Microsoft announced the third release of Windows Live Local, the company's online local search and mapping service that gives people the ability to quickly find maps, directions and local search information that is layered on top of rich, immersive aerial photography. Added functionality includes real-time traffic flow and incident reporting, new social networking tools that enable users to save and share their favorite local experiences, and productivity enhancements from extending the Windows Live Local experience into Microsoft Office Outlook and Windows Live Messenger.
The following new capabilities in the online service enable the seamless sharing of localized knowledge:
-- Real-time traffic flow. Customizable driving directions are now even more useful with the addition of real-time traffic flow and incident reporting provided by Traffic.com. This functionality will be available only in the U.S. release.
-- Collections. Social networking functionality allows customers to create lists of favorite landmarks and locations, attach personal photos and save them to a Scratchpad. Collections can be saved, recalled later, "permalinked," and shared with friends and community in e-mail or through their MSN Spaces blog.
-- Integration with Windows Live Messenger. Sharing maps and location information from within Windows Live Messenger chats is easier. Users begin a sharing session from the Actions menu. People sharing a chat session can see and interact with the same Windows Live Local map and benefit from a shared mapping and local search experience.
Also being released is Windows Live Local Add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook. This add-in introduces Windows Live Local mapping capabilities to the Outlook Calendar, enabling Outlook users to find and print maps and directions to meeting locations from within Outlook. It also allows them to better manage their travel schedule by extending meeting times to accommodate travel time and automatically send links with mapping information about meeting locations to other people within Outlook Calendar requests.
Following last year's launch of Windows Live Local in the U.S., its arrival, along with that of the MSN Virtual Earth platform, in the U.K. and Canada is evidence of Microsoft's ongoing commitment to provide this set of services in new markets and regions. Customers in these countries will experience similar high-quality local search and driving directions capabilities currently available in the U.S. Features such as bird's-eye-view imagery, improved aerial views and real-time traffic will be included in future releases and updates. Bird's-eye-view imagery, also known as oblique imagery, is an image from an angled view taken from a range of 3,000 to 3,500 feet. The perspective offers the customer a unique view of a given area at superior resolution.
Standard aerial imagery for the U.K. has been licensed from Getmapping plc. Microsoft is also working with the Blom Group to provide the unique bird's-eye-view photos that will cover roughly 235 square miles of London in the coming weeks and will expand over time. Bird's-eye-view imagery in the U.S. is provided by Pictometry International Corp. for 30 percent of the U.S. areas that are mapped. In Canada, bird's-eye-view imagery will not be available in the initial release but will be introduced as the beta is built out and improved over the next several months.
