Live Maps Finland Hits the Web

The team in Finland has take advantage of recent improvements Virtual Earth and to create Live Maps Finland.

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How about an Finnish language lesson while we go over features, hmm?

Katu (Road {Maps})
The route coverage for Finland is excellent in Virtual Earth, so you’ll see tons of roads throughout the country.

Ilmakuva (Aerial)
We have everything from low resolution satellite imagery to high resolution aerial photography.

Lintuperspektiivi (Bird’s Eye)
We’ve published gigabytes of photography for different areas in Finland in Virtual Earth and now the Live Search team in Finland is leveraging it for their local site.

3D
Live Maps Finland now has the 3D view activated. This allows viewing the world in all dimensions, gives access to near-real-time weather and a growing number of 3D cities around the globe. Bird’s Eye overlay allows overlying the 3D view with our real bird’s eye photography.

Merkit (Labels)
You can turn the labels on and off in the different aerial modes.

Yritys (Search {Yellow Pages})
Put in the Mikä (what) and put in the Missä (where) and start exploring a local yellow page listing result set provided by Fonecta.

Kokoelman Nimi (Explore Collections)
It is now possible to explore collections on Live Maps Finland. Collections are user generated content that is collected from all over the web. Zoom in and click on "Kokoelma" to view all areas of interest on the map.

Jaa (Share)
Users can now not only share map links in mail but also publish them to their blog with just one click.

Ajo-ohjeet (Directions)
The routing engine now allows the creation directions using nopein reitti (rapid itinerary), lyhin reitti (shortest itinerary) or kävelymatka (walking) algorithms. Walking directions is available in the Virtual Earth giving users the quickest way suitable for pedestrians.

Tulosta (Print)
The site provides you with a specific style sheet setup just for printing.

 Other features:

  • Outlook vCards: Business addresses can be opened as vCards in Outlook.
  • Market header: This allows users to switch to another market if they don’t like being redirected to the Finnish site.
  • Virtual Earth Web Service for geo-coding.
  • Improved UX: Better error handling and smaller changes to improve the user experience.

Did I mention the Bing Maps web site site uses the Virtual Earth imagery almost exclusively?? Yes, the very same one you have access to as a developer. So, you can totally build your own experience!