A new and improved Multimap…
April 11th, 2008
You might be wondering why you’ve not heard much from us recently regarding our acquisition by Microsoft.
Back in December, we mentioned that it was all business as usual here at Multimap, and that is still very much the case. Our London office still provides the heartbeat of Multimap, and you still have to be quick to grab your favourite bagel on Fridays (cinnamon and raisin in my case)…
Being part of an organization such as Microsoft however, gives you the opportunity to access fantastic new technology and content. Since the new year we’ve been burning the midnight oil to bring some of these new capabilities to Multimap.com, and we’re delighted to show the results of this to you today.
First things first, Multimap is now the lead consumer mapping experience for Live Search in the UK, and we’re proud to welcome all the UK users of Live Search Maps to Multimap.com. It may have been a while since you last used Multimap.com, but we hope that you’ll find all the great features that you’re used to, plus much more.
For those of you not familiar with Live Search Maps, and the Virtual Earth platform that powers it, check out the fabulous Bird’s Eye images, which are now available on Multimap.com. Unlike normal satellite and aerial imagery that is taken from directly above, Bird’s Eye images are captured by low-flying aircraft and are taken from a 45 degree angle, facing north, south, east and west directions to give a unique perspective.
We’ve also taken the opportunity to update all our aerial imagery using Virtual Earth’s fabulous high-resolution images, as well as expanding our aerial coverage pretty much everywhere.
You may also be interested in using our “find a business” feature that uses the Live Search API to help you find local business, view maps and get directions. We’ve also madeit easier to search the web using live.com.
While we were at it, we also simplified our user interface, to help you find things easier, and we’ve refreshed our Travel Directions within the “get directions” section so that your journey is broken down into a series of manageable legs (which makes it much better for planning and printing).
You’ll be happy to hear that the features that you tell us you like the most are still here, such as our Barts London and Ordnance Survey Maps, nicely wrapped in a new widget that allows users to switch between the different map types easily. And if you have not checked out our Wikipedia overlay, you might want to explore the largest (and every growing) free-content encyclopedia on the Internet, as well as our other great Local Information.
Some of you have told us you want a mapping site that works over slow connections – so we created the new “basic maps” site that makes full use of our static maps API. To view, simply click the “basic maps”, next to the “MyMultimap” button.
We hope you like the changes that we have made and keep checking the blog as we make more new features available!
April 11th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Absolutely awful in my opinion. And this is nothing against Multimap because I’m using your service today (read: being forced to use) as a regular user of live search maps which I can now only access by using the US URL (http://maps.live.com/?mkt=en-us).
Again, this is nothing against Multimap - I just assumed, when the deal was announced, that what it would mean for live search users would be better UK info. Instead, we now have an inferior interface, a lack of cool features (you ever seen the 3D features of http://maps.live.com/?mkt=en-us??) and, best of all, all my local searches I perform at search.live.com now no longer link a valid map.
It’s just plain awful. I hope there are plans to bring in the entire API for Virtual Earth so we get back the features we had before. I can just about live with the half screen maps, and the adverts the pollute the screen, if we get back the decent features that have been cut or held back.
I don’t know what else to say really.
But compare Multimap with http://maps.live.com/?mkt=en-us and you can see why the change is a bad one for users coming in from that experience.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Oh, and in an amazing demonstration why, after just an hour, I miss LIVE SEARCH, here is the route from my town to the town next to me (a ten minute drive at most).
http://www.multimap.com/directions/?qs_1=clevedon&countryCode_1=GB&qs_2=portishead&lat_2=55.347&lon_2=-2.29369&countryCode_2=GB&mode=driving&optimizeFor=quickest#map=53.39453,-1.78219|8|4
SEVEN HOURS???
April 11th, 2008 at 9:02 am
is it just me, or doesnt the aerial view work now? (11th april)
also the birds eye view doesnt work, and why do we appear to have lost the hybrid view?
i used to use the hybrid view a lot, as it helped to place landmarks against the mapping ie watch for the green roofed building before the next turn…
April 11th, 2008 at 9:04 am
So what good is it if you cant use hybrid or aerial? Sometimes its nice to have a little look around at our country and landmarks of the surrounding area. I’ve always used multimap but somehow feel google map calling me… its not on Mr Skeels!
April 11th, 2008 at 9:33 am
What on earth ??? I just fired up Live Maps only to be brought here… Why on earth are we being forced to use Multimap instead of Live Maps ?!? What a ridiculous decision - talk about a massive leap backwards !!
April 11th, 2008 at 10:10 am
[...] turns out any UK visitor to maps.live.com gets “helpfully” redirected to multimap. The Multimap blog explains how, since being acquired by Microsoft, they are now “the lead consumer mapping [...]
April 11th, 2008 at 10:11 am
I have to say that multimap is a step back from maps.live.com for ease of use. Is there any way to change back to map.live.com? I especially miss the feature that allows you to zoom in and out using the scroll wheel.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:24 am
But what’s wrong with mouse wheel zooming??? Why do we need all these new features if we can’t navigate maps properly any more?
And bird’s view has become pretty confusing now because you can’t see the borders of an image and names of streets around the image (like it was with using bird’s view in 3d mode). It would be nice if you made an option to overlay a street map in the bird’s view because now it has become close to impossible to find out what street you are looking at.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
How very wonderful for you.
Unfortunately a whole lot of functionality that Microsoft previously delivered to us through local.live.com / maps.live.com is not available from the MultiMap site - a site we seem forcably redirected to here in the UK. Where is the 3D? Where are our collections gone? Why don’t the ‘permanent’ links we used to use work?
This is really alienating users in the UK - and over on the Microsoft Spaces blog for VirtualEarth, allot of people are wanting the old site back!
April 11th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Terrible update. Bring back the original Live Maps site
April 11th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Please can we have local.live.com back - compare your front page (horrible, covered in adverts*, no map) with the previous experience and explain to me how *anyone* in their right mind can think that this is an improvement for the end user?
Just to be clear - I am impressed by your technology and by the breadth of options - its not the mapping or the underlying systems that I have a problem with - but I would have to question the notion of being “proud” to welcome users to a far far less pleasant overall experience -in terms of the website - than the one they are used to.
And just to be really clear - this is why I wasn’t using Multimap in preference to local.live.com (1) or maps.google.co.uk (2) before and if it stays this way its why I’ll either work out how to cheat or just go to google.
*Not just adverts but high bandwidth animated adverts, the worst kind of irritation.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Why have they stopped people from the UK using live maps. No offence to the multimap guys but live maps is way superior. I’m afraid I don’t like multimap. Its outdated, slow and has an un-pleasant user interface.
The change is the wrong way round, multimap users should be moving towards the virtual earth platform. No users of the virtual earth will want to use multimap, they will just use google instead (which is also superior to multimap)
From now on it will be google maps for me.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Yes, all very nice, but can I have the old Live Maps look and feel back in the UK please? I used Live Maps in preference to Multimap because of the better design. It looks (looked?) great, worked and didn’t have crudloads of adverts.
And where have all my pushpins, jogging routes, pub locations and waypoints gone?
Slightly (very) annoyed…
April 11th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
What about all the map ‘Collections’ which I saved at maps.live.com - they don’t seem to be available to me at Multimap. I share these maps with many people and regularly use them for personal use.
There is a good reason I’ve been using map.live.com over Multimap for a while. Microsoft - what are you doing forcing us to use this site!
I’m a big Microsoft fan however you have just lost me to Google Maps…
April 11th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
So, change can be good. BUT… some of the functionality has gone. The scratchpad tools are gone - I used to measure maps now and then, and draw directions onto maps. Also, I can’t login using my live account.
Sorry guys, this represents a bit of a backstep. I felt Live maps was better than Google Maps. It was elegant, and clean, and Just Worked. This ticks a lot of the boxes, but it’s not as elegant.
Sorry to rain on your parade guys!
April 11th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Seems there’s a lot of backlash against the forced move to multimap on the blogs and the comments on vearth blog.
April 12th, 2008 at 1:16 am
Big mistake forcing me to be here!!
If you want me to use your site then it should be through the merit of your site not by force.
When I type maps.live.com/ then call me crazy but I want to go to Live Maps!!!
I’m off.
Maybe I’ll come back and give you a chance when you give me the choice about whether I can use the site or Live maps
For now I’m off to Google
April 12th, 2008 at 6:23 am
This is stupid. People will just be going to Google Earth instead of Live Maps now. I want the option to use Live Maps! Not silly multi map, the mapping tools for morons who get confused at the idea of seeing the world on their computer.
April 12th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I have to say I am really annoyed that maps.live.com now redirects to multimap. We should be allowed to choose whatever mapping service we want to use. I prefer live maps. It is not only faster but has a more intuitive interface, has far more screen space dedicated to the actual maps and no annoying flash adverts. Multimap has some useful features, like the OS maps which I have used several times but multimap is a site I’d rather not use. Please can you restore the link to maps.live.com in the UK.
April 13th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Hi.
I’ve arrived here expecting to see my local live maps, and ended up at Multimap. I simply can’t understand how it was possible to think that us live maps users would think it was a good thing to remove half of the features we use, including 3D, disable all our collections and links, and add lots of adverts to our page. It’ll surely be difficult to trust a company with our future (time-consuming) efforts to create and store online data if they’re liable to simply remove them without consultation.
Cheers,
Peter
April 13th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Definitely a retrograde step…..as is not posting negative comments on this blog….
April 14th, 2008 at 1:26 am
Dear Julian
Nice to hear from you. I hope you don’t mind if I just quickly comment?
>You might be wondering why you’ve not heard much from us recently..
I thought you have moved on doing something you may really excel in.. like carpentry?
>you still have to be quick to grab your favourite bagel on Fridays (cinnamon and raisin in my case)…
Really? That is bad. No one has done anything about it?
>Being part of an organization such as Microsoft however, gives you the opportunity to access fantastic new technology…
Have they provided you with a new cell phone? WOW! How nice of them if they have.
>Since the new year we’ve been burning the midnight oil
Awww, that good old midnight oil lamp that must have been burning since the early days. Must take a lot of time to refill, not leaving any time to do proper development work? I got a spare lamp here that uses electricity. Let me know and you can have it. Anything to help you out and free your hands for development so you can continue to provide a first class service.
>First things first..
Are you saying I shall better sit down?
>Multimap is now the lead consumer mapping experience for Live Search in the UK, and we’re proud to welcome all the UK users of Live Search Maps to Multimap.com
Only ‘now’? I thought you always have been? Anyway..
NO WAY! That must be AWESOME for you. Must be like redirecting all Google traffic to mysearch.com. Thank you for your warm welcome. You seem like a nice person (someone who likes cinnamon and raisin bagels, ay!), perhaps you can help me? I actually was looking for maps.live.com. Can you tell me where I may find it? Don’t worry, you can use crayons to draw up some directions.
>It may have been a while since you last used Multimap.com
I didn’t know you actually notice that I wasn’t around much recently..well.. over the last couple of years. You really must have been counting your site hits? My sincere apologies. No ill feelings I hope buddy? Will a cinnamon and raisin bagel make up for all the shed tears?
>..but we hope that you’ll find all the great features that you’re used to, plus much more
Well, we have to talk about some features I can’t find. Like hybrid view, tilt, free rotate, 3D views, zoom in/out using a mouse wheel, the smaller map size, smooth moving from map region to map region..just to name a view. Probably it’s just silly me. But man, I really like the ads and all the weather stuff. Good, hard work! Here, have a cinnamon and raisin bagel for that!
>We’ve also taken the opportunity to update all our aerial imagery using Virtual Earth’s fabulous high-resolution images
Are you saying you ditched your great old pics? Well, can’t blame you. Virtual Earth really got fabulous high-resolution images that no one can beat. I hope you did let them have a cinnamon and raisin bagel for their kindness?
>Some of you have told us you want a mapping site that works over slow connections – so we created the new “basic maps” site
Thanks guys. It works like a breeze with my 9600K modem. I really appreciate that and your simple basic API. Thanks god someone got rid of all the frills and whistles. Have a cinnamon and raisin bagel for that.
See ya later old sport!
Martin
PS: Just in case my entry does get lost on your blog, you can also read it on http://hottapcoldtap.blogspot.com and you can email me at [myfirstname]@invent2b.com
April 14th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Dear all - thanks for all your comments, while it may not be the reaction we hoped for, it’s good to know you do all care.
You may be aware that the UK Live Maps site has been restored, and we’ll do a follow up some time later to explain some more.
In case you are wondering why it took a while for your comments to appear, it’s nothing sinister, and certainly nothing to do with us trying to control the news. It’s simply a combination of an over-zealous spam-filter, and a transatlantic flight taking me out of action for a while. We’ll have a look into improving that (the spam filter that is).
April 14th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Well, as a non-Live Maps user that all passed way over my head. I can imagine the umm irritation at unexpected enforced changes!
I was rather worried that MS takeover would mean the end for Multimaps UK focus, which to me would mean the loss of Ordnance Survey map access via interactive Open API. Now that would be bad! But somewhat reassured now by that incident, in a perverse way it demonstrates MS support for the UK users
cheers, Ross K
April 14th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
[...] A new and improved Multimap… (via Multimap Blog) Plenty of comments and a change since this item was first [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Incidently, Julian, just to clarify - Multimap has many strong points - I love the Wikipedia overlays, and knowing where I can get Wi-Fi, parking and cash points is extremely useful. I just much prefer the maps.live.com as my service of choice, and I’m glad that I now have access again to that service (it’s almost a shame that MS didn’t use the deal to implement your amazing features into maps.live rather than running Multimaps as an almost rival service).
Having said that, Multimap has now returned to my bookmarks for the first time in years, and I’m sure that I’ll use it in the future for certain searches.
I’m sure, after all your hard work, the critisism must be a bit of a ‘put down’, but most of the people were not slating your update at all, they were annoyed that they were denied access to the latest maps.live update, and that all their collections were broken (a serious problem for me, as I’ve used maps.live on many of my clients sites) and that local searches on MSN/Live were now also broken.
Now that we have access back, and I know I’m not going to have to spend days reprogramming websites, I’d just like to congratulate you on your own updates. It’s a nice implementation of the live maps service, and your extra services are a nice touch. I’ll still use maps.live for the majority of my searches, but no doubt I’ll be here from time to time too.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:29 am
The new site is terrible. Have to reposition my the window to read the map each time and get the zoom controls. If you zoom out or in and then go to print it only prints the original search?
bring back the old site. Far easier and great to use.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Hi,
Well I used to like the old Multimap site when I needed a map to print off. Reading these posts it seems the most upset are those that have lost Live maps and get re-directed.
MISSING from your new basic version of multimap is the dropdown box to select SCALE. You say “basic” is aimed at low hardware spec and limited connection speed - then why force us to sequentually zoom out resulting in long waits for screen reloads rather than select standard map scales like 1:500000 as your old site offers.
Best wishes but you do seem to be upsetting both old multimap users and old live users with all these changes…
April 16th, 2008 at 11:26 am
All the new fangles gadgets are very nice but I need a simple “street map” which I can zoom in and out of the give drivers instructions for deliveries if required. It all takes longer than the old site and has loads of unnecessary stuff. I’ll probably use “streetmap” now
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:45 pm
[...] the full blog post here OR better yet use the new and improved Multimap [...]
April 29th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
What has happened!! The multimap interface is awfull..
can’t believe we arebeing forced to use this rubbish…shame on you microsoft
May 9th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Congratulations! You’ve made the simple task of finding a map and printing it off one of the most fraught tasks imaginable. The new site has ignored the thing that made the old site a joy, simplicity!.
Its also easy to see that you’ve been bought out by Microsoft, the first line in the contract must have been “Make sure the site stops working with Firefox”. Your site won’t allow Firefox to print a map, it prints the adverts along with a nice big empty white space where the map should be, but no bloody map.
There is only one solution to it.
Bye bye.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I agree we are getting a much inferior service. Where for instance is the Go Via option? It’s in the FAQ’s but try to find it - nowhere.
And the maps! Landscape! Hardly helpful for motoring.
It’s time for some enterprising group to set up a simple map based service for the public. I am sure it would attract advertising revenue.
Linda
May 14th, 2008 at 12:55 am
I would just like to say your birds-eye view is amazing. It is so detailed, I can even see the car outside my house.
Only problem I’ve found is that there are too many ads. Far too many, taking up far too much space. This then leads to a lot of window resizing. The expand feature makes the map wider, but the vertical sizing is too narrow to see an overview of an area. Instead of looking at points of interest, I can rarely fit them in and have to scroll and pan constantly.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Oh for the old site to come back….
I would say more postings are against the ‘improvements’ than for, and yet we see no movement to satisfy the customer. A lot of people now use Firefox, and yet we can’t now use Multimap the way we used to.
I have been busy trying to find a mapsite I like to use, although I WAS more than happy with the way this one used to work.
In my opinion, nowdays in a lot of fields we suffer from ‘form over function’ ie it looks better, has more buttons and bells, so must be better…….
please please please, buck the trend, and give us, the (ex)users what we want, an easy to use, easy to print, mapping service.
Surely, if so many people have felt the need to comment, and Im sure you have ‘cherrypicked’ the comments, and still have more anti than pro, you should listen, and act?
May 18th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Amazing. You have actually addressed both my problems with the site by reducing the amount of add space and making the map viewable area window larger.
Thanks!!
May 20th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
agree with all the above- have been using multimap almost since it’s inception, and LOATHE the ghastley new interface.
its NOT easier to use, it is LESS helpful, and is - all things considered- a pain in the rear.
there was actually NO need to re-design it- so why bother???? why not admit your mistake and go back???
i now go elsewhere- congrats. i suspect you have lost a lot of other users too…
May 20th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Well I feared today would come. For ages on multimap they at least had a link to the old site. But the new site seems to only contain maps of roads. Is it just me or is there no decent 1:25000 scale anymore? Just white space and the odd road, no contours, no anything detailed. A bit like then the BBC decided to ‘improve’ the weather maps a few years ago, what a complete waste, I never look at the TV weather now!
May 24th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I detest the new multimap site. Whilst others bemoan the lack of functionality compared to Live Maps, I actually preferred the old fashioned multimap site for obtaining my directions. Trying to get decent printed locations is much more difficult on the new site. I had been using the old site but the link to that has now disappeared.
Guess I’ll have to find a new mapping site then. Sigh.