Mar 1 2006

Windows Live! Blows it Again

Posted by Joe Rinehart at 6:59 AM
8 comments - Categories: Causing Trouble

Microsoft has unveiled "Windows Live Local" (Virtual Earth Technology Human Eye XP Not-Quite-Professional-But-Better-Than-Home 2006 Edition), which appears to be their stab at the Yahoo! / Google maps RIA.

It's absolutely horrible. If you don't believe me, feel free to try it at http://preview.local.live.com/.

The screen is horizontally split into two regions. The bottom displays a little car and a map. You can drag the map - sometimes. Just don't get the cursor too close to the car before you click. If you click the car you'll be able to drag it around on the map - sometimes. Sometimes it rotates the car instead. I'm not sure why.

The top half is where it gets wacky. Someone took a lot of time grabbing still frames from a video of driving around the city, because it tries to show you what you'd see out of the car's window. Ok, that's neat, but:

1. The graphics are cheesy, and look like they're from the 1993 edition of Need for Speed 2.0.

2. Why would I use this if I needed to find a place? The map is so small it's unusable, and the UI is clunky.

3. It's such dizzying experience that I get a headache after using it long enough to blog it.

I think someone at MSFT needs to get beaten with the KISS principle.

Comments

Vesa

Vesa wrote on 03/01/06 8:08 AM

I did like this "RIA" even it have those bugs you pointed out.
daniel

daniel wrote on 03/01/06 8:24 AM

Not bad. They most definatly need to work on the design. It's butt ugly. Just a toy, as far as I can tell.
Jason Nussbaum

Jason Nussbaum wrote on 03/01/06 9:40 AM

I'm with the other comments - might be ugly, and certainly not perfect, but it's still pretty cool. It's a nice perspective on an app that, as you point out, has been done to death lately.

Speaking to your points:
1. It's a beta.
2. You wouldn't. It's not for necessarily finding a place, but exploring a place (fwict).
3. lol. Maybe you're driving too fast.

I didn't experience the ui issues you had, though - while the design is obviously out of MS Paint, there were enough cursor changes/ui clues that I could navigate pretty easily. In Firefox, no less.

Keep in mind that it's a beta - what used to be known as a 'beta' (heck, more like an alpha)...of course, nowadays beta pretty much means release candidate (if not release), so we all expect more from our betas.
Critz

Critz wrote on 03/01/06 9:49 AM

that gets my vote for one of the biggest wastes of technology
Brandon Harper

Brandon Harper wrote on 03/01/06 11:59 AM

Wow, they really stuck it to VRML with this! What will they think of next? </sarcasm>
Steve Nelson

Steve Nelson wrote on 03/01/06 10:18 PM

Wow! you guys are rough! I think this is fantastic. You're right it has kinks, it's incomplete, the 'car' graphics are lame. SO WHAT!

This is the beginning of something huge.
Peter B.

Peter B. wrote on 03/02/06 12:15 PM

I was beginning to wonder if it was just me with some of the other blogs I've seen about this ... but I agree this a tremendous waste of space, completely unusable. I can kind of see a scenario where in concept it might be useful, but something like maps.a9.com pulls it off much better and is much more useful. The only real-world use I can see this trying to address is to be able to find a place that you are unfamiliar with and find recognizable land-marks previous. But, absent being able to find a place, or get directions, this thing really is just a toy.

"It's not for necessarily finding a place, but exploring a place"

... as executed, you're even unable to do any exploring .. the arrow keys don't work... they've got me driving through buildings, same goes for dragging ... the map is far too zoomed in to make it even the least bit useful. And tiles load far to slowly, even over broadband to make it useful at all event if all those issues were addressed.

I wouldn't even call this an alpha... I'd call it a P.O.C., and POC has proved is failing ... the amount of effort to get all the pictures of every angle even just in the major cities in america is staggering and seems a was to time and money for a toy like this.

Yep, I think it's a toy as well. So does Microsoft apparently with the Nintendo controller on the dask. And if it's gonna be a toy, you gotta be fun or engaging, and it's failing on both fronts as well.
Chris Scott

Chris Scott wrote on 03/02/06 8:22 PM

WOW! I can honestly say that is the most retardedly useless thing I have ever seen! How can they waste so much money on such a half assed 'product'? Seriously, it's just so dizzying, and why do I get to change the cheesy 'car' view? Huh?

Btw, does not work on Safari, works on Firefox (OS X of course), go figure...

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