house prices for every zip code and address (even if it grossly underpriced the Japanese villa of Oracle's Larry Ellison). So when the developers made a heat map of San Francisco real estate rates, I asked them to stretch that map across the whole Valley. They answered with the giant map here — stretch the window to enlarge it, or view it full-size.