Dave, try this link on the desktop to see Google's Street view.  You can tell what time-frame the photos were taken by what movies are playing at that theater.  Sometimes I zoom in on the people to see if there's anyone I know.  Actually, I use the street view sometimes to see what the storefront of my destination looks like.

However, I use Live Search Maps and Virtual Earth 3D more often.  It's just so much cooler to zoom through the City in 3D!!  I've also used that in Photoshopping the old WTC out of an image for a client piece...  I needed to see if any other buildings could be seen behind the WTC once it was taken out.

Both are useful in finding safe places to park my motorcycle on evening trips into Manhattan.

Having the Virtual Earth 3D being part of Live Search Mobile would be rediculously cool, but I don't think our little mobile devices will be able to handle that just yet.

Just add voice navigation and i'm good.

Welcome Michael !

Adam Z Lein:

Here's a page on Liveside about making Live Maps collections show up in Live Search for Windows Mobile.  It looks like all OpenTable would need to do is create an RSS feed in the proper syntax with all of the restaurant listings, positioning data, and links to the mobile site for reservation searching.  They could probably even add links in the restaurants' details that show what time slots are available for the current day. 

I've emailed them here, with the suggestion to add that feature.  Feel free to send them your votes as well.

OpenTable finally responded.  Nothing too promising though...

Discussion Thread
Response (Deryck S)	07/22/2008 09:07 AM
Hi Adam, Thank you for your feedback, I have forwarded your email to our web team for consideration in future versions of our mobile site. Thank you for using OpenTable. Sincerely, Deryck S. OpenTable Support OpenTable, Inc OpenTable More Guests - More Satisfied - More Often
Customer	07/08/2008 10:22 AM
Hi, It's great that you have a mobile site now, but it is not very easy to use. Can I suggest an additional option that would make using OpenTable MUCH easier? Windows Live Search for Mobile has the ability to subscribe to RSS-based "Collections" of locations. See this page for more information: http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2008/05/19/live-maps-collections-mobile-create-a-collection-and-add-it-to-your-phone.aspx OpenTable could easily program a dynamic collection of compatible restaurants that mobile users could subscribe to using Live Search Mobile. Then when the user is within an area near an OpenTable restaurant, they can quickly see which ones are closest, and then open the pushpins in order to show details of the restaurant which could also link to the search reservations page on your mobile website. This would make searching for restaurants in your database MUCH easier! I hope you consider implementing this feature as it would be a great help to your mobile users.

 Here something that I would like, a WiFi Hotspot Directory. 

Biomehanika:

 Here something that I would like, a WiFi Hotspot Directory. 

Oh yeah, that would be excellent!  Anyone could create one like that today with the Live Search's Collections feature.  We just need a properly formatted RSS list to subscribe to and that would become searchable in Live Search. 

We'll have to start some lobbying and get the WiFi Hotspot companies to make a live feed like that.

 How about Mass Transit Directions intergrated with public transport timetables?

Google maps have just progressed there latest feature (avaible already on the Blackberry) to Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

Joining Car and Walking routes, transit directions give you a route using public transport.

This, plus the timetables, would give you a clear idea of how long that route would take. So if you could walk between two points before bus arrives at the first, it help you to make your trip more efficient.