This is really not it.

The world as I see it. Links to the best on the web. If I had a blog this would be it. But I don't.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

MSN Virtual Earth v.s. Google Maps: Showdown.

Took a butchers at MSN Virtual Earth today. It's good. Really good in fact - if you live in the only country in the world, the good old US of A. For anywhere else, well, sorry, maybe in a future version.

The interface is very loveable. A nice big map fills most of the screen. tools pop up in little ajax-y type boxes. mouse scroll wheel zooms by default (I had to use greasemonkey to enable this for google maps.)

There are some serious problems for them to iron out in the beta. tile loading is poor - sometimes 50% of the tiles would fail to load. could be server overload maybe. Scrolling around is buggy, sometimes you 'pop' back to where you started scrolling from. The place names are often duplicated, and different sizes, with no apparent logic. For example, on the world map, the most prominant, largest name is the Marshall Islands. Very nice place I'm sure, but hardly a primary focus in most applications. And the coverage is dire. England in aerial photos is blurry green blob where coastlines are indistinct, and the 'road map' view does not zoom in far enough to display any roads.

Compare:

MSN Virtual Earth coverage of south east England

Google Maps coverage of Lichtenstein

Google Maps manages to show recognisable buildings in a county many people would be pressed to find on a map. That's pretty good, and a big target for MSN Virtual Earth to chase.

I look forward to what future versions of both sites (applications?) have to offer.

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