Microsoft is really serious on gaining a good ground in the web search arena. New features after new features are being slowly carried out by Live Search. The most recent of which are ten new features of its Live Search Maps.
The Live Search blog enumerated these 10 new features and in brief here are those 10 nifty features:
1. Rolled up routes or Abbreviated Directions – when printing directions on how to get to a familiar place, Live Search now enables you to “roll up” initial directions that you are already familiar with, and lets you print only the final steps into getting to a certain place or location.
2. Improved Directions Printing – again, on printing directions from Live Search maps, font color and grouping changes settings were enhanced to make the maps more readable. Also, Live Search now gives you a hint if you have gone too far of a specified direction.
3. Category browsing in an unfamiliar area – Live Search added a Yellow Page category browsing when you are traveling into an unfamiliar area. This feature gives you more information when exploring the particular area.
4. Ghost node while drawing lines and shapes – This feature has something to do with editing/reshaping polygons in a particular node in Live Search maps. Live Search even gives you the area of the shape that you are editing.
5. Severe Traffic indication – A new black highlighting is introduced to indicate where you will be completely cramped out while a red highlight is still active and render the with crawling traffic.
6. Subscribe to changes in a KML file via RSS – Now, you can monitor updates on a KML file through RSS feeds which you can add on your favorite news reader, much like your ordinary blog feeds.
7. Force Feedback with XBOX controller – This feature is for XBOX fan boys who use the Virtual Earth 3D maps when playing with their XBOX consoles. Bump into a building and the controller vibrates.
8. Category Sensitive Details page – Live Search now features more details about Business categories coming from Live Search partners on the web.
9. Traffic sensitive routing – Real-time traffic flow overlays now guides you into getting around traffic problems.
10. Transparent Buildings – Now this one is really a cool feature. When you are touring a 3D city with sky-rise building, and this building is getting into the way of the camera path, the building will automatically ghost out temporarily to give you a clearer view of the area being blocked by the building.
