Microsoft has really surprised me with their showing of Bing Maps at TED.  Instead of creating another mapping system primarily for directions, they have created a mapping application that other applications can hook into expand the services of the mapping system.  For example, it appears that blogs will be able to geotag locations mentioned in their blogs and they will show up on the mapping system.  I’m believe local news stories will also be geotagged.

Bing maps takes street view to a whole new level.  Two features that stuck out to me were the fact that you can view historical images and that you can go INSIDE buildings.  Yes…inside buildings.  Microsoft has people who will be walking inside locations with backpack cameras so that you can extend your experience to inside of a location.  On top of that, if you manage to view a location that one of their backpack cams are at you will be able to view a live stream of the location.  If that wasn’t enough, the live stream works in seamlessly with the map image.  I have to say that I am quite excited about this.  Why?  Because this will cause quite the stir and Google will be forced to come out with something even better.  Check out the video to see a few of the examples I was talking about.