Bing Napkin Maps

I'm pretty stoked that Microsoft is no longer evil/complacent and is innovating (again?). This is of course not the beginning of this turnaround, nor even the first time Microsoft-as-Good has reached me for unabstract personal benefit[1], but this is probably the first thing I've seen from Bing that could make the rounds being touted as cool without my first and overriding suspicion being "total astroturf".<p>Back in the days I read Slashdot, I very viscerally hated Microsoft like only a teenage Windows-user reading Slashdot could. I switched to Macs after the Intel changeover and I've been increasingly locked into Google since Gmail. Completely removed from their ecosystem, when (rarely) some news of Microsoft bubbled up to my attention, I watched with bemused indifference. Lately though, with Apple's behaviour especially, I've borne actively good will towards Microsoft. I'll probably never use Windows again, but I want them to succeed. Competition is good, and it's also very gratifying to see this affirmed.<p>-----<p>[1] "Windows 7-style Window Resizing" is my most indispensable feature in BetterTouchTool[1] - <a href="http://blog.boastr.net/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.boastr.net/</a>

This is really worth a look. My experience was very positive; it took only a few seconds to compute, and the decisions about what detail to suppress were made very insightfully. (This was for an address in San Francisco--streets were selected for all the approaches into the city, but very economically.) The result would be MUCH better to give someone than a standard Big or Google map. No bugs, no problems with silverlight. (From Bing Maps, I discovered, you find this feature by clicking on the "Map Apps" button at the bottom of the left column, and then choosing the app "Destination Maps".)

Thats cool, but I wasn't able to figure out how to turn on the feature within bing maps.<p>Also, its frustratingly buggy, and asks for silverlight to get many of the cool features natively available in google maps.

Reposting a comment from srikanth:<p>"FYI, this is based on RouteMaps <a href="http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/routemaps/" rel="nofollow">http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/routemaps/</a><p>I remember that MSN maps had already implemented this feature into their application a couple of years ago."

As visually appealing and nigh-brilliant as that is, there's a <i>fatal</i> flaw in it that means I'll never touch the stuff:<p>It distorts the map to enhance meaningful areas. All those images are of the same area, compare them to the normal map on the left at the top of the article.<p>Brilliant and deadly. I use maps <i>because</i> they're physically accurate, so I can estimate times / distances between things, and find alternate paths if needed, and know if I went too far. The distortion there is <i>way</i> too significant to do that sort of analysis, though.<p>I know I may very well be in the minority in that, but there you have it. I'd love to see a large comparative study between "real" people. Gut-feeling is that most would like it, though, because it seems few outside the geek world are efficient at information filtering.

Looks cool. But not so cool I'd want to install Silverlight!

Semi-related, I want a feature for driving directions where I can specify that I'm familiar with either the origin or destination. If I print out directions, half the page is taken up with turn-by-turn instructions on how to get from my house to the nearest interstate highway. These should go away and be replaced with a simple "goal" instruction ("Get on I-71 North").

Largely forgotten is an earlier offering in reduced-detail maps, MapBlast's drafting-diagram-like 'LineDrive' directions. It's still available if you get to MSN maps via mapblast.com:<p><a href="http://www.mapblast.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.mapblast.com</a>

The realistic-looking highway shields are a welcome addition. (They're much better than the cartoony-looking ones seen on most online maps.)<p>I wonder if they were influenced by this: <a href="http://www.41latitude.com/post/598792787/realistic-looking-highway-shields" rel="nofollow">http://www.41latitude.com/post/598792787/realistic-looking-h...</a>

Hmmm... I posted the exact same link 12 days ago: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1412740" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1412740</a><p>Weird that it allowed it to be created again.

It's very very slow.

No coffee ring?