Following the recent announcement by Microsoft that Bing’s mapping feature, Streetside was coming to Europe, the first images of the project are beginning to appear, say QueryClick.

In April, Microsoft announced that Streetside, Bing’s visual mapping feature was going to appear in Europe in the coming months, its first images of London have already begun to appear online. The appearance of these images mark the first time that people outside of the US are able to use Streetside, and London is the first city to experience this new service, say QueryClick.

Christopher Liversidge, QueryClick’s Managing Director comments: “There was a lot of excitement earlier this year when it was revealed that the URL microsoftstreetside.co.uk has been registered, and following on from the official announcement it has emerged that the first images of London are now available online for all to see, which is great news for Bing users in the UK.”

Microsoft has previously said that it wasn’t going to be focusing on capturing every street or road in the capital, with the emphasis going on ‘urban and more heavily trafficked areas’, so not every single street in London will be available to view online. However, users can still use Streetside to view some of the busiest streets in London, and in either traditional 360 views seen in Google Streetview or as a basic panorama, which gives users a choice in how they view their maps, say QueryClick.

Chris continues: “If user want to view the images in 360, then they will have to have access to Silverlight, an alternative to Flash Player, which will enable them to see the streets in clear and high-quality image of the street in question. But if they don’t have Silverlight, then they can still view the images in what’s known as “Bing Maps Classic”, which is the official name for a panoramic image on Bing. While Bing has only been concentrating on London so far, they hope to expand their UK Streetside project to a number of other cities and towns in Britain in the future, which will give Bing users more options for when they want to use Bing’s maps.”

Via EPR Network
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