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."

Comments

West to East, or East to West? So easy to forget

[Monte]

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.

ms and innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

wow microsoft is just leaps ahead of the competition when it comes to innovation

Re:ms and innovation

[Excelsior]

The only thing they "copied" was the dragability.

Um, they copied a lot more than that. They copied resizing the map window to fill up the browser window.They copied the general color scheme. They copied the ability to switch between street maps and aerial photos. They copied DHTML layering to show point data on top of the maps. They copied the entire design for searching, navigating, and finding points-of-interest. And they copied it so closely, they made it cross-browser functional (you can damn well bet if Google Maps didn't exist as a cross-browser functional product, MSN VE would only work on IE).

And they copied the most innovative part of Google maps - tile-based pre-built raster images to assemble dynamic maps. As someone who has developed GIS applications, I can tell you, while this may sound trivial, it is not. Google thought outside the box. The GIS community for years has used vector data to produce one raster image on-the-fly at runtime (like Mapquest). Instead, Google creates small tiled images at every zoom-level they offer and stores them on the server, and thus can produce a map at any location and any zoom-level, and offer it with "dragability". This is a completely new paradigm for interactive GIS apps. The old way does offer some advantages over the new way, but for web-based interactive GIS, the new way is pretty phenominal.

While the rest of the GIS community was happily working to make incremental improvements to the old paradigm, Google innovated a new paradigm. MSN just copied it. There's nothing wrong with copying (well, until the USPTO grants software patents), but don't mistake it for anything other than what it is.

Not a good first impression

[defkkon]

Typed in my home town including specifying that it is in Ontario, Canada.

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.

Weird distortion on building outlines?

[philgross]

What have they done to Columbia University's campus map?
Microsoft Version

(correct) Google Maps version

International Support is Pathetic

[aslate]

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.

Something odd about Ground Zero?

[Kappelmeister]

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!

Re:Just me?

[Tim C]

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.

Re:West to East, or East to West? So easy to forge

[Monte]

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.