Flickr's new "Places" section

I don't know how "new" flickr's Places section is, but yesterday it was new to me.

The Places project is our way of saying thank you to all our members who’ve taken the time to put their gorgeous photos on a map. Browse the whole globe, from your hometown to your favorite place, or places you’ve never even heard of...

So go ahead, start exploring... Zambia, London, Jackson Hole, or even just Wyoming.

It's a pretty awesome little portal, and gets us one step closer to Tim O'Reilly's proposition:

Imagine wandering through the streets of Paris on a virtual site generated from thousands of images of Paris posted on the internet from different people! [Via]

IMAGINE! </sarcasm>

If you could mash this together with Google's Street View, I think we're almost there!

UPDATE: Turns out it's pretty new (flickr blog announcement, 11/20/2007).