Review: MSN Virtual Earth [ensight.org]
Jeremy’s read on Virtual Earth against Google Maps. Gives MSN Virtual Earth the nod in the end.
There’s a bit of a divide here between Google Maps / Earth and MSN Virtual Earth… Google Maps just plain has better overall imagery. Virtual Earth’s imagery is either great or awful, whereas Google Maps has maps for just about everywhere on earth, even if the map is way pixelated. At the same time, Virtual Earth is much easier to use from an “exploring” point of view. Hop off a plane, hit “Locate Me”, look for rental cars, then look for hotels, then look for somewhere to eat and then look for somewhere to catch a show. Boom, your whole day is planned and in your Scratch Pad.
My only real issue with the Scratch Pad is that I can’t print out a summary of it. That’d make it 100 times easier for me. 1000 times easier? Give me driving directions from one to the other.
As TDavid, and others, have noted this is a fantastic service which ultimately feels like with just a bit more tweaking it could kill every other map system out there. Google Maps really only did one thing: interactive maps. Virtual Earth takes this to the nth degree.
