{"id":8570,"date":"2006-09-22T17:35:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=8570"},"modified":"2006-09-22T17:35:00","modified_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","slug":"microsoft-live-local-and-google-maps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=8570","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Live Local and Google Maps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some wil be aware of Google Maps<\/a> but I suspect much fewer people are aware of Microsoft’s Live mapping service, Live Local<\/a>.\u00a0 I am fan of most of what Google has been doing.\u00a0 Their competitive spirit has forced Microsoft to wake up from the slumber they had fallen into.\u00a0 One example is how Microsoft has developed their Live service to compete with Google’s web offerings.\u00a0 As a person\u00a0who once said to an MS salesman that MS search engines\u00a0were $h^te, I must admit that Live<\/a> is pretty good, possibly as good as Google, especilly since it often comes up with different but equally good results.<\/p>\n

As someone who likes to get out an about in my car on road trips, for photography, work, etc, knowing where I am going is pretty important.\u00a0 Earlier this year, I navigated around the backroads and cities of Virginia courtesy of Live Local without gettings lost or making a wrong turn.\u00a0 I’ve just found (it might have been like this for a while) that Live Local now has Irish and European maps.\u00a0 A true test of Live versus Google is now possible.\u00a0 Irish digital mapping is a joke as anyone who has tried to use a GPS in the Republic outside of the main roads or cities can testify.<\/p>\n

I’ve taken screen shots of my town from Live and from Google.\u00a0 Note that Live shows all of the rural roads.\u00a0 Google stops at the edge of the town.\u00a0 Strangely, Google does not show any detail at all for the neighbouring town of Newbridge, one of the major towns in County Kildare and it’s a much bigger town than Kildare town.<\/p>\n

Live allows you to cleanly right-click on the map to quickly add pushpins, add way points and search for routes.\u00a0 Google cannot do this at all.\u00a0 This is pretty important because Google can’t even search the Irish map.\u00a0 I tried searching for Leeson Street, Grafton Street and Merrion Square and it failed all three.\u00a0 Live failed with Grafton Street, came close (next street) to Leeson Street (it’s actually shown as N11)\u00a0and hit Merrion Square bang on.\u00a0 Another test was to find my family home which is 4 miles from the nearest town.\u00a0 Live Local had the road clearly marked whereas Google Maps barely even mentioned the aforementioned town, let alon my home area.\u00a0 WHile I give with one hand I take with another.\u00a0 Live Local does not show the M1 bypassing Dundalk nor the completion of the M50.\u00a0 But, like I said, digital mapping in Ireland is a joke.\u00a0 This might not be the fault of Microsoft because my GPS unit doesn’t show them either.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Faced head to head, I give Live Local the edge.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Screen shots are attached.<\/font><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some wil be aware of Google Maps but I suspect much fewer people are aware of Microsoft’s Live mapping service, Live Local.\u00a0 I am fan of most of what Google has been doing.\u00a0 Their competitive spirit has forced Microsoft to wake up from the slumber they had fallen into.\u00a0 One example is how Microsoft has … Continue reading “Microsoft Live Local and Google Maps”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}