October 17, 2007
@ 04:00 AM
Comments [4]
The New maps.live.com is Hot

It looks like my favorite team in Windows Live scored another hit with their recent release. You can see it for yourself by going to http://maps.live.com. The product team has a huge list of the new changes in their post Live Search Maps v2 is out! Gemini Launches which list a number of significant features including

    • generic directions to a specific location (e.g. if coming from I-5 North vs. if coming from I-5 South) without a specific starting point. I believe this is formally called 1–click directions.
    • the ability to have the directions route around bad traffic
    • the ability to import GeoRSS, GPX and KML files as collections
    • increased metadata about businesses from partner companies like InfoUSA, CitySearch, and Gayot.

Surprisingly, my favorite features of the new release don’t seem to have been mentioned. The removal of dual search boxes along with some of the other user interface niceties such as suggesting “Work” or “Home” when a user attempts to save a location are just great.

There was also a bug in the driving directions to my house from Redmond which was also fixed in this release. I never even got around to mentioning it to the team. Now that’s what I call service.  

Now playing: Lil Wayne - Go DJ (Remix) (feat. Slim Thug & Mannie Fresh)


 

Categories: Windows Live

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Wednesday, 17 October 2007 11:28:41 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Finally my postcode (ZIP for US readers) points to the correct place on the map, two years after the place was built and the code allocated, although they still haven't updated the mapping so the street itself still doesn't exist according to Live Maps. Still, that's one better than Google Maps where the postcode lookup still points to the wrong location.
CW
Thursday, 18 October 2007 02:35:32 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
What could be more exciting than this? I feel all tingly.
Bobby the Brain Heenan
Thursday, 18 October 2007 16:40:06 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
is it just me.... or did they nurf one of my favorite features?

up until now, i could easily search for more than one thing (i.e, Circuit City and Victoria's Secret) and have both search results show up on the same map, color coded... and then easily see where the closest pair was (which made shopping trips in strange lands much easier). Is that feature gone??
chris hollander
Friday, 19 October 2007 15:33:31 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
- No Drag 'n drop directions
- No Sign of a Stable Service. e.g. Errors such as "1-click directions is temporarily unavailable." are still common to the service
- No integration with Live Contacts

Why should I switch?
Leo
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