14 DAY TRIAL // At the end of the past week, a new initiative from Microsoft Taiwan and Chunghwa Telecom went live under the name Live Pages. The label is designed to indicate a Live Search Maps and Virtual Earth version 1 release aimed exclusively at the Taiwanese market. The collaboration between the Redmond company's local division and the main telecommunication operator in Taiwan has resulted in an entirely new service designed as a bundle of technologies from both Microsoft and Chunghwa Telecom. According to Chris Pendleton, Virtual Earth Tech evangelist, Microsoft Live Search, the two companies offered their own resources in order to make the service a reality.
"Chunghwa Yellow Page, a subsidiary of Chunghwa Telecom, on their geocoding engine together with an abundant database of Business Listing and Point of Interest information. A total of 1 million entries are available for user to search within, which is the most complete among other local competitors. Kingway Technology, one of the top mapping players in Taiwan, on their road map images. Multimap, a Microsoft whole-owned subsidiary, on their mapping API to render road map from Kingway and aerial map from Virtual Earth," Pendleton enumerated.
Microsoft is continuing to push the application programming interface from Multimap, in the detriment of its own Virtual Earth. However, the Redmond company is now providing VE imagery to Multimap customers, so in a sense, its imagery, mapping, location and search platform is still offered to customers. Pendleton revealed that Multimap map styles survive via the API, while extending the service through Virtual Earth. In this sense, Microsoft is not only confirming its support for existing Multimap users but also for new customers via the international application programming interface.
"Additionally, there were a number of services provided as a part of this release, including Local Search (Finding Business or Place); Maps (Road and Aerial); CHT powered web call for their premium subscribers; Messenger Activity and Messenger Tab," Pendleton added.