Windows Live Local
I'm a bit behind the times here, but Microsoft released the beta of Windows Live Local (WLL), which is the rebranding of Virtual Earth into Microsoft's 'live' portal, about a month ago.
Anyway, I've been checking it out lately and thought I'd post some of my thoughts! (I wrote about VE when it was first launched, and all the good points mentioned there still stand!)
This release provides some of the features that were talked about when VE was initially announced, in particular the bird's eye view imagery.
As usual, this only covers the US, and only a few cities at that, but it does provide quite an impressive view. This example from the VE blog shows it off pretty well, providing 10 different locations to look at.
But for me, the biggest improvement in this release is that it now provides some information for the UK!!!
There are no aerial images, or local information (eg searching for pizza wont work!) but you can get maps and also integrated driving directions!
I really like the way they have implemented the driving directions, especially when it comes to printing them. It lets you print the detail diagrams for every stage, but gives control over which ones you want to print, so you can skip the ones you don't need, and also allows you to add any custom comments you want to the directions.
I'm finding that I'm using this in conjunction with Google Maps at the moment, but if WLL adds better support for the UK it may become my favourite.
The two needed features are:
Anyway, I've been checking it out lately and thought I'd post some of my thoughts! (I wrote about VE when it was first launched, and all the good points mentioned there still stand!)
This release provides some of the features that were talked about when VE was initially announced, in particular the bird's eye view imagery.
As usual, this only covers the US, and only a few cities at that, but it does provide quite an impressive view. This example from the VE blog shows it off pretty well, providing 10 different locations to look at.
But for me, the biggest improvement in this release is that it now provides some information for the UK!!!
There are no aerial images, or local information (eg searching for pizza wont work!) but you can get maps and also integrated driving directions!
I really like the way they have implemented the driving directions, especially when it comes to printing them. It lets you print the detail diagrams for every stage, but gives control over which ones you want to print, so you can skip the ones you don't need, and also allows you to add any custom comments you want to the directions.
I'm finding that I'm using this in conjunction with Google Maps at the moment, but if WLL adds better support for the UK it may become my favourite.
The two needed features are:
- Better support for entering UK addresses, eg not needing to add ', UK' after a postcode.
- Integrated local searching
Adding satellite imagery would be nice, but I would like the birds eye views even more. I think these do actually become useful for finding your way around, where as satellite imagery isn't really that useful.
I think the interface is also crying out for the ability to move and resize the overlay windows, in particular the directions, scratchpad and search results.
Being able to add multiple stops in the driving directions (as offered by yahoo) would also be nice.
So yes, there's still lots that can be done to improve it, but I think WLL is shaping up nicely! :)
posted by Gezz at
4:50 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home