Windows Live Local ---- Also Interesting survey showing who uses Google

News from PC Magazine: Windows Live Local: "By Davis D. Janowski

A beta version of Microsoft Corp.'s new online local search and mapping service goes live Thursday morning. Windows Live Local, powered by Microsoft's mapping and location platform, Virtual Earth, combines bird's-eye imagery with driving directions, Yellow Pages and other local search tools. It will be available at http://local.live.com (but not until 9:01 am PST).

Among the intriguing features available in the new service is a 45-degree bird's-eye view of major U.S. cities that currently include Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, which ends up representing about 25 percent of the U.S. by population according to Microsoft. These images, fascinatingly enough, recall the sort of low-level aerial photography captured during World War II reconnaissance flights rather than the satellite images we've come to commonly associate with these service over the last year or so. The images were taken by Pictometry International Corp. using low-altitude overflights and then melded with satellite imagery and road maps. This gives you a 360-degree panorama from the four cardinal compass directions and you'll also be able to zoom in on a given location. A yellow indicator informs you during a search whether a birds-eye view is available for that area.

Some very clever navigational aids in the product really enhance productivity. One that really impressed us is the ability to merely click on a point on the map and have the system immediately calculate directions for you, rather than having to start from a search bar asking for a street address. Suppose, for instance, you have a general idea where the ball park is on the map but not the street address or even necessarily the actual street. You just click on the map and directions are generated from that.

You can also get step-by-step directions using bird's-eye or satellite views and identify construction areas along a specific route. And there are several print options, such as print-only directions, the adding notes to printed directions, or even having thumbnail pictures print along with each turn in the route.

Windows Live Local also includes an updated version of Location Finder to help people using a Wi-Fi-enabled PC easily determine their current location as a starting point. Keep in mind that this requires an ActiveX download, which pulls in the names of access points your machine can see and their signal strengths and then calculates your location based on Microsoft's database. The folks at Microsoft told us to expect accuracy of within a few hundred feet.

User-customizable pushpins are another feature that should prove useful. You can use them to annotate directions or an itinerary with specifics (say the time you want to meet, specific street corner, and so forth) and then share them with others via e-mail, Web logs, MSN Spaces or MSN Messenger.

Expect to see a steady stream of information available on other countries as well as additions, updates and improvements to what is currently available."

It does not stream very well, and I have cable. Microsoft really copied Google Local, which I think is much better. There are a couple features that the Microsoft local has that Google does not such as the scratch pad, but who really needs that. If you need directions or want to look at a map I would use Google Local.

Speaking of Google, this survey shows some very interesting results about who uses Google:

ComputerWorld:"U.S. residents who prefer Google's search engine tend to be richer and have more Internet experience than those who primarily use competing search services from Microsoft, Yahoo and America Online, a new study has found.

The longer people have been using the Internet, the more likely it is that Google will be their search engine of choice, according to a survey of 1,000 U.S. Internet users conducted by investment banking and research firm S.G. Cowen & Co.

Moreover, people whose primary search engine is Google are more likely to have household incomes above US$60,000 than people who use competing search engines, according to the survey, whose results S.G. Cowen published in a report Monday.

Google also emerged as the search engine of choice, with 52 percent of respondents choosing it as their primary engine for general Web searches. Yahoo came in second with 22 percent, while Microsoft's MSN and AOL tied for third place with 9 percent. Ask Jeeves Inc. rounded out the top five with 5 percent. (Google powers AOL's general Web searches.)

If Google users are wealthier and savvier online, and if Google is the search engine of choice for more than half of U.S. Internet users, then these survey results reinforce the notion among many businesses that it is critical for them to appear in Google search results or Google search ads or both, more so than in competing search engines..."

Image Found: Here