IF the world were to ever overflow with lava, Microsoft Research would have the maps for this new world first in the industry. Last April, Danyel Fisher, a Microsoft Researcher at Redmond developed a tool to create a paradox of looking at what we look at on online maps.
"Hotmaps" is the name of this smart tool which uses internal Microsoft statistics to generate a heatmap overlay for Virtual Earth. Areas of interest on the map with the most views are given bright red spots whilst areas without much interest with not many views are given dark spots.
Previously used for only research purposes, now the tool is freely available for the public to see how many people are looking at their house and neighbors.