Virtual Earth is Live

And you can meet the Virtual Earth team over on Channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=91714

Is this Virtual Earth just a Virtual USA? I can't quite seem to get the UK on it.

<p><a title="Surely there's a grammar problem with the name of this blog." target="_blank" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/07/25/443118.aspx">MSN Search's Weblog</a> announces that virtual earth is live. Ever the conscientous reporter I

you may want to look into removing this portion... just a thought:

http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=10&Z=18&X=2915&Y=22537&W=3&qs=%7cnew+york+city%7cny%7c

Compared to Google earth, Virtual earth is rather disappointing...

See if you guys can bring in a context menu, it would be awesome to add thumbtacks to places - and not just to save this stuff as a cookie, but if you have an msn spaces account, to store all this data out there

Why should it be censored? I would think its simply old data, you have to pay for the newer data.

Are you also going to ask for censorship of all images that show them? Films? Etc......

i don't believe current maps should have representations of buildings that are no longer there. should money really be an issue if you are trying to deliver a map service accurate content?

especially in the context of this particular company?

The following features, if implemented, might help to make Virtual Earth a bit more competitive. As it stance it is not.
1. Local time integration: select any place (town, state, country) and view its current local time on a digital web clock (or just on the map it does not matter). Imagine how useful that would be. Many times users wish to find the time at a specific place, without having to look at the timezone changes and make calculations. By supporting local time it would be really easy for us to find the time in any place without making all those calculations and fearing for mistakes. And this is after all a feature not difficult to implement. Also, add the ability to find the local time after let's say 12 hours, eg. what is the time in London after 6 hours from now?
2. Flight and trip info integration: On Virtual Earth all the US airports are displayed. Wouldn't it be nice if I could draw virtual lines across two airports and immediately get the flight listings that join these two airports, plus get flight delay info and prices to compare. Wouldn't it be nice if I could plan a trip to a country just by drawing a virtual line or just by circling with my mouse the places I wish to go and Virtual Earth could give me a list or trips I could take, plus a price list for me to choose, plus comments from other users on those travel destinations.
3. Theatre, movi listings integration: Wouldn't it be nice if just by clicking on a cinema building on the map or by clicking on the special link after I have located a number of theatres in my area, I could get movi plus price listings for these theatres and cinemas.
I am not talking about really new features here. After all, MSN Travel, MSN Movis can do the job today. Just integrate them with Virtual Earth and do it now not in two years.

MSN's Virtual Earth is now out of beta. You can read their 'blog post about it at http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/07/25/443118.aspx and see the service itself at http://virtualearth.msn.com . You can search by...

"See Whats There" - This is a really powerful concept for promoting the this new generation of immersive, photographic maps from both Google and MSN. It would be a great marketing campaign for either Virtual Earth or Google Earth. Six years ago I bought the domain SeeWhatsThere.com to promote the idea of Geographic Media using aerial photos and QuickTime VR panoramic tours. I intended to build a business around these new ideas, but the technology and bandwidth weren't ready yet. Now they are, and I am making SeeWhatsThere.com available to the companies competing in this incredible new market for search: visual exploration and virtual travel -- the ability to not just search, but to look around and See Whats There! http://www.seewhatsthere.com

"See Whats There" - This is a really powerful concept for promoting this new generation of immersive, photographic maps from both Google and MSN. It would be a great marketing campaign for either Virtual Earth or Google Earth. Six years ago I bought the domain SeeWhatsThere.com to promote the idea of Geographic Media using aerial photos and QuickTime VR panoramic tours. I intended to build a business around these ideas, but the technology and bandwidth weren't ready yet. Now they are, and I am making SeeWhatsThere.com available to the companies competing in this incredible new market for search: visual exploration and virtual travel -- the ability to not just search, but to look around and See Whats There!

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