Chris Pendleton announced lots of new features in Live Search Maps, which are tied back to some of the updates in the Virtual Earth platform, including:

• Communities: Collections are indexed and available for search “seconds” after they are loaded.  In addition, Collections data is used where no Business listings are available for business searches
• Local search: Improvements include filters refine searches based on what you are searching for (hotels, for example)
• Details page: Moved from a tabbed model to inline, allowing for much more content:
• Multi-Point directions: Enables you to generate a single set of directions for reaching multiple destinations
• Landmark hints: Hints will show up in driving directions in North America, telling you to “turn at the Taco Bell”
• Weather: in 3D real time weather, based on 14 cloud types, updated every 3 hours, will be available
• Geocoding: Results for place searches (e.g. cities, states, countries, landmarks, etc.) have been improved, particularly for international queries.

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