The Daily Ping

The 1st Ping was published on January 6, 2000.

December 10th, 2005

Microsoft’s Map: SimCity for Real

As I’ve mentioned here recently, my online mapping heart (located next to my spleen) belongs to Google. But Yahoo!’s new beta is winning me over. And now, Microsoft is coming to the game – I kid you not – with the poorly-named Windows Live Local. (eesh.)

But! Windows Live Local has a very nifty feature: bird’s eye view. While it’s not available for every city (sadly), it’s very cool for the cities that are there. It makes the entire city just look like something out of SimCity – the perspective is pretty much the same. It’s wild. Soon we’ll be able to plop little fake people in these maps and watch them drive from point A to point B, I bet.

It’s a gee-whiz feature. Is it useful? I’m not sure. Yahoo! Maps beta reigns when it comes to functionality. Google Maps has speed. Microsoft has… uh… yeah. I give them major points, though, for making it work in Firefox, Safari, and Opera. Then again, SimCity already works with all of those browsers.

Posted in Technology

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