Spatial Search, Microsoft’s next frontier

Feb 12, 2010 14:54 GMT  ·  By

In less than a year since Virtual Earth and Live Search Maps were transitioned under the Bing brand umbrella, Microsoft’s mapping, search and location platform has evolved constantly and is spoiling users with some amazing features. Integration is at the core of Bing Maps’ evolution, a key element bridging together the platform with technologies such as Silverlight, Flickr, Seadragon, PhotoSynth, etc. Ultimately, it is clear that it will be this integration, which will contribute to the success of Bing Maps, as Microsoft delivers innovation that rival solutions such as Google Maps are lacking, or cannot even implement.

The latest move from Microsoft involves a marriage between Bing Maps and Flickr designed to provide imagery from the image sharing service on top of content from the Redmond-based company’s Streetside feature. It is an example of what the software giant is referring to as Spatial Search, and is available today with the technology preview of the Streetside Photos application in Bing Maps.

“This tech preview mines geo-tagged photos from Flickr, and relates them to our Streetside imagery to show images matched to its original spatial context. Why is this cool? You’re now able to see what that club looks like at night (is it really THAT scary?), see if you’re really going to get a good sunset at that B&B you’re looking to book, or check out the crowds on a Saturday morning at Pike Place Market in Seattle or get a view of the same market from decades prior. As more people share imagery, our challenge is to reunite those photos with where they were taken – again, provide context to the data in the ether,” revealed a member of the Bing Maps team.

At the end of this article, you will be able to watch an embedded video featuring Bing Maps Architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrating the Streetside Photos application. But at the same time, the evolution of Bing Maps goes beyond tapping Flickr for imagery. In this regard, Aguera y Arcas also demoes the integration of content from the Word Wide telescope, a Microsoft Research project designed to let users explore the known universe from their computers, using nothing more than a Silverlight-capable browser.

“At the same time as we’re getting more ‘universal’ with World Wide Telescope, we’re also getting more intimate. Blaise showed the first results of our indoor panoramas work. This will provide an experience identical to Streetside, but won’t be limited to places you can take a vehicle. Whether you’re exploring Seattle’s Pike Place Market, or your favorite theme park, Bing Maps will give you the most immersive experience of the place. We’ve already given you a taste of this with the integration of Photosynths into Bing Maps (18,000 of them and counting), and you can expect Photosynth and Streetside to converge in a way that allows all of us to document the important places in the world – indoor or outdoor – and explore them in a completely natural way,” the Bing Maps team member added.

Another interesting aspect of Bing Maps’ evolution is the new Video Overlay technology. The promise from the Redmond-based company is that live Webcam feeds of real-time video can be overlaid seamlessly on top of street-level imagery. The software giant indicated that it would work to advance this technology as much as possible by the end of 2010 and that end users would be amazed by the results.

“Our next step is to continue to augment the Spatial Search experience with these types of data. The potential for ‘augmenting’ your physical world with data pulled from everywhere, in real-time, and in context is exciting. The chance of getting lost diminishes greatly. You may never have to enter a fabric store only to realize you should have gone somewhere else to get your remnant. The ability to re-route before hitting a road closure due to construction will be right at your fingertips. The technology to enable the Deciding pillar of our Spatial Search strategy is daunting – but this is a key element in our quest to better understand how we naturally process information to make a decision. So that’s where we’re headed,” the Bing Maps representative explained.