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MSN Virtual Earth Revealed
jeremyw writes "A day before its official launch, MSN Virtual Earth has gone live. MSN appears to have been inspired by Google Maps in this combination of local search and mapping. Virtual Earth introduces a number of interface enhancements to the now-familiar draggable aerial web map, such as the ability to zoom in using your mouse scroll wheel, and a Location Finder to determine your location to determine your real-world location "using Wi-Fi technology." Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble claims the site may not perform at full capacity until Monday."
I hope Microsoft has their virtual earth rotating in the right direction this time.
I tried to link to the original Knowledge Base entry for this, alas, it doesn't seem to be there any more.
I can see my house from here!
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
wow microsoft is just leaps ahead of the competition when it comes to innovation
MSN Virtually Useless Earth took me to some little town in the US. Apparently, it completely ignored my criteria.
I love a lot of Microsoft products, but if they're going to compete with the likes of Google Earth and Google Maps, they're going to have to do a lot better than this.
Besides, the interface isn't nearly as clean and fast. Just my two cents.
What have they done to Columbia University's campus map?
Microsoft Version
(correct) Google Maps version
Looking at London, i see a label with a massive expance of blank map around it. No London boroughs, areas, regions, anything. If i tried to find my house it wouldn't go very far. You can't even zoom in very far.
At least Google had a great service for the areas they had up, then expanded it to the rest of the world. The MS map seems to have poor support all round.
And setting aside the international support, this was very slow and seemed "clunky" compared to the Google interface. I do like the scrollwheel support and the use of the same images for various zoom levels, as you don't reload the map on every zoom.
At least for international areas, the maps don't seem to be as detailed as google's.
Also, the interface doesn't seem to be reactive to me, might be slashdotted, but at least with google you can see it's doing something.
I guess it's a bit early, should probably check again in a few days.
Zoom Player Lead Dev.
On the map view, zoom into my hometown near Birmingham, UK using "Road Map" view.
Switch to "Aerial Photo" view and BLAM! straight in downtown Atlanta, USA.
It's amazing. I never knew my hometown could do that!
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
You know, Ford makes cars with 4 wheels, and voila, GM copies them and makes a car with 4 wheels also.
I'm not saying Google is not innovating, but what is Microsoft supposed to do? If they don't make a mapping software, then they are attacked, if they do, then they are attacked.
Besides, I remember having a CD called something like Encarta Streets or something that was MICROSOFT mapping software long before google was anything other than a mispelling of goggle.
http://virtualearth.msn.com/default.aspx?cp=32.676 439%7C-117.158347&style=h&lvl=17&v=1
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=32.676147,-117.1575 27&spn=0.005491,0.006289&t=k&hl=en
Roberto
Microsoft TOTALLY ripped ENCARTA off from the Triple-A. This whole idea of SELLING MAPS has been around for at least, what, 35 years or more. I think the guys at Apple invented it. Thievery!
Microsoft doesn't create markets, it attempts to take over young markets through agressive (and sometimes illegal) marketing. It aims to achieve a monopoly, which it can then use to lock its customers in, creating a long-lasting cash-cow.
This is the technique used for Microsoft Windows, Word and Internet Explorer. It isn't always successful, but it is successful often enough to make a lot of money and annoy a lot of people.
NBC made that goof in the early '80s. They had a rotating earth in the intro sequence for their evening news broadcast, except it was rotating the wrong way. It was left this way for quite some time, too.
- If you do a "local search" it brings up a panel with links - however if you shift-click or right-click on those links there's now way to open the new page in a new window.
- If I hit the back button I don't go back to my previous local search results. Heck, somehow they messed with my browser button so the back button never leaves their site. I remember back when porn companies did this, but I don't expect to see reputable organizationos do this.
- I can't right-click on the image to bring it up in it's own window -- a normal web-browser feature that is very nice for printing maps without wasting paper&ink on useless headers and footers.
Basically, this page combines all the limitations of a web brosers with all the inconsistancies-and-difficulty-of-use of a PC application.The one thing that made the Internet easy-enough-to-use to make everyone comfortable with it is that all pages worked the same way (back button works) and all links worked the same way (same right-click-menu). Why does Microsoft feel a need to change this?
I'm not sure, but I think Microsoft may be living in a bit of denial...
On the other hand, it took only a week or two for them to update Flight Simulator!
Well...because I'm dumb, I guess. I say that honestly, too, not as a snarky reply. I guess I just assumed that because they called it "Virtual Earth" they were aiming for the same thing as GE.
And to betray even more ignorance...I, uh, didn't know about Google Maps.
You know, I wish I could take back that original post now, just because I hate being stupid. But whatever; I still do like Virtual Earth, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
Would you prefer that google had no competition? Competition can be a powerful drive to improvement, after all.
I think it's rather obvious that the creative type who comes up with the ideas usually prevails over those trying to play catch up.
I don't think that's obvious at all. It's perfectly possible to take someone else's idea, improve upon it, and produce a superior product. After all, they've just done most of the hard work and expensive R&D for you.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Ironically, a few years ago, I put up some satellite photos of my house in Colorado ... and the Virtual Earth has the same ones clearly showing the drought of 2002 with a bunch of brown grass - not realistic to expect real-time imagery, but I'm surprised not a more recent pass.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
The cars aren't moving.
I always assumed it was Gates' ego - he honestly believed the sun should rise on him before most of the rest of the U.S.
Visiting the site makes my konqueror crash. Fair enough, googles version also doesn't work for konqueror, but at least it doesn't make it crash.
Think that's bad? Try comparing those scenes in the aerial/satellite views ;)
They both get their data from NAVTEQ. If you look in the lower right corner of MS Earth, you'll see "© 2004 NAVTEQ." In Google maps you'll see "© 2005 NAVTEQ."
So, they're using older vector data. They're using older imagery, too. For most places MS uses USGS DOQQs, probably from 1999. Google, for urban areas at least, uses more recent satellite imagery. But outside of urban areas, Google uses low-res Landsat imagery which is fairly useless for this application.
and i'm in Ontario as well. I had to give it more information than I would google but that wasn't a big deal.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Let's see. Microsoft did Teraserver back in 1998. I guess, by your own definition, the tables have turned...
I never assumed that NBC graphic depicted the earth rotating. I thought it was from the perspective of someone in a rocket circling the earth as he travels from West to East.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
It appears that it is an integer rounding error. Notice how the MS lines line up exactly in the y direction, the x direction, or are exactly 45 degrees -- whereas Google lines are at the correct angle.
It is really annoying, that zooming is done differently: google: wheel down: zoom in ms: wheel down: zoom out But this is an old problem with any CAD software. Which metaphor is used ? Are you pulling an object towards yourself (above: google like moving earth towards yourself) or are you moving yourself towards an object (above: ms like moving yourself towards earth). (BTW, pesonal note: I prefer the "wheel down=zoom in" and use this in our 3D surgical planning software for dental implantology, www.med3D.com)
Well, the problem is that Microsoft's competition is based on leveraging prior successes - not by actually performing better in a new market. They don't win by being better than the competition, they win by throwing money at the problem until the competition can no longer keep up, and then once they own the market they just milk it like a cash cow. Look at IE - nothing but minor incremental bugfixes for about a decade, until all of a sudden Firefox comes along and IE is booming with new features.
Check out Google's campus from Google Earth:
http://catatonic.org/grafix/google-google.jpg
Now from MSN's product:
http://catatonic.org/grafix/msn-google.jpg
Pretty darn nice. Sorry for the folks in other parts who don't have good resolution in either product but for the SF Bay Area, MSN has the better satellite images (for now). The block I live on not far from the above shots was similarly clear. I could clearly see my car.
I think Microsoft did a great job with this site. This is the first version and it has all the features of google map. Even the hybrid mode they added a few weeks ago.
And on some areas (San Fransico, Los Angeles...) the zoom level is insane (2 or 3 times better than google's). You can nearly see people on the streets.
Finally there are cool innovative features like locate me. And it works really good.
I know this is slashdot so I won't go any further. But I do think that with a little more work this could be as good or better than google map.
I would prefer that Google had legitimate competition, not the type that Microsoft provides. Microsoft never steps into a market and works hard to do better than anyone else -- they step into the market with fistfuls of cash from their existing monopoly and use their brandname and monopoly cash to "compete" until they've destroyed everything in sight, at which point they shutdown all operations and move on to another existing market with clear non-Microsoft innovation.
Why do you think that Internet Explorer has had the same outstanding deficiencies since 1998?
Competition can be a powerful drive to improvement
I don't believe Google is above having competition, but keep in mind that they've been producing the best search products for years -- they're light-years ahead of everyone else in just about everything they've touched. Google does their work without any real competition to hound them into being better.
Microsoft isn't welcome competition, ever. Maybe if they produced results, but they've been an ineffective-products/effective-marketing company for too long to believe they'll start actually producing anything new in search technologies. And I say "new" because I find it hard to believe they can even do that, let alone "better".
Stop it already, he' dead Jim. I think the servers got slashdotted. Never have seen Google go under in a slashdotting.
Thalasar
I think you mean TerraServer.
This new Microsoft service is not based on ActiveX, it is just HTML and JavaScript as is Google Maps.
The only part of it that uses ActiveX is the "Locate Me" option, and even that is optional, where ActiveX is not available it will simply use your IP address to look up your location.
Google Earth is a windows only client. But MSNVirtualEarth and Google Maps both work fine in Firefox on any platform.
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
wow taking forever to load... nothing like MSN load time... wow aint it fast... oh wait... its loading... no wait here it come... damn and i have broad band and it is acting like 14.4k dial up... well i love the hybrid maps on google :) so i am sticking to google :)
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble claims the site may not perform at full capacity until Monday.
So I suppose us visiting it wouldn't be such a good idea. I can see the posting now:
"Slashdot Crashes Earth"
At least that's better than when IE had the rotating Earth throbber. That only showed the Americas and Europe, and left out the whole of Asia!!!!
BBC News made the same goof when they launched their TOG system in 2003 - small globe in the background behind teh clock at the left of the lower-third of the screen.
Mirror
I quit!