The Microsoft Virtual Earth / Live Maps Blog gave us a shout out today. Hello back at ya!
They mention that many of the maps submitted to VGT these days are Live Maps’ birds eye and satellite images. They’re quite right — already a good number of the submissions from today are awesome birds eye images:
 © Bing Maps |
 © Bing Maps |
Taking a look at our historical data, the number of Live Maps images submitted by VGT visitors has been increasing quite a bit. In 2006, 76% of the maps submitted were of Google Maps images. So far in 2007, Live Maps images are beating Google Maps images 51% to 49%. Lots of cool things to be seen from up above! I definitely think that Live Maps’ birds eye images are helping Microsoft out here — the detail they’re getting is amazing!
The best part about all this Microsoft/Google competition? Us globetrotters are the winners 
Speaking of which… Live Maps? Live Local? Virtual Earth? Live Search Maps? While Microsoft keeps tweaking the name of their service, others such as Robert Scoble have noticed and ask why Microsoft Maps doesn’t get the hype?. Does the constant name changing have something to do with it? Personally, I think Live Maps has the best ring to it. Virtual Earth was great back in the day too, but if it has to have ‘Live’ in the name, leave it at ‘Live Maps’. The Virtual Earth / Live Maps blog has a response to Scoble as well.