MSN Virtual Earth - Where 2.0
So, after the comedy show, they delved into a preview peek of MSN Virtual Earth. It looks like both google and Microsoft are racing ahead in satellite imagery integration with maps/local experience. Here are some features that they talked about in MSN Virtual Earth.
- Tag/Label streets on the satellite images.
- Zooming in and out much like google earth.
- Panning works more like gmaps and not like gEarth. They also have a auto panning mode (like gEarth)
- OverLays. They have several overlays on top of the satellite imagery. They do driving directions (gEarth does it too), local search results.
- There are some talk about multiple points of interest, but it seems like it’s just placing multiple POI on the map and not multi point routing.
- You can share the multiple POI via blogging/IM etc.
- In addition they announced mappoint webservice and location server. Was this already public?
- Their vision - “Global Access to Local Information”
- Of course, this is not released yet. The speaker said something about “summer” release.
- However when ever they release, they intend to release developer apis and resources.
- Announced partnership with OrbImage
