Microsoft Launches Map Site of China

[engine]

The information includes street data, details of 114 cities, and public transit information of 11 cites.

Apparently, it does not inlcude driving directions and public collections.

[ditu.live.com...]

[Brett_Tabke]

Pretty Nifty. I always thought MS never got the credit they deserved for the original Tera Server.

[bill]

Interesting find. They're about a year behind Google [webmasterworld.com], but I like what they've done. It's a little less cluttered than Google's offering and seems to be a handy resource. I liked the bus route options for the big cities.

[klown]

Well its pretty far behind most local systems (as is Google) but its nice to see them trying something. MSN's system can't do much beyond zoom towards a city a bit.. Living in a fairly large city (Shanghai) as I do this doesn't really help much..

Some of the current local efforts offer driving directions along with complete 3d maps in English, and Chinese.

[bill]

Who's got the leading mapping company in China now? Are there a lot of players?

[klown]

Not really sure for the entire China space. I don't really utilize the maps programs outside of Shanghai, and even there I'd have to look up the addresses. I'm sure for most of the large cities there are at least one or two players (not including Google and MSN since they're quite poor).

[Action]

I am in Shanghai as well, what map service do you use?

[klown]

Generally I just use the one at Smart Shanghai [smartshanghai.com]. They provide a nice little map of shanghai which goes right along with their directory of restaurants and bars. Generally I end up going someplace around here if I need to look up an address at all (not often). [sh.edushi.com...] is a pretty nice 3d map of Shanghai that is used for real estate. You can browse around and find apartments in your area. My co-workers mentioned they they know better ones, I'll try to post that tomorrow its time for happy hour (Omalley's).

[edited by: bill at 10:31 am (utc) on Jan. 24, 2008]
[edit reason] fix link [/edit]

[bill]

Different cities have different players?

That Edushi map is gorgeous. It takes forever to load from Japan, but it's worth the wait. Impressive.

[mack]

Yea that map is very impressive. If you take Google earth for example you are left open to what nature throws at you, poor light, shaddows cloud cover etc. Because this entire map is drawn it is flawless.

Mack.

[inbound]

Wow, now that's a map!

City-wide pixel art... It's a good job it's not Edinburgh (where I live) as I'd waste hours looking at the map.

[TheChinaMan01]

[map.baidu.com...]
[ditu.cn.yahoo.com...]
[city8.com...]
[eemap.org...]
[edushi.com...]

I can't really get the MS map to work at all? It just redirects me.