Live from Virtual Earth! Any questions?

I’m going to have lunch w/ member(s) of the Microsoft Virtual Earth team tomorrow. They just released a new version of their mapping control & local search service this week (highlights include more Birdseye images, polygon support, and MapCruncher layers). Since Dustin’s recent conversation w/ Yahoo went over well, I figured I’d extend the same courtesy and see if my fellow bloggers had any interesting questions they wanted to ask.

FYI – Due to NDA’s, I suspect they’ll be unable to answer the really interesting questions. However, don’t let that stop you from asking the question or giving a product suggestion. Since I’m talking to the program manager and/or software engineers that blog, I suspect they’ll appreciate the feedback, even if they can’t be completely forthcoming in their responses.

PS – Is anybody else waiting for them to combine the Vexel technology they recently accquired, Photosynth, Flight Simulator X, w/ Birds Eye images and give Google Earth a battle worthy of a level in Halo 3? Should be a ton of fun watching Master Chief battle the Covenant armies of Mt. View during the next year.

Yahoo Responds to Our Questions!

Based on my request for questions a few days ago, I put together a slew of questions for Yahoo to answer about their new real estate site. I must say that I was a little bit disappointed in the number of times they state “we can’t comment on future releases or upgrades”, but otherwise, I think there are some nuggets of gold in their answers. (Note that I also added a few questions in the beginning to get them talking about their service before I hit them with the agent-specific stuff. 🙂 )

1) What are the three best features of the new site?

1. Integration with Yahoo! Local & Maps:

Yahoo! Real Estate has added maps with satellite imagery so house hunters can easily see where homes for sale or rentals are located and their proximity to roads and other landmarks. In addition, integration with Yahoo! Local allows users to also see “inside information