Online map Web sites are arguably one of the most useful benefits of the Internet (right up there with email and online banking) and everyone has their favorite site. I've done a tour with them all: Mapquest, MapBlast, MapsOnUs and Yahoo Maps which I eventually settled on because it does a great job of saving addresses in My Yahoo! has nice anti-aliased graphics. The recently added real-time traffic information is pretty sweet too.

Like they're on a mission to conquer the world Google has entered the online mapping game with Google Maps. To one-up all the other mapping sites Google serves up DHTML-driven maps from NAVTEQ that pan and zoom with ease (just click and drag!) The new mapping service is likely a result of Google's recent purchase of Keyhole, but that's not been confirmed.

As you'd expect, Google Maps are gorgeous and virtually ad-free. Features include: driving directions, businesses and cool Info Bubbles that pop up with street addresses and directions when you hover over them. Also, there's no need to reload the page to scroll the map, its all dynamic and real-time. Google Maps also offers the best resolution of any online map I've seen, especially when you zoom in a few times.

Google Maps doesn't work in Safari, you'll need to use FireFox and they don't yet offer maps for Canada. Some features that I requested:

- save/recent addresses

- options for more/less highways

- map another route (if you don't like the first route)

- multi-destination trips (tours)

- satellite maps :)

Satellite maps are currently available from Microsoft's TerraServer.

Give Google Maps plenty of feedback via the Send Feedback link in the upper right of the Google Maps pages.

In related news, Gmail has given many people over 50 invitations. If you need one the isnoop.net Gmail invite spooler has over 1.5 million invitations to distribute.