Microsoft will relaunch Virtual Earth tomorrow under local.live.com, around 9 am PST. This is a continuation of Microsoft’s rebranding campaign to place online consumer services under the Live.com brand.
Charlene Li had a briefing with Erik Jorgensen, GM of Microsoft’s new Search & Mapping group today and includes additional details on her blog.
Local.live will also have new functionality. In addition to road maps and satellite views, Microsoft is beginning to integrate “birds eye” views, which are photos with significantly more detail than satellite pictures alone (see above screenshot). In addition, driving directions will be more fully integrated into the service.
This is a significant improvement on the existing service as well as a rebranding exercise. I’m still a big fan of Yahoo’s flash-based mapping service. The multi-point directions are absolutely a must have, and the constantly updating permalink saves a couple of steps when sharing a map. It does not include satellite images, however, which continues to be a drawback of the service.
Looks like it’s already live. Very impressed! An intriguing feature is the “Locate Me” function. You can do it by IP (not very precise) or by Wi-Fi access points. I’d be curious if anyone can comment on how well it works using the latter method.
One aspect that I found interesting is that the contextual ads that appear in the sidebar when you search for businesses are provided by Overture.
As for the “Locate Me” via Wi-Fi, it found me within about 100-150 feet of where I’m now sitting.
Microsoft local live is an excellent product. However the screen is to cluttered. 1-They need to move the viewer menu to the top of the page header. Allowing more of the screen to view or capture. 2- They need to add a step zoom (+)(-)view. 3- Need to add a save to file in current photo Jpeg formats. 4-Allow user to drag a continuous map not just sections at a time.
For E1 see:
http://domains....ionextreme.net/
For E2 see:
http://domains....ionextreme.com/