Wouldn't it be great if there was one mapping service that offers everything you need to plan a trip to somewhere you've never been? Sure, map sites are generally pretty similar. You can see maps, find business listings, get driving directions, see images and stuff like that. But it's actually more complicated than that. At least it was for me. My wife and I recently visited Maui, Hawaii for the first time. We spent a week on the island celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary and, after getting advice from all of our family and friends, we had enough must-sees and must-dos to fill a [...]

Related Topics: Features: Analysis | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Street View | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Photosynth | Top News

It's probably not something that you can wrap your head around pretty quickly. It's also not something you can describe in quick, easily digestible terms. "It" is a new Microsoft Bing effort called Read/Write World that has some pretty lofty goals: things like indexing and connecting all of the world's "geo-linked media." And not just indexing and connecting all this media, but also making it easy to use and consume, too, on any platform and type of device. It's stuff like maps, photos, panoramas, movies, business listings -- almost anything that can be tied to a physical location - [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Bing Streetside | Microsoft: Photosynth

Photosynth is one of the many cool-but-underpromoted-and-unknown aspects of the Bing Maps experience. That could change soon thanks to the launch this week of a Photosynth app for iOS devices. With the Photosynth app, users can create panoramic images inside the app -- no additional stitching software required -- and upload them directly into Bing Maps. (Or to Facebook if you prefer.) It looks better than I'm describing it, so watch at about the :20 mark of this Microsoft video to see how the app works. Video: Microsoft Photosynth App – April 2011 If users upload panoramas to Bing M [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Photosynth

At the Bing Search event in San Francisco today, Microsoft unveiled a dizzying array of nearly across-the-board updates and improvements for Bing online and mobile apps. Some are minor and some are more significant. Most of these upgrades and feature enhancements will be available starting today or later this month. There are in fact so many things rolling out simultaneously that it's a bit overwhelming. Accordingly in this post I'm just going to offer up an edited version of the information provided by Microsoft. We'll explore selected features and products later in subsequent posts. Fa [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Social Search | Microsoft: Bing Travel | Microsoft: Photosynth | Top News

Microsoft's innovative Photosynth technology has been integrated into Virtual Earth, marking the first time Photosynth has been available for commercial use. Photosynth is a tool that lets users upload regular photos and then stitches those photos into 3-D scenes of whatever the photos depict. Our Greg Sterling has previously shown some Photosynth screenshots and called it "pretty amazing stuff." Microsoft says that two early customers using Photosynth via its integration with Virtual Earth are NASA and VisitBrighton. Here's one screenshot of how NASA is using Photosynth to show the Inte [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Photosynth