Live Local Goes Live This Morning

Despite Microsoft’s efforts to keep it a secret, Live Local was the talk of at least some parts of the Web yesterday. I noted it yesterday in this blog. By yesterday afternoon, Search Engine Watch had the press release, which my notes say wouldn’t be available until 9:01 am today.

So, should you be excited? I wasn’t. Yes it has the promised Pictometry Imagery. Yes it has updated directions tools (ooo – you can either print the maps, or the directions in steps, or both!). Yes, it has tools for annotating the map with you own push pins. But none of those are enough to drag me off of my preferred mapping platform.

Why? The app, now called Live Local powered by Virtual Earth, is still clunky. Things don’t work intuitively. In the demo, Tom Bailey, Director of Marketing, MSN, placed a custom push pin at the front door of a building. He then located a hotel and tried to create driving directions to that pushpin. I waited eagerly for him to double click on it in the scratch pad and for that location to populate the “to” part of the directions tool. No such luck – we had to zoom to the location, then click on the pushpin on the map! That’s inelegant and adds steps to what should be a simple process.

And, let’s consider Live Local as a name. The old MSN Virtual Earth URL points to the new, local.live.com. Live Local is one of the terms my local TV station uses to promote its news. Live Local does not sound like maps. (I have yet to hear anyone refer to Google Maps as Google Local, though its name changed some months ago.) And, perhaps maps should not be part of these offerings’ names. Local is about Search first, geography second. That said, I hope the company will also examine some of the core interface challenges as well.

Microsoft has big plans for more data and goodies for Live Local and that’s good. One good one to note: Virtual Earth will in time become the core mapping technology that will power Live Local, MapPoint Web Service and the company’s consumer mapping products.