The new Bing Maps Preview added many new features to help you plan your next outing. One of them is to make your map more personal to you. We learned from our customers that they want to be able to save the most-visited, most-loved destinations and trip inspiring spots on any devices, and have quick access to them later when planning a trip. In the new Bing Maps, we made My Places more relevant to you and easier to use.

In sync with Cortana and Maps app

In the past few months, we heard many customers asking us to expand My Places to include those locations already known by Cortana and those already saved in Windows Maps app.

We heard you and made it happen for you in the new Bing Maps. Now Home, Work and Favorites are in sync between Bing Maps, Cortana, and the Microsoft Maps app on Windows devices.

 

Saving a favorite is easy

See a place you like in the search results or on the map? Want to be able to quickly find and use it later? No problem, saving a place “As favorite” is easy. If you see the place in the search results, click on “Save” to save it from the card. If you find it on the map, right-click on the place to save it. Once saved your favorite will show up on the map as a yellow star.

 

Create and share your collections

Collections is a unique and useful tool in Bing Maps for organizing your places. It’s handy when you want to organize places as a theme. For example, I found all the places for my upcoming Oregon trip and created a collection for them. Over the years, I “collected” many cool places in Seattle I visited. When I heard my friend is coming to Seattle for the first time this summer, I shared my collection with him. Give it a try, it is a great way to organize and share your geospatial wealth.

Define my own map

We know many Bing Maps power users import locations from GPX or KML files, also create and edit lines and shapes on the maps. We didn’t get a chance to include these features in Bing Maps preview, but are committed to enabling them in the near future. Rest assured meanwhile, you saved lines, shapes and data are safe, you can see them in the existing Bing Maps web site.

What’s next?

Your map should be unique to you. We will continue to provide more ways for you to customize the map to best fit your needs on all your devices!

We want to hear from you

Have feedback for the new Bing Maps? You can share your thoughts by using the feedback button within Bing Maps, going to Bing Listens, or tweeting us @bingmaps. We love to hear from you!

– Jason Chen, Principal Program Manger, Bing Maps