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Amen to that.

Regarding MSN; I guess somebody forgot to tell Mr. Norman about Microsoft's blatant ripoff of Google. If Google is doing things so wrong, why is Microsoft copying their look and feel to the letter?

Check out Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth!
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

That's just about as cool, new, and exciting as you can get :-)

and to search books http://books.live.com/
 
i've never used the live search before - so maybe this is obvious to people who do, but it is pretty cool. just by searching on some generic words i'm getting back some very interesting books.

Publisher information for adding content to Windows Live Book Search through the Windows Live Book Search Publisher Program can be found here: http://publisher.live.com/

search.msn.com is giving me 806 results on a search for google and over 65 million on a search for google -asdfghjkl.

search.msn.com is giving me 806 results on a search for google and over 65 million on a search for google -asdfghjkl.

So Yahoo seems to be advertising its own search service more than anything else. Huh...who'd have though a search company advertising their own search service - the horror. They are hardly pushing it - that'd be forcing you to download IE7 with the yahoo toolbar bundled and blocking dedicated FF+typically Google users like me.

Yup, you get the same kind of thing visiting Microsoft's Live search page when using Firefox. You'd think that Microsoft at least would want to push IE, but all they want to do is put their search into Firefox's search box. Oh, and anecdotally, I find the Live add to be the most unobtrusive out of all of them - which I appreciate.

I wonder if they'll take advantage of Photosynth with all the imagery they'll have on-hand...

The Windows site appears to be http://preview.local.live.com/, although since I use a Mac it didn't work properly.

Nobody said the vehicle is taking pictures while on the move.

If you read the The Road to Knowhere: Microsoft Virtual Earth with "Street Side Views" you'll note that it's stills, not video, being presented.

The Windows site appears to be http://preview.local.live.com/, although since I use a Mac it didn't work properly. I'm not sure I want my neighborhood viewable on the Web from ground level. And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could

I guess it's time for a new PC. I don't know that I can live without IE 7's new 'anti-phishing' filter.

While I'm sure you're being facetious, you do realize that IE7 is available for XP and has the anti-phishing feature, right? If you still want to stick with IE6 (or have to, like if you're running Win2k), you can get the same anti-phishing protection from the Windows Live Toolbar. It's all the same technology, backed by the same store of anti-phishing data.

"Microsoft's Live.com has my blogs listed in the correct order, while Google does not (Live.com lists scobleizer.com, which is my currently-kept-up-blog first, while Google lists scoble.weblogs.com as first, despite the fact that I haven't updated that blog for more than a year)." -Scoble in TFA

I searched "scoble blog" at live.com and google

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=scoble+blog& mkt=en-us&FORM=LVSP&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=Search
http://www.google.com/search?q=scoble+blog&ie=utf- 8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=f irefox-a

both have the weblogs link first.

> One MS project that really interests me is PhotoSynth. http://labs.live.com/photosynth/. Anybody out there willing to argue it's not a truly innovative application?

I dunno - I tried to check it out, but it only supports IE.

Great - you have to use the old crappy shit to check out the new cool stuff.

That isn't about innovation. They're so busy operating out of fear that even when they come up with cool ideas, they can't bring themselves to to get excited about them. Instead, they start pulling in the fences around the new idea.

Yes, but Google likes it when mean dogs eat cute kittens:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=mean+dogs +eating+cute+kittens
Results 1 - 10 of about 679,000 for mean dogs eating cute kittens. (0.09 seconds)

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=mean+dogs+ea ting+cute+kittens&mkt=en-US&form=QBNO
mean dogs eating cute kittensPage 1 of 40,114 results

So Google is almost 17 times more likely to watch and laugh when mean dogs are eating cute kittens.

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=cute+kittens &mkt=en-us&FORM=LVSP

cute kittensPage 1 of 1,631,025 results

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie =UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-09,GGLD:en&q=cute+kitten s
    Results 1 - 10 of about 2,120,000 for cute kittens

that means google is about 25% more cute kittens.

sack Javascript and replace it with something better, like an iteration of Python,

There's nothing wrong with Javascript as a language. In fact, it's actually more powerful than Python, considering that Javascript really is a functional language (it's based around closures as first-class objects, where classes, functions, even variables are really nothing more than closures as far as Javascript is concerned). The problem is with the implementation of the engine inside of web browsers. The lack of proper threading is a real killer, for example. Changing the language will not solve that problem (see VBScript for an example).

make the focus more on manipulating the DOM than verifying forms

I don't know about you, but the Javascript I've been doing lately is 99% DOM manipulation, 1% form verification.

move the user authentication parts from the documents themselves (PHP, etc.) and into the web page server

Isn't that already the case? Seems to me that client-side authentication would be rife with problems, and thus all authentication methods I know of are either 100% server-side (IIS' basic auth or Apache's .htaccess, for example) or use little or no javascript client-side just for sanity-checking before sending off the credentials for server-side validation via Perl, PHP, Ruby, ASP, ASP.NET, etc.

make the network support better

I whole-heartedly agree! XMLHttpRequest is good for what it is, but it has too many problems and limitations. Granted, some of those are security-related (Same Origin Policy), but others (threading) could be solved with a better framework.

wget http://search.yahoo.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A%2F%2F www.mysite.com%2Fsitemap.gz

wget http://search.live.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A%2F%2Fw ww.mysite.com%2Fsitemap.gz

Is it me or did MS remove the non-IE Web browser support in http://local.live.com/ ? It used to work in my Mozilla v1.7.13 when the site was new. Now, I don't get the cool aerial 3D maps anymore unless I use IE6. Or did I miss it?

I guess that most people praising Virtual Earth (VE from here on) did not try it on spots outside the U.S.A. (Disclaimer: I run Firefox on Linux,so I did not test the new 3D VE services. ) I tried comparing the 2d services: open both maps.google.com and virtual earth , set them to hybrid, and zoom into "Paris, France" for example; click here (google) and (VE). Google lets you zoom all way down, you can see people walking on streets (that picture of Hotel de Ville is gorgeous!); with VE, building are smeared out at a 1mile=2inch scale, and then you cannot zoom further. The same is true for "rome, italy". Instead , in Tokio, you can zoom to smallest detail in VE: but still, Google zooms about 4x more than VE (you judge by (google) and (VE)).

I guess that most people praising Virtual Earth (VE from here on) did not try it on spots outside the U.S.A. (Disclaimer: I run Firefox on Linux,so I did not test the new 3D VE services. ) I tried comparing the 2d services: open both maps.google.com and virtual earth , set them to hybrid, and zoom into "Paris, France" for example; click here (google) and (VE). Google lets you zoom all way down, you can see people walking on streets (that picture of Hotel de Ville is gorgeous!); with VE, building are smeared out at a 1mile=2inch scale, and then you cannot zoom further. The same is true for "rome, italy". Instead , in Tokio, you can zoom to smallest detail in VE: but still, Google zooms about 4x more than VE (you judge by (google) and (VE)).

Now really, this was my morning joke. Is Microsoft trying to tap into google's world now? They come no where "close" to how Google maps is. I looked at their 3D, in what way is a bunch of blurry images 3-D view of buildings and houses. I think Microsoft should take this product down. Another rant that I have is http://live.com/ :| hmmm "can you say Google wannabe?". I thought this was rather amusing. Thanks for making my day. Cheers, Thusjanthan Kubendranathan

Wow. I was looking around Los Angeles, wanting to see what Santa Monica looked like when I came across this ad blatantly hanging in the air. Incredible. That's reason alone to stick with Google Earth.

Every once in a while, Microsoft does something right ... or at least releases something cool. When I plugged in my address (which is kind of in the middle of nowhere), up popped 3 different viewing angles of my house. Pretty detailed shots too, and in one you could even see me mowing the lawn in the backyard! I had lots of fun with this one.

Actually, I think it is a threat. I use Live Local/Virtual Earth almost exclusively. Here's why (adapted from a post I wrote in a previous story that didn't get much attention):

• Live Local has better controls. It was the first to add mouse wheel scroll zooming, which Google Maps has added. (I don't mind the copying, though; the more the merrier!) I can't live without the middle-click, box zooming, though. From a globe view I can zoom to my house in a few seconds with Live Local's box zooming.
• Directions between arbitrary points: Right-click anywhere to select the From and To points to find directions. Google Maps requires that I type in addresses. Problem is that I don't know the address of Paradise point at Mt. Rainier National Park, and Google Maps can't seem to find it. Note that Yahoo Maps expands upon this by letting you add waypoints, but it's too slow for me.
• Bird's Eye view. Images are taken from an airplane, so detail is awesome.
• I can perform up to 3 simultaneous map searches. This means I can see the locations of all Safeways, libraries, and CompUSAs on the same map. Useful if you intend on going to multiple places when driving.
• Live Local's direction finding seems more capable than Google's. I can find directions from Glasgow, UK to Palermo, Italy.
• Live Local has better sharing features. You can create collections of places and share them on Live Local. This might be a silly example, but some friends visited Seattle recently and wanted suggestions on places to visit. I made a collection of places for them. You can add text, images, and URLs to places on a collection, and viewers of a collection can generate driving directions between any of its places (as well as any other arbitrary point). Google has auto-saving of locations (which was added after Live Local's collections), but as far as I can tell, it does not permit sharing or customization of locations.
• UI is more customizable. Live Local's panels are removable, yielding more visible map area than Google Maps. You can't turn off the "example searches" pane in Google.

Of course it has downsides:

• Performance is worse than Google Maps. On my 1.7 GHz 512 MB RAM laptop, Live Local causes the fan to spin up far more often than Google Maps.
• Color scheme is uglier in some places (compare Tokyo road view in both Google and Live).
• Google Maps' satellite view is considerably more detailed and updated in some places, including Shanghai, Pyongyang, Ho Chi Minh City. MS appears to be countering this with Bird's Eye view, but the two are just not the same.
• I'm not sure all its features are supported in Firefox 1.5 and below; can someone confirm? But it does work in Firefox 2.0.

If you're interested in looking at satellite imagery, Google is the better choice. But if you want to find places and get directions to them, and share those places with people, I believe Live is far better.

Every once in a while, Microsoft does something right ... or at least releases something cool. When I plugged in my address (which is kind of in the middle of nowhere), up popped 3 different viewing angles of my house. Pretty detailed shots too, and in one you could even see me mowing the lawn in the backyard! I had lots of fun with this one.

Actually, I think it is a threat. I use Live Local/Virtual Earth almost exclusively. Here's why (adapted from a post I wrote in a previous story that didn't get much attention):

• Live Local has better controls. It was the first to add mouse wheel scroll zooming, which Google Maps has added. (I don't mind the copying, though; the more the merrier!) I can't live without the middle-click, box zooming, though. From a globe view I can zoom to my house in a few seconds with Live Local's box zooming.
• Directions between arbitrary points: Right-click anywhere to select the From and To points to find directions. Google Maps requires that I type in addresses. Problem is that I don't know the address of Paradise point at Mt. Rainier National Park, and Google Maps can't seem to find it. Note that Yahoo Maps expands upon this by letting you add waypoints, but it's too slow for me.
• Bird's Eye view. Images are taken from an airplane, so detail is awesome.
• I can perform up to 3 simultaneous map searches. This means I can see the locations of all Safeways, libraries, and CompUSAs on the same map. Useful if you intend on going to multiple places when driving.
• Live Local's direction finding seems more capable than Google's. I can find directions from Glasgow, UK to Palermo, Italy.
• Live Local has better sharing features. You can create collections of places and share them on Live Local. This might be a silly example, but some friends visited Seattle recently and wanted suggestions on places to visit. I made a collection of places for them. You can add text, images, and URLs to places on a collection, and viewers of a collection can generate driving directions between any of its places (as well as any other arbitrary point). Google has auto-saving of locations (which was added after Live Local's collections), but as far as I can tell, it does not permit sharing or customization of locations.
• UI is more customizable. Live Local's panels are removable, yielding more visible map area than Google Maps. You can't turn off the "example searches" pane in Google.

Of course it has downsides:

• Performance is worse than Google Maps. On my 1.7 GHz 512 MB RAM laptop, Live Local causes the fan to spin up far more often than Google Maps.
• Color scheme is uglier in some places (compare Tokyo road view in both Google and Live).
• Google Maps' satellite view is considerably more detailed and updated in some places, including Shanghai, Pyongyang, Ho Chi Minh City. MS appears to be countering this with Bird's Eye view, but the two are just not the same.
• I'm not sure all its features are supported in Firefox 1.5 and below; can someone confirm? But it does work in Firefox 2.0.

If you're interested in looking at satellite imagery, Google is the better choice. But if you want to find places and get directions to them, and share those places with people, I believe Live is far better.

Every once in a while, Microsoft does something right ... or at least releases something cool. When I plugged in my address (which is kind of in the middle of nowhere), up popped 3 different viewing angles of my house. Pretty detailed shots too, and in one you could even see me mowing the lawn in the backyard! I had lots of fun with this one.

Actually, I think it is a threat. I use Live Local/Virtual Earth almost exclusively. Here's why (adapted from a post I wrote in a previous story that didn't get much attention):

• Live Local has better controls. It was the first to add mouse wheel scroll zooming, which Google Maps has added. (I don't mind the copying, though; the more the merrier!) I can't live without the middle-click, box zooming, though. From a globe view I can zoom to my house in a few seconds with Live Local's box zooming.
• Directions between arbitrary points: Right-click anywhere to select the From and To points to find directions. Google Maps requires that I type in addresses. Problem is that I don't know the address of Paradise point at Mt. Rainier National Park, and Google Maps can't seem to find it. Note that Yahoo Maps expands upon this by letting you add waypoints, but it's too slow for me.
• Bird's Eye view. Images are taken from an airplane, so detail is awesome.
• I can perform up to 3 simultaneous map searches. This means I can see the locations of all Safeways, libraries, and CompUSAs on the same map. Useful if you intend on going to multiple places when driving.
• Live Local's direction finding seems more capable than Google's. I can find directions from Glasgow, UK to Palermo, Italy.
• Live Local has better sharing features. You can create collections of places and share them on Live Local. This might be a silly example, but some friends visited Seattle recently and wanted suggestions on places to visit. I made a collection of places for them. You can add text, images, and URLs to places on a collection, and viewers of a collection can generate driving directions between any of its places (as well as any other arbitrary point). Google has auto-saving of locations (which was added after Live Local's collections), but as far as I can tell, it does not permit sharing or customization of locations.
• UI is more customizable. Live Local's panels are removable, yielding more visible map area than Google Maps. You can't turn off the "example searches" pane in Google.

Of course it has downsides:

• Performance is worse than Google Maps. On my 1.7 GHz 512 MB RAM laptop, Live Local causes the fan to spin up far more often than Google Maps.
• Color scheme is uglier in some places (compare Tokyo road view in both Google and Live).
• Google Maps' satellite view is considerably more detailed and updated in some places, including Shanghai, Pyongyang, Ho Chi Minh City. MS appears to be countering this with Bird's Eye view, but the two are just not the same.
• I'm not sure all its features are supported in Firefox 1.5 and below; can someone confirm? But it does work in Firefox 2.0.

If you're interested in looking at satellite imagery, Google is the better choice. But if you want to find places and get directions to them, and share those places with people, I believe Live is far better.

Every once in a while, Microsoft does something right ... or at least releases something cool. When I plugged in my address (which is kind of in the middle of nowhere), up popped 3 different viewing angles of my house. Pretty detailed shots too, and in one you could even see me mowing the lawn in the backyard! I had lots of fun with this one.

Actually, I think it is a threat. I use Live Local/Virtual Earth almost exclusively. Here's why (adapted from a post I wrote in a previous story that didn't get much attention):

• Live Local has better controls. It was the first to add mouse wheel scroll zooming, which Google Maps has added. (I don't mind the copying, though; the more the merrier!) I can't live without the middle-click, box zooming, though. From a globe view I can zoom to my house in a few seconds with Live Local's box zooming.
• Directions between arbitrary points: Right-click anywhere to select the From and To points to find directions. Google Maps requires that I type in addresses. Problem is that I don't know the address of Paradise point at Mt. Rainier National Park, and Google Maps can't seem to find it. Note that Yahoo Maps expands upon this by letting you add waypoints, but it's too slow for me.
• Bird's Eye view. Images are taken from an airplane, so detail is awesome.
• I can perform up to 3 simultaneous map searches. This means I can see the locations of all Safeways, libraries, and CompUSAs on the same map. Useful if you intend on going to multiple places when driving.
• Live Local's direction finding seems more capable than Google's. I can find directions from Glasgow, UK to Palermo, Italy.
• Live Local has better sharing features. You can create collections of places and share them on Live Local. This might be a silly example, but some friends visited Seattle recently and wanted suggestions on places to visit. I made a collection of places for them. You can add text, images, and URLs to places on a collection, and viewers of a collection can generate driving directions between any of its places (as well as any other arbitrary point). Google has auto-saving of locations (which was added after Live Local's collections), but as far as I can tell, it does not permit sharing or customization of locations.
• UI is more customizable. Live Local's panels are removable, yielding more visible map area than Google Maps. You can't turn off the "example searches" pane in Google.

Of course it has downsides:

• Performance is worse than Google Maps. On my 1.7 GHz 512 MB RAM laptop, Live Local causes the fan to spin up far more often than Google Maps.
• Color scheme is uglier in some places (compare Tokyo road view in both Google and Live).
• Google Maps' satellite view is considerably more detailed and updated in some places, including Shanghai, Pyongyang, Ho Chi Minh City. MS appears to be countering this with Bird's Eye view, but the two are just not the same.
• I'm not sure all its features are supported in Firefox 1.5 and below; can someone confirm? But it does work in Firefox 2.0.

If you're interested in looking at satellite imagery, Google is the better choice. But if you want to find places and get directions to them, and share those places with people, I believe Live is far better.

From the blog, The SDK is here: http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/

It seems to be working fine in FX 1.5. So either: 1) I'm on the wrong site or 2) It's only partially working in FX 1.5.

http://local.live.com/ yes?

And their maps loads a LOT faster than google's, and work far better (no waiting for all the pictures making up a map to slowly load (for every zoom level), and then half the time having to drag it out and back because pictures some didn't load at all). It just works, and very quickly. I like the google maps controls better still, but like anything there's always some adaptation to a new interface. (No idea about map coverage for whatever countries or such, but it works very good for North America at least). The maps themselves look nicer too IMO.

Their "local" is no worse than google's (at least for where I live, I've searched for small shops and such - it finds 'em easily). There's a bunch more things I haven't had time to look at yet (expo, gallery, etc)

I disagree on performance. Live Local, like most other Live services, fails on performance when compared to Google. I can tell because my primary machine is a 1.7 GHz laptop with only 512 MB of RAM. Any slow website results in the annoying fan spinning up, and I get this far more often on Live Local than Google Maps.

With that in mind, I use Live Local almost exclusively. Here's why:

• Live Local has better controls. It was the first to add mouse wheel scroll zooming, which Google Maps has added. (I don't mind the copying, though; the more the merrier!) I can't live without the middle-click, box zooming, though. From a globe view I can zoom to my house in a few seconds with Live Local's box zooming.
• Directions between arbitrary points: Right-click anywhere to select the From and To points to find directions. Google Maps requires that I type in addresses. Problem is that I don't know the address of Coldwater Peak. Note that Yahoo Maps expands upon this by letting you add waypoints, but it's too slow for me.
• Bird's Eye view. Images are taken from an airplane, so detail is awesome.
• I can perform up to 3 simultaneous map searches. This means I can see the locations of all Safeways, libraries, and CompUSAs on the same map. Useful if you intend on going to multiple places when driving.
• Live Local has better sharing features. You can create collections of places and share them on Live Local. This might be a silly example, but some friends visited Seattle recently and wanted suggestions on places to visit. I made a list in Live Local. You can add notes, images, and URLs to places on a collection, and viewers of a collection can generate driving directions between any of its places (as well as any other arbitrary point). Another feature is the ability to share your current view plus any places you have marked via a URL, as I've shown through various links in this post.
• UI is more customizable. Live Local's panels are removable, yielding more visible map area than Google Maps.

Aside from performance Live Local is also lacking in aerial imagery. Google Maps has considerably more detail in places like Shanghai, Pyongyang, Ho Chi Minh City, etc. But when it comes to actual usefulness, I use Live Local.

And their maps loads a LOT faster than google's, and work far better (no waiting for all the pictures making up a map to slowly load (for every zoom level), and then half the time having to drag it out and back because pictures some didn't load at all). It just works, and very quickly. I like the google maps controls better still, but like anything there's always some adaptation to a new interface. (No idea about map coverage for whatever countries or such, but it works very good for North America at least). The maps themselves look nicer too IMO.

Their "local" is no worse than google's (at least for where I live, I've searched for small shops and such - it finds 'em easily). There's a bunch more things I haven't had time to look at yet (expo, gallery, etc)

I disagree on performance. Live Local, like most other Live services, fails on performance when compared to Google. I can tell because my primary machine is a 1.7 GHz laptop with only 512 MB of RAM. Any slow website results in the annoying fan spinning up, and I get this far more often on Live Local than Google Maps.

With that in mind, I use Live Local almost exclusively. Here's why:

• Live Local has better controls. It was the first to add mouse wheel scroll zooming, which Google Maps has added. (I don't mind the copying, though; the more the merrier!) I can't live without the middle-click, box zooming, though. From a globe view I can zoom to my house in a few seconds with Live Local's box zooming.
• Directions between arbitrary points: Right-click anywhere to select the From and To points to find directions. Google Maps requires that I type in addresses. Problem is that I don't know the address of Coldwater Peak. Note that Yahoo Maps expands upon this by letting you add waypoints, but it's too slow for me.
• Bird's Eye view. Images are taken from an airplane, so detail is awesome.
• I can perform up to 3 simultaneous map searches. This means I can see the locations of all Safeways, libraries, and CompUSAs on the same map. Useful if you intend on going to multiple places when driving.
• Live Local has better sharing features. You can create collections of places and share them on Live Local. This might be a silly example, but some friends visited Seattle recently and wanted suggestions on places to visit. I made a list in Live Local. You can add notes, images, and URLs to places on a collection, and viewers of a collection can generate driving directions between any of its places (as well as any other arbitrary point). Another feature is the ability to share your current view plus any places you have marked via a URL, as I've shown through various links in this post.
• UI is more customizable. Live Local's panels are removable, yielding more visible map area than Google Maps.

Aside from performance Live Local is also lacking in aerial imagery. Google Maps has considerably more detail in places like Shanghai, Pyongyang, Ho Chi Minh City, etc. But when it comes to actual usefulness, I use Live Local.

And their maps loads a LOT faster than google's, and work far better (no waiting for all the pictures making up a map to slowly load (for every zoom level), and then half the time having to drag it out and back because pictures some didn't load at all). It just works, and very quickly. I like the google maps controls better still, but like anything there's always some adaptation to a new interface. (No idea about map coverage for whatever countries or such, but it works very good for North America at least). The maps themselves look nicer too IMO.

Their "local" is no worse than google's (at least for where I live, I've searched for small shops and such - it finds 'em easily). There's a bunch more things I haven't had time to look at yet (expo, gallery, etc)

I disagree on performance. Live Local, like most other Live services, fails on performance when compared to Google. I can tell because my primary machine is a 1.7 GHz laptop with only 512 MB of RAM. Any slow website results in the annoying fan spinning up, and I get this far more often on Live Local than Google Maps.

With that in mind, I use Live Local almost exclusively. Here's why:

• Live Local has better controls. It was the first to add mouse wheel scroll zooming, which Google Maps has added. (I don't mind the copying, though; the more the merrier!) I can't live without the middle-click, box zooming, though. From a globe view I can zoom to my house in a few seconds with Live Local's box zooming.
• Directions between arbitrary points: Right-click anywhere to select the From and To points to find directions. Google Maps requires that I type in addresses. Problem is that I don't know the address of Coldwater Peak. Note that Yahoo Maps expands upon this by letting you add waypoints, but it's too slow for me.
• Bird's Eye view. Images are taken from an airplane, so detail is awesome.
• I can perform up to 3 simultaneous map searches. This means I can see the locations of all Safeways, libraries, and CompUSAs on the same map. Useful if you intend on going to multiple places when driving.
• Live Local has better sharing features. You can create collections of places and share them on Live Local. This might be a silly example, but some friends visited Seattle recently and wanted suggestions on places to visit. I made a list in Live Local. You can add notes, images, and URLs to places on a collection, and viewers of a collection can generate driving directions between any of its places (as well as any other arbitrary point). Another feature is the ability to share your current view plus any places you have marked via a URL, as I've shown through various links in this post.
• UI is more customizable. Live Local's panels are removable, yielding more visible map area than Google Maps.

Aside from performance Live Local is also lacking in aerial imagery. Google Maps has considerably more detail in places like Shanghai, Pyongyang, Ho Chi Minh City, etc. But when it comes to actual usefulness, I use Live Local.

And their maps loads a LOT faster than google's, and work far better (no waiting for all the pictures making up a map to slowly load (for every zoom level), and then half the time having to drag it out and back because pictures some didn't load at all). It just works, and very quickly. I like the google maps controls better still, but like anything there's always some adaptation to a new interface. (No idea about map coverage for whatever countries or such, but it works very good for North America at least). The maps themselves look nicer too IMO.

Their "local" is no worse than google's (at least for where I live, I've searched for small shops and such - it finds 'em easily). There's a bunch more things I haven't had time to look at yet (expo, gallery, etc)

I disagree on performance. Live Local, like most other Live services, fails on performance when compared to Google. I can tell because my primary machine is a 1.7 GHz laptop with only 512 MB of RAM. Any slow website results in the annoying fan spinning up, and I get this far more often on Live Local than Google Maps.

With that in mind, I use Live Local almost exclusively. Here's why:

• Live Local has better controls. It was the first to add mouse wheel scroll zooming, which Google Maps has added. (I don't mind the copying, though; the more the merrier!) I can't live without the middle-click, box zooming, though. From a globe view I can zoom to my house in a few seconds with Live Local's box zooming.
• Directions between arbitrary points: Right-click anywhere to select the From and To points to find directions. Google Maps requires that I type in addresses. Problem is that I don't know the address of Coldwater Peak. Note that Yahoo Maps expands upon this by letting you add waypoints, but it's too slow for me.
• Bird's Eye view. Images are taken from an airplane, so detail is awesome.
• I can perform up to 3 simultaneous map searches. This means I can see the locations of all Safeways, libraries, and CompUSAs on the same map. Useful if you intend on going to multiple places when driving.
• Live Local has better sharing features. You can create collections of places and share them on Live Local. This might be a silly example, but some friends visited Seattle recently and wanted suggestions on places to visit. I made a list in Live Local. You can add notes, images, and URLs to places on a collection, and viewers of a collection can generate driving directions between any of its places (as well as any other arbitrary point). Another feature is the ability to share your current view plus any places you have marked via a URL, as I've shown through various links in this post.
• UI is more customizable. Live Local's panels are removable, yielding more visible map area than Google Maps.

Aside from performance Live Local is also lacking in aerial imagery. Google Maps has considerably more detail in places like Shanghai, Pyongyang, Ho Chi Minh City, etc. But when it comes to actual usefulness, I use Live Local.

And their maps loads a LOT faster than google's, and work far better (no waiting for all the pictures making up a map to slowly load (for every zoom level), and then half the time having to drag it out and back because pictures some didn't load at all). It just works, and very quickly. I like the google maps controls better still, but like anything there's always some adaptation to a new interface. (No idea about map coverage for whatever countries or such, but it works very good for North America at least). The maps themselves look nicer too IMO.

Their "local" is no worse than google's (at least for where I live, I've searched for small shops and such - it finds 'em easily). There's a bunch more things I haven't had time to look at yet (expo, gallery, etc)

I disagree on performance. Live Local, like most other Live services, fails on performance when compared to Google. I can tell because my primary machine is a 1.7 GHz laptop with only 512 MB of RAM. Any slow website results in the annoying fan spinning up, and I get this far more often on Live Local than Google Maps.

With that in mind, I use Live Local almost exclusively. Here's why:

• Live Local has better controls. It was the first to add mouse wheel scroll zooming, which Google Maps has added. (I don't mind the copying, though; the more the merrier!) I can't live without the middle-click, box zooming, though. From a globe view I can zoom to my house in a few seconds with Live Local's box zooming.
• Directions between arbitrary points: Right-click anywhere to select the From and To points to find directions. Google Maps requires that I type in addresses. Problem is that I don't know the address of Coldwater Peak. Note that Yahoo Maps expands upon this by letting you add waypoints, but it's too slow for me.
• Bird's Eye view. Images are taken from an airplane, so detail is awesome.
• I can perform up to 3 simultaneous map searches. This means I can see the locations of all Safeways, libraries, and CompUSAs on the same map. Useful if you intend on going to multiple places when driving.
• Live Local has better sharing features. You can create collections of places and share them on Live Local. This might be a silly example, but some friends visited Seattle recently and wanted suggestions on places to visit. I made a list in Live Local. You can add notes, images, and URLs to places on a collection, and viewers of a collection can generate driving directions between any of its places (as well as any other arbitrary point). Another feature is the ability to share your current view plus any places you have marked via a URL, as I've shown through various links in this post.
• UI is more customizable. Live Local's panels are removable, yielding more visible map area than Google Maps.

Aside from performance Live Local is also lacking in aerial imagery. Google Maps has considerably more detail in places like Shanghai, Pyongyang, Ho Chi Minh City, etc. But when it comes to actual usefulness, I use Live Local.

Does anyone use MS' web search page? After its introduction with much noise I've never heard anything about that anymore.

I use it, although in all honesty, it's about the same as Google search for me. Results are good enough that I'm happy. However, I do like Live Image Search far more than Google Image Search. Live Image search has infinite scroll (no more clicking Next), the images are more relevant in my experience (try "Al Gore" on Live and Google), and it lists related people. It also has my favorite feature: you can add images you've found to a scratchpad. This is quite useful if you want to gather images while searching.

Does anyone use MS' web search page? After its introduction with much noise I've never heard anything about that anymore.

I use it, although in all honesty, it's about the same as Google search for me. Results are good enough that I'm happy. However, I do like Live Image Search far more than Google Image Search. Live Image search has infinite scroll (no more clicking Next), the images are more relevant in my experience (try "Al Gore" on Live and Google), and it lists related people. It also has my favorite feature: you can add images you've found to a scratchpad. This is quite useful if you want to gather images while searching.

Does anyone use MS' web search page? After its introduction with much noise I've never heard anything about that anymore.

I hate to be a slashdot heretic.. but in my opinion the best mapping solution today is Microsoft LIVE maps. It's got the google fast panning feel.. it has really good traffic updates (even on the directions), good printing (google had that, but messed it up), and good directions.

I still think google maps "search" is a lot better. Like if I am looking for a dominos near my hotel or something I'll normally still use google with "dominos near 73118" or something. But for anything else right now its Live Maps.

Like this http://labs.live.com/photosynth/whatis/

I don't think we're going to be seeings these kind of pics on the average website anytime soon ;)

Well, this reminds me of Seadragon http://labs.live.com/Seadragon.aspx; using their technology this should not be
such a problem. Coming soon? (You'll probably have seen Photosynth http://labs.live.com/photosynth/?)

I don't think we're going to be seeings these kind of pics on the average website anytime soon ;)

Well, this reminds me of Seadragon http://labs.live.com/Seadragon.aspx; using their technology this should not be
such a problem. Coming soon? (You'll probably have seen Photosynth http://labs.live.com/photosynth/?)

How they wish now Seadragon were there to help ;-)

In the 1950s There was a period of intense competition among manufacturers that was known as the "Holey Wars". Proctor began with an advertising campaign that touted the efficiency of its 15 steam jets. Eventually some manufacturers featured over 100 steam vents. The industry standard has evolved to be about 22 holes spaced evenly around the perimeter of the sole plate.

Incidentally, I found this post using a third search engine other than Google or Wikipedia that is rapidly gaining in accurate results for me. YMMV, and yes, I know this will be considered flamebait for haters. http://www.live.com/

Microsoft's live Web site gets that all the time. https://postmaster.live.com/ is even under the wrong cert name.

-M

For the moment, http://fss.live.com/ is in beta and free to all. I don't know the long term marketing plans with respect to charging for it. The parental control features offered by fss.live.com are redundantly available in all versions of Vista, BTW.

I agree with the general thrust of what has been said here. Give the kids simple "User" accounts. If you don't want to go to all the trouble of having a domain controller with AD group policies and such, here's a newer, simpler way to go: Set up Family Safe Settings on each computer with you and certain other faculty as administrators, and the various students as the children. It blocks the worse stuff, and by monitoring what's going on, you can selectively lock down various sites. We use it in my house with our kids and it works pretty well. Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft Employee.

If the father in your previous example hadn't been such a shitty parent, the problem would never have happened in the first place.

You know, you are totally right, except it was actually the mother who was a really shitty parent. The mother was also a lawyer, and used her abilities at manipulating the law to keep the father out of the daughters life. The mother also sometimes left her daughter in the hands of some boyfriend who sexually molested her which obviously would have contributed to her problems.

How much experience do you have on this stuff? In my post I was actually talking about my dead wife whose death notice I put up here, but I guess it must be nice to walk around in a nice sunny world and say that all bad things are "none of my business", but yes, if she'd had legal access to the drugs the dealer who lead to her demise would never have got his hooks into to her. Unfortunately she felt she only had two choices in life, drugs or suicide. She was good at hiding these issues, admittedly if I had known what she was hiding I would have kept the hell away from her, which I guess is a reason for her to have a good false front. But live and learn ay.

Thats what I was thinking too.

Here is the Live Search's Macro site for those who don't know:
Live Search Macros

Thats what I was thinking too.

Here is the Live Search's Macro site for those who don't know:
Live Search Macros

At microsoft the internal commitment to existing business goals/products far outweighs any customer/service consideration. You can see this play out across many products. This is probably not the best example but their map service http://local.live.com/ doesn't work well on Firefox and it doesn't work at all on Safari. If the development were customer centric this service would work on these platforms. Overall this seems very limiting for the work (and the customer). Definitely something to consider before committing.