MSN Virtual Earth Beta Released (well it will be later today/tomorrow morning)

MSN Virtual Earth

Looks like the MSN Virtual Earth beta will be officially launched tonight or tomorrow morning, but the URL is active now, so...

It's pretty interesting, compared to Google Maps (GMap). It's AJAX, like GMap, has satellite views, labels, etc. It's NOT a smart client app like Google Earth though.

One thing I'd like to see are more up to date "Aerial" (i.e. satellite) photos. These look like the very dated TeraServer pic's and are many years out of date (at least for my city). But as you'd expect, it depends on the area. The photos from around my work (70 miles from home) are much more up to date...

Still there are some pretty cool features that GMap doesn't have. The My Location is pretty neat. Geo-locate yourself based on your IP Address or via a Location Finder ActiveX control.

Also I like the Scratch Pad feature, which records your recent searches. A neat touch is that you can share your Scratch Pad with others. You can even easily post it to your MSN Space blog. Here's mine ... (Yeah, feels strange to post my home address, but since I'm listed in the phonebook, it would take about 1-2 seconds to find my info online anyway)

The UI is pretty cool. I like the semi-floating windows (semi cause while you can close or collapse them, you can't move them).

Overall it's pretty cool and a good first showing...

(via Angus Logan - MSN Virtual Earth Rocks!)

Update #1 7/24/2005 @ 3:53 PM PDT:
Well it looks like it's offline until tomorrow's official release, which is reported to be 6am PDT.

Update #2 7/25/2005 @ 6:33 AM PDT:
Well it's back online and much snappier.

I guess that happens when you use a site that's been actually released (verses checking it out a day early when it's only up for testing... :)