Last week, I noticed a link on Matt Cutt's blog to a great Google Map hack designed to let you see the outline of particular zip codes. I've since found it to be an incredibly handy tool while house hunting and I've got to think that there are plenty of other great uses for it.

Quite honestly, I haven't figured out what those uses are yet, but real estate agents would be wise to make use of this for their clients. I've found Google Maps satellite view to be invaluable during our searches and this zip code tool has also made the list of must-use tools. The satellite view is handy for seeing how close urban sprawl is to overtaking any country dream-houses we're considering and the zip code hack is great for narrowing down the areas that we'd like to live in when running real estate searches.

If you're curious, check out the Google Zip Codes hack.