Sunday, July 24, 2005

MSN launch Virtual Earth : Google Maps will have solid competition


It was a long time I was impressed by something by Microsoft. Virtual Earth is a very nice web based apps with a very high quality aerial pictures, -in US big cities-, up to 4 windows layers of products/services (one fully open plus the scratch pad at the same time). All thoses layers, with transparencies in IE and FF, automatically update when you move your map with your mouse, unlike Google Maps and even Google Earth ! The support of the scroll-wheel of your mouse to zoom in/out is great too. The cartographic data is also a lot more precise than Google Maps, and even Google Earth, and all the small roads in rural region are there.
I'd like to have to possibility to resize and move thoses layers, but it's only day one of this project. Hope they gonna extend the aerial pictures to Canada and get more zoom level to cities like Miami. Nice jobs Bill.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They should have named it Virtual USA. Outside the US it sucks...just dissappointed 1 billion people ouytside the US...ah well luckily Google is friendlier to the rest of the world ;-)