In the dog-eat-dog world of search engines, Google's made all comers its bitches. Even though we still think Google's map application (http://maps.google.com) is pretty ace, what with its satellite imagery of like the entire country, we did a double take when we saw what the code monkeys at Amazon's search outfit A9 had up their coffee-stained sleeves. Still in beta, A9's maps (http://maps.a9.com) eschew silly, fuzzy satellite photography for what it calls "BlockView" images. They jumped in a truck jury-rigged with GPS and wheeled around 23 major U.S. cities (and Fargo, N.D.) snapping eye-level photos of business districts and major residential areas. There's still lots of ground uncovered — for instance, in Philadelphia, the truck spent more time in Grays Ferry than University City (and from the looks of things, that's only because it got lost there). One can easily imagine this toy's practical and stalkery applications. Still, the best thing to do with this is kill hours looking up photos of places you see every day. I spent a good hour last night tracking down the exact spot on Christian Street where some jaywalking jackass knocked me off my bike last weekend. I got creeped out when I saw my apartment. Fondly reminisced about the corner where I made out with Skinny-Glasses Girl all those years ago. Then it kind of hit me that in many of these photos, there are people, people who will be forever (or thereabouts) immortalized as part of the landscape at such and such a block. Made me wonder where I was the day A9's truck made its rounds (according to the TLA marquee, at least some of Philly was mapped in early September). Was I at home? Was I at work? Well, I can tell you who was at work: our own managing editor Brian Hickey, who was doing a little editing al fresco that day.