Please check it out. I will write more about it some later.
http://ditu.live.com
[update: December 14th, 2007]
Virtual earth is a map service already deployed in US for years. Also, there're lots of local map services in P.R.China. Now, the local map service specified for P.R.China is going live from Microsoft. It is developed by the VE team in Windows Live (China).
Although live search is coming better and better, the virtual earth is now rushing ahead. I haven't used it too much. However, I believe it is a great product which can compete against the ones from other competitors. I know the guys in the VE China very well. They are excellent, crazy, full of passion. They devote very much to the baby product. I do know the difficulties of make it happen in this country as a foreign company. Both the tech things and the non-tech things. After all, after months, it happens. And, it will be better and better.
Usually, I used go2map, mapbar, mapabc, 51ditu, the map services from baidu and google while search somewhere in China. Now, I have another good choice. To be frank, I do not think the accuracy could be very different across so many map services. Especially in this country, too much changes are happening day after day. G, a super guy in VE China team, kept talking to me, his commitment is to achieve the top accuracy. His confidence impressed me a lot. And, I do know he is well qualified to achieve this goal because of the strong tech background and high level view. To talk about the user experience of this map service, it is my favorite feature, especially of the transit service. No longer type in, search and then route, Click-route instead. Open the map, right click your location, set as the start point, right click the target location, set as the stop point. That's ALL. It is really straight forward, really COOL as well. Look into the results, the transit points are marked with dash lines and you are kindly informed a walk is possibly necessary. It looks like a service provided by human other than by machine. It is really awesome, isn't it? I like these features even though I seldom take a bus nowadays. While I introduced this service to Min yesterday, she performed several tests, which turned to be really difficult to make a satisfied route by machine. One typical scenario is to find a transit plan between two points WITHIN Tsinghua (Haha, this naughty girl). Know what? The transit plans returned are almost the same as we expected, even the two points are somewhat far from the gates. Can't you help loving such a service?
地圖服務在中國大陸已經遍地開花。微軟早已擁有自己的地圖服務，但在中國一直是個空白。現在，微軟中國終于也交出了自己的答卷，這就是http://ditu.live.com。
這是一個優秀的服務。我尤其喜歡其中的公交換乘功能。與以往的類似服務不同，查公交換乘，可以不需要先搜索出發和到達的地點，而只需要直接在圖上用右鍵就可以直接標記出發和到達的地點了。對於並不知道確切的車站分佈的情形，這顯然是非常有用的，當然，方便更是不用説了。此外，如果中途需要換乘，那麽在換乘點會用虛綫標出兩個車站的位置，距離和行走的估計——這個設計確實很人性化。尤其在北京這樣的城市，往往一個站名在多條綫路上會對應多個不同的地點，是不是在馬路同側不必說，單是距離有時候就有夠人走的，還不算走錯的情形，而有了這個換乘點的信息，是多麽方便的事情啊？真貼心！雖然我已經很少去乘公交車，不過，這仍然是我最喜歡的功能之一。
關於地圖數據的精確度再説兩句——其重要性自不必言，實現難度也是周知的，尤其在中國北京這樣變化日新月異的地方。我不敢說微軟地圖服務的精確度和其他相比會如何，畢竟，數據本身的準確從根本上我們作不了主，我們的工作與合作夥伴的努力是緊密相關的。但是，一個地圖的核心開發人員G，我的好朋友，一直對我說，他就是要做中國精確度一流的地圖，這是他的承諾。我深知這是我能期許和等待的承諾，因爲我了解他，了解他們做地圖的一群人，他們有這個信心，更重要的有這個能力達到這個目標。他們了解中國，他們有微軟支持，他們有合作夥伴的幫助，需要的只是時間和耐心了。
昨天，向敏介紹這個服務的時候，她頗刁難了一下公交換乘。比如，在清華“裏面”選兩個地方，讓地圖找出一個換乘方案（這丫頭有夠狠）哈，一開始我可沒期望機器能夠得出讓人滿意的結果。但看到方案后，還是讓人很滿意的，不信可以親自試試哦。:p
Labels: live, microsoft
