I could waste hours here

In fact, I've already wasted at least an hour playing with this thing.

There's a new website that just went online on Wednesday called Zillow.com.  Its purpose is to allow you to quickly and easily see what your house is worth.  It bases its estimates on public data, of course.

Now, it's still in beta, and it's far from perfect in that regard.  But that's not why I love it so much.

It's the incredible satellite imagery.

I've never seen satellite pictures of this kind of quality.  Not only are they in color, but I can resolve objects in my own yard as small as a couple of feet in diameter.  This is amazing.

It also has a "hybrid" image mode which overlays a map, complete with street names, onto the satellite image.  Perfect for finding your own home—or anyone else's.  For myself, I care little what someone else's home is worth—I just wanted to see what it looked like from the air.  And yes, that top image is of my house.

And very quickly I found myself panning to different parts of Greenville County just to see what they looked like, and from there I started moving to other states with which I was familiar.  I was hooked.

The panning/zooming tools move with blistering speed, so that one can move from one's own street to a street several states away in only seconds.

Now, sure, I can see where some folks might consider this to be an invasion of privacy.  For myself, I don't see much potential for abuse.  After all, this is all public record stuff.

Give this a look, folks.  It's pretty amazing.