Pimpin'

I'm sure a lot of people will give MS crap for not producing totally new, innovative stuff... and virtual earth and start are both decidedly ripoffs of existing technologies. Having said that, I'm all for improving upon the work of others and when it comes down to it, I just want to use the best tool and I don't care who makes it.

SO. Some comments on Virtual Earth:

1) Option for topographic layer. Please please please. Suggest that MS purchase Topozone or something. I use topozone infinitely more often than I use maps.google, but its interface sucks the heiny. Having the scrolly interface and the ability to switch between topo and aerial and/or map would be great. This would, imho, also add something major that Google lacks.

2) Layer blending options? Right now the aerial photos have some of the road map info on top of them. Some ability to control how much (if any) of the road map info we see on top of the aerial photo would be nice, and of course being able to superimpose topographic information would add mucho value.

3) The zoomy thing is annoying. It's cute... but not functional. At least at some zoom levels, the zoom effect zooms farther in than the next image set and you get a weird bounce-back visual effect and it's distracting. I think part of the value of the scrolly interface is that it is seamless and fluid. The zoom interface (on google and msn) is neither, but the msn approach comes off as such a bad execution that I think it is worse than the google slider bar. If the zoomy effect could go to the correct scale, and the next image level could pre-load once the current level is loaded... maybe it might work.

Thanks for the preview. :)
Is this the sort of thing you're presonally working on? I was under the impression your work had something to do with changing the way we did business or dynamically allocating our changing workforce technologies or something.

I've forwarded your comments to the VirtualEarth team. In response to the overlay, there's an option to disable it under the "Aerial Photo" button dropdown, but it's either on or off—nothing in between.

My work isn't on this sort of thing—we enable individual-through-enterprise level partners to achieve the connectivity expected of today's and tommorow's world. Actually, I deliver company mail in a small cart and on Tuesdays, get to buff Steve Ballmer's spare Lexus with a cotton diaper.

OK, well as long as I have a semi-direct conduit to the people who are actually working on this, let me be a bit more abstract and forward-looking:

What Google did with maps.google that was so impressive was purely interface. The map data and the aerial imagery were obviously not new. The bulk of what makes the maps.google interface great is now replicated on Virtual Earth. Furthermore, the data for both are still more or less the same.

There is room for improvement on the interface, but I would like to see more diversification in the data. At present, I have a choice of either roadmap or aerial imagery... but nothing about the interface is explicitly linked to these two datasets. There are any number of additional datasets that could be viewed in this way.

Topographic maps, satellite imagery (visual and other), weather prediction plots, subway maps, GPS tracklogs, generic GIS data, alternate versions of aerial/satellite imagery (some satellite datasets have really bad coverage of certain areas; terraserver shows Los Alamos with snow, which is irritating), old versions of aerial photography or road maps for comparison to current data, whatever.

Granted, the usage of things like old versions of road maps is not likely to be high, but what's an extra terabyte of server-side storage to Microsoft? Having a hugungus storage capacity and a database to deliver it with alacrity was the whole point of MS's Terraserver. Having the option to turn on and off various data layers would be a huge win for functionality.

I envision an extension of the interface where a panel shows me what data layers are available for the map area I am currently looking at, and allows me to pick which one I want to see. For some layers transparancy might make sense (e.g. the map data overlaid on the aerial imagery, topographic information overlaid on map, etc.). Other layers only make sense as a base layer (aerial imagery, etc.).

I'm assuming there is a generic data layer interface already, so the issue is just obtaining as much map data as possible and converting it to the correct format. NASA and the USGS have a huge amount of interesting map data available in the public domain. The only real challenge is to develop an intuitive interface for switching layers.

[segue]

While I'm on the subject of Virtual Earth, can we get a directions engine that handles multiple waypoints? If I want to get from Boston to Santa Fe via Minneapolis, I wish VE could just show me the whole map and directions list instead of having to do two separate lookups.