Last month a significant update to the road map data in Australia was deployed on Virtual Earth. You can see the new road map data on http://maps.live.com.au/.

This example shows a before and after of the recently completed M3 EastLink in Melbourne.

Before

After

Visit Live Search Maps now for up to date Australian road maps.

The new ninemsn toolbar was released last month at http://ninemsntoolbar.com.au/. This is the satisfying shortcut to all your ninemsn essentials. The toolbar is easy to use, and is installed straight into your internet browser for easy access at all times.

There are two sides to the toolbar…

ninemsn content and Hotmail/Messenger

This side of the toolbar will keep you up to date with all the latest videos, breaking news, sport, celebrity, competitions, shopping and travel deals.

Search

The search side gives you access to search the web, images, video, ninemsn, Maps and businesses. For Maps, just press the Maps button, type in a location and hit search. For business searches, type in a what/where query (e.g. Dentist in Sydney) to find local businesses. Both will take you to results on Live Search Maps.

You can switch between the two sides by clicking the flip button. It is right next to the weather display.

Head to http://ninemsntoolbar.com.au/ and download now!

Yesterday our development team deployed a major release of content to the live http://maps.live.com.au/ site. Lot’s of things went on behind the scenes, which is unimportant to you as a user…

What I really want to tell you about is the new content and new multi-stop driving directions which were added to the site.

Content

The homepage now calls out examples of content you can explore on Live Search Maps.

This section will be kept up to date with relative content so you can find what you need.

Multi-stop driving directions

This is where the real effort lies. With an objective to catch-up on the core US site functionality, multi-stop driving directions has been added. Previously you could define a start and end point and find directions from A to B.

You can now define up to 15 stops along a route, from A to O.

Selecting round-trip will copy your start point to be the end point, so you can find your way back. Reverse simply reverses the order of stops.

And to top it all off, you can still use the Share button in the top right to send the route to a friend.

Shhh... not many people know about this one yet!

Great coverage of Bird's Eye imagery now in Melbourne. Check out Melbourne on Live Search Maps (just click Bird's Eye to view once you are on the site).

You can share any map and directions search with the world. Here is how it's done...

Location searches

From Live Search Maps, click on 'Locations' and search for any town. I am thinking of heading to Palm Beach this weekend (if the rain stays away!). OK I found it on the map, and I want to show a friend on Messenger where it is. Simple...

Click 'Share' in the top right corner:

You will see the query string has parameters calling out Palm Beach. I just press 'Copy to clipboard':

And I can paste it into Messenger, or anywhere else! It is copied to your system's clipboard:

You can also go to 'Share' and press 'Send in e-mail', this will launch your email client with an email messaging containing a link to the map.

Driving Directions searches

Perform a Driving Directions search and perform the same process above to share a directions route.

So now you can share!