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Microsoft Enters Mapping Wars


CYBret

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Posted

CBS News Article

 

I think they've mapped 10 cities so far with promise for much more. Mostly a lot of bells and whistles, but still some very cool pictures.

 

It goes online tonight with a preview on live.com. Might be fun to check out.

 

Bret

Posted

I saw that news bit on television. It looked too cool.

 

It did get a bit scarey when they started talking about virtually touring a street using the 3-D views and being able to "click on any door to go inside and shop the store" though. :unsure:

Posted

I'm trying to install it right now. Apparently you need to use IE, so it seems that this product, unlike Google Earth, will actually be a "web site," so perhaps that explains while the article is wrong in the opening. Still sloppy work, but at least a bit more understandable.

Posted

Gave it a minor test drive... not terrible impressed. Seems to be okay, though not quite as intuitive as GE.

 

Ran a little slow, but I did have a lot of apps running on my computer and had the building resolution set high.

 

Looked at LA and not a whole lot of it was in 3D. The downtown area of course, but not much more beyond the central area that I saw.

 

I also really disliked being locked into a browser window. An inch and a half of the screen was taken up by the browser button, address bar, etc. And then an inch of the left was taken up for a column there. If they don't already have a way to float the program out of a browser window, they need to get one. Way too little of the map can be seen.

 

Additionally, you NEED Internet Explorer. No big suprise there, MS obviously want you to use their product to view their product. But if you use FireFox or something else, be prepared to get a copy of IE if you don't already have it or no dice.

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