Following are some areas Microsoft is highlighting.

Laguna Chacaico, Argentina

Republic of the Congo

Ambohipaky, Madagascar

Coco, Costa Rica

“Our latest release of Global Ortho imagery includes 69 blocks and covers over 800,000 sq km,” Bing says. “In total, we have published 10,777,300 square kilometers covering 100% of the United States and 83% of Western Europe! The Global Ortho project is nearing completion with only 4% remaining to be published.”

Microsoft has also refreshed its Europe and U.S. desktop themes. There are now over 200 images for the U.S. and 175 for Europe, compatible with both Windows 7 and Windows 8.

The company also recently released a Hurricane Sandy Maps app.

“With all the recent chatter about mobile apps, particularly mapping in iOS 6, a lot of people are wondering which apps given them both the essential tools they need and a great experience,” a spokesperson for Bing tells WebProNews. “Well, Bing has them covered and now is a great time to download the Bing App for iPhone.”

“The Bing App, which is free and iOS 6 compatible, helps people easily find what they need – whether it’s using voice activated search to find maps and driving directions or Bing Vision to scan and find that great bottle of wine that was shared with friends,” he adds. “Just wanted to offer a reminder that a great mapping and search option exists for iPhone users, and they don’t have to wait for it.”

The company also put out a blog post to the same effect, though they didn’t talk about maps too much in it, other than to mention that you can “get walking, transit, and driving directions with current traffic conditions and maps,” and to show a picture of Bing Maps on an iPhone.

It’s worth noting that iOS users can still access Google Maps from the web via their mobile devices. There’s just not an app currently available (though it sounds like that will change within the next couple months or so).

In other Google Maps news, the company introduced some pretty breathtaking under water “Street View” imagery today.

“In two years, the Bing Maps Imagery team has collected every square inch of the continental US and Western Europe at 30cm resolution (1ft = 1 pixel),” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “This endeavor sets a new standard in aerial map imagery.”

“To give you an idea of the amount of imagery the team has taken, at 30cm per pixel, you could line up all the Global Ortho pixels end-to-end to reach around the earth 994 times, to the moon 104 times and to Venus with an extra seven trillion pixels to spare,” he adds.

Here are a couple of examples:

Pueblo Bonito ruins at Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Cape Canaveral, FL

“There is higher resolution imagery of some certain areas available, but there is no continent-wide mosaic at this high of a resolution,” Bing’s Charlie Peterson said in a blog post. “What GO brings you is an amazing view into familiar places (like your own home) and remote corners of the United States.”

To commemorate the completion of the project in the U.S., Bing sent its team on another mission to capture imagery of a giant Bing logo it had painted on the roof of a nearby parking garage. Once it’s ready, the image will be visible among the imagery.

One of the most salient qualities evident in the map upgrade is how less cluttered the maps appear to be without reducing the amount of knowledge available to a user. The examples below were provided from Nokia’s announcement and, while they’re small, even at that scale you can immediately see that the image is a lot clearer and less overwhelming. The side streets aren’t so prominent and lumped together with the main roads that you’re more likely to need. The colors designating water or grassy areas seem more pastel, too, so you’re in luck if you prefer softer hues. The color enhancements will hopefully help users avoid mistaking roads for rivers (i.e., driving into rivers).

According to the Bing side of things, users will notice an improvement to the topographical details to a map. Bing hopes that the added detail of the actual landscape will help people “consume mapping details more quickly.” When you’re ready for second helpings of Bing Maps, another improvement that may serve to reanimate your appetite is the way the text is now flush with whatever level of zoom you’re using.

Bing also notes a change to the visual hierarchy on the maps. Different amounts of information will be observed depending on what degree you are zoomed in so users won’t be met with a barrage of detailed information before they need it. “Go in for detail, pull back for context,” Bing easily explains.

While the changes are going to be noticeable to people regardless of what map they’re using, Bing cites some big improvements to countries like Egypt, Israel, Malta, Philippines, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The upgrade will be rolled out gradually on Nokia web maps, first on maps.nokia.com, then later to the Bing, however, didn’t clarify if it will be gradually rolling out the changes but as far as I can tell the changes appear to be live for the website and the mobile site.s I can tell the changes appear to be live for the website and the mobile site.

The control was built on top of the beta version, meaning that all of the features of Bing Maps will remain, such as various map styles to toggle through, pan and zoom keyboard controls, and Microsoft Surface (the touch-enabled facet with support for Surface v 2′s Pixel Sense technology). Honestly, I will admit, I do really prefer the look of the terrain on Bing Maps than Google Maps. Bing’s version reminds me more of the classic map I’d expect to see clutched in the hands of Indiana Jones as he escapes from a burning library.

Bing’s Plate:

Google’s Plate:

Just look at the difference. I feel like Microsoft just ate Google’s lunch money with this Bing Maps launch. Google might be more focused on, and therefore still better at, maps that are fun (and fun again), but if you have any appreciation for aesthetic quality then Bing Maps is the one posted up in the pro zone (i.e., winning).

Today’s blog post from Chris Pendleton, the Lead Program Manager for Bing Maps, continues:

Per community feedback on the Bing Maps MSDN Forums we added the following features (and fixed a few bugs):

Support for tile layers – you can now overlay your own tile layers atop the map control.

Turning off the base tile layer – this is useful for when you don’t need/want to use our base map tiles and instead would prefer to use your own without overlaying them atop of ours. The control won’t request the tiles which reduces downloads and improves rendering performance.

SSL Support – since many of you are using the WPF control in secure applications, you can now make tile and service request over SSL without issue.

Hiding the scale bar – if you don’t want a scale bar (perhaps your map is small and the scale bar clutters the map) you can turn it off. In fact, the only elements you can’t turn off are the Bing logo and the copyrights.

New copyright service – provides accurate copyright for our data vendors.

Additional inertia – inertia is now enabled for the mouse and is on by default for touch.

Miscellaneous bug fixes – thanks for the feedback on the MSDN Forums, the Bing Maps Blog, e-mail and Twitter. Good finds people.

Pendleton seems aware of the fact that he’s got a winner on hand, too:

I have to give it up for my (small) crack team of people involved in the making of the WPF Control. This was one of those 10% projects that we all really had a passion to get done because it was the right thing to do for the Microsoft Developer Community. So, we found the time, slipped the release a month (for quality) and, as the guys over in Surface said, “just got it done.” Our internal motto kept stoking the fire to push this bad boy out the door…”WPF, FTW!”

Looks like passion and dedication came up roses for Pendleton and Microsoft this time. Nicely done.

The new algorithm changes how driving directions queries are computed.

Algorithms behind routes on search engines’ maps probably aren’t something that most of us give a whole lot of that, but Bing clearly wants us to know how proud they are of this, having devoted not only a blog post about it, but an entire research paper.

“It started when I took over as PM of backend services for Bing Maps,” says Chris Pendleton. “The Microsoft Research team presented this crazy new idea to replace our modified Dijkstra’s algorithm with the blandly named ‘Customizable Route Planning’ algo. We’ve been using our own modified Dijkstra for years, it’s done a great job and it’s flexible – so, why would we change that? Once we saw the calculation numbers it was a no brainer to begin implementation immediately. For any of our route calculations we’re now processing requests twice as fast as we ever have. Oh, snaps! Now, if only CRP could double the speed limit. Future enhancement!”

The “special sauce” of the routing engine, Pendleton says, is a feature in the API for altenate routes. Applications can request up to 3 separate routes in one request, which can be displayed on the map. Here’s what Pendleton has to say about the basic algorithm:

Our metric-independent preprocessing stage partitions the graph into connected cells with at most U (an input parameter) vertices each, with as few boundary arcs (arcs with endpoints in di erent cells) as possible. The metric customization stage builds a graph H containing all boundary vertices (those with at least one neighbor in another cell) and boundary arcs of G. It also contains a clique for each cell C: for every pair (v;w) of boundary vertices in C, we create an arc (v;w) whose cost is the same as the shortest path (restricted to C) between v and w (or in nite if w is not reachable from v). We do so by running Dijkstra from each boundary vertex. Note that H is an overlay [24]: the distance between any two vertices in H is the same as in G. Finally, to perform a query between s and t, we run a bidirectional version of Dijkstra’s algorithm on the graph consisting of the union of H, Cs, and Ct. (Here Cv denotes the subgraph of G induced by the vertices in the cell containing v.) As already mentioned, this is the basic strategy of separator-based methods. In particular, HiTi [19] uses edge-based separators and cliques to represent each cell. Unfortunately, HiTi has not been tested on large road networks; experiments were limited to small grids, and the original proof of concept does not appear to have been optimized using modern algorithm engineering techniques. Our rst improvement over HiTi and similar algorithms is to use PUNCH [5] to partition the graph. Recently developed to deal with road networks, it routinely nds solutions with half as many boundary edges (or fewer), compared to the general-purpose partitioners (such as METIS [20]) commonly used by previous algorithms. Better partitions reduce customization time and space, leading to faster queries. For our experiments, we used relatively long runs of PUNCH, taking about an hour. Our results would not change much if we used the basic version of PUNCH, which is only about 5% worse but runs in mere minutes. We use parallelism: queries run forward and reverse searches on two CPU cores, and customization uses all four (each cell is processed independently).

The research paper can be found here, in PDF form.

There have recently been some questions about whether Apple would stick with Google Maps in the upcoming iOS 5, or abandon it in favor of a technology of its own, but that appears not to be the case. Google Maps will reportedly continue to get featured placement on iOS devices.

Danny Sullivan, who liveblogged Schmidt’s comments at D9, quotes him as saying, “We have a very, very good partnership,” and that both the search and maps deals have been renewed. He didn’t reveal any more details about the deals.

The search deal especially, could be critical for Google in keeping Bing from gaining a significant amount of search market share (or at least an even more significant amount than it’s already poised to gain). Bing should be getting some nice boosts from the Windows Phone platform, as well as deals with Nokia and RIM (and watch out if Microsoft ever decides to put a proper browser with Bing as the default search engine on Xbox).

While Android has been doing incredibly well, Google remaining on the very popular iOS devices matters. Given that Apple is about to introduce the next generation of iOS itself, one can only imagine that a new wave of consumer interest is on the horizon.

The maps deal matters, as it is simply an extension of search, and obviously an important one on mobile devices. Bing just launched some new streetside view technology for its own Maps service.

While Google (and Schmidt specifically) has repeatedly referred to Microsoft as its main competitor, Schmidt spoke about what he calls the “gang of four” companies that are dominating in consumer tech. This includes Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook – no Microsoft. When asked by interviewers Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg about Xbox, Schmidt downplayed the wildly popular gaming console, saying that “it’s not a platform at the computational level,” and that Microsoft is still fundamentally about Office and Windows (as quoted by All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka).

Really? Microsoft’s latest earnings report tells a different story:

It’s also clear that Xbox is becoming less and less about just gaming. According to Microsoft, 40% of all activity on the Xbox 360 is non-gaming activity, meaning that users are spending nearly half the time on the console watching streaming video. Users can stream movies and music through Zune, which might be getting a rebrand. Again, look out if they simply throw a browser into the mix. I wonder if Microsoft has anything like that.

It’s very interesting that Schmidt would downplay the significance of the Xbox, given the less-than-stellar launch of Google’s entry into the living room – Google TV.

“These changes represent a significant enhancement for desktop browsers, enabling you to quickly pan up and down the street to see the neighborhood and find businesses,” explains Bing’s Chris Pendleton. “We are doing this by providing street level panoramas so you can take a virtual walk through the streets with a view of locations and landmarks. As you slide the street level imagery sideways, the view of the sidewalk is seamlessly constructed including an overlay of business listings, street names and store fronts.”

“In the past you explored Streetside imagery by navigating between ‘bubbles,’ or discrete 360 degree views, and moving down the street was accomplished by jumping from bubble to bubble. This works, but makes it difficult for you to get a sense for a larger area like a city block. Moreover, it’s hard to pick out storefronts farther away since you really only see the ones directly perpendicular to your viewpoint with great clarity,” says Pendleton. “This new style, on the other hand, keeps the immersive experience but adds smooth left/right panning navigation that makes it easy to find what’s nearby more quickly. The street flows by as a series of smooth ground-level photographs so now you simply pan up and down the street to see the neighborhood and find what you are looking for.”

The street map remains above the imagery, so if you get lost in your streetside journey, you shouldn’t have much trouble figuring out where you are. Below the imagery, you will also see an overlay of the names of businesses and bus stops.

“Maps would be integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and adCenter advertising platform to form a unique local search and advertising experience,” the press release said.

That integration might be much bigger than anyone realized, however.

Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land says he had lunch with a “person with close connections to Nokia,” who told him that Nokia Maps would “effectively replace almost everything that Microsoft had developed over the past several years in terms of the Bing Maps infrastructure”. Sterling writes:

I said I couldn’t believe Microsoft would agree to swap in Navteq for the guts of its own system. Yet my lunch guest argued that Microsoft’s role would mostly center on the Bing Maps UI — ironically not unlike Yahoo’s relationship to Microsoft search results — everything else would be powered by Nokia.

And there was another very interesting remark. He asserted that Google’s unwillingness to agree to a co-mingling of Google Maps and Nokia Maps or substitution of Nokia Maps on the back end was one of the sticking points that prevented Nokia and Google from coming to terms.

Navteq is a GIS data provider, owned by Nokia. It counts plenty of big brands (including Microsoft) among its customers.

Based on the circumstances, we can only file this one under rumors at this point, but as Sterling points out, Microsoft and Nokia were indeed quite vague on the details about any Map integration resulting from the partnership.

At this point, it’s unclear what would become of much of the progress Bing Maps has made on its own, and its own integrations – Bing Maps apps, for example. We’ve reached out to the Bing Team for comment, and will follow-up with any additional details.

Update: Bing simply gave us the following canned response: “Bing Maps has utilized Nokia content for road data, geo-coding and routing services for several years, through Nokia’s Navteq vector data business, relying on the quality of its data for core location services. The Nokia/MS partnership will enable deeper collaboration and an improved experience for our customers in the future.”

"Have you ever driven to a mall, parked at one of the big department stores, then discovered the store you needed to go to was on the other side of the mall? What about experiencing the frustration of not knowing where in the mall is the store you need and the mall directory is nowhere in sight? And with malls being extra busy now that we’re in holiday season, we’ll take anything we can get to help us get in, get out, and avoid the crowds," said Bing Maps Product Manager Brian Hendricks. 

"You can use these mall maps to figure out where the right place to park is and map out your mall excursion so you don’t spend precious time walking around," says Hendricks.

Users can find the mall maps by clicking "Mall Map" within Bing Local results. 

So far, Bing only has maps for malls in Seattle, Boston, and New York  metro areas, but they will continue add more regularly.