Explore World Cup stadiums using Google Maps

Maybe you can't make it to the World Cup on foot this year, but you can take a 3D tour of the South African stadiums using Google Maps. The tool now allows users to explore each of the nine host cities, the football stadiums and a number of landmarks local to those cities.

Traveling to Cape Town, South Africa, users can enter Street View and take in the sites of Green Point Stadium. Zoom-out and take a look at Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, "a shopper's delight."

If you're exploring the World Cup on Google Maps, take a few screen shots and send them to AndyStettler@Gmail.com with "140 World Cup" in the subject line. We will add your photos to our Picasa slide show below.

Foursquare Now on the Maps

Just a few days after announcing its check-ins would now appear in Bing maps, Foursquare has made a second announcement; check-ins are now on Google maps too. Along with Gowalla and Brightkite, two similar location based mobile social networking games, Foursquare is visible in Google maps via a browser accessible application called Checkin Mania.

What's to see?

Anyone using Checkin Mania will see venues Foursquare users have added in the game, plus tips and visitor information like who the mayor of that venue is and who else is there. Overall, this is a pretty cool idea. It's a very futuristic way of looking at Bing and Google maps where users can look for reviews or opinions rather than locations only.

Note: When I accessed Checkin Mania for the first time, I was able to see almost every venue tagged in Foursquare but after a reloaded, I wasn't able to see the games information. In fact, Gowalla was the only network I could see in the app after the first reload. Is anyone else having this problem?