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.

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!

With the release of the Virtual Earth Web Service and Map Control 6.2, is the arrival of weather integration in 3D. The weather data is near-real time. A tad cool in New York at the moment, with random clouds about...

Looking outside of the ninemsn office, I'm thinking those clouds are playing a big role in keeping the heat around!

Note - there are more than 3 buildings in Sydney central business district. Bring on more 3D imagery!

Try it out for yourself, just head to Live Search Maps, find a location and toggle 3D on.

Research tells us that visual information is generally remembered better than verbal information (InfoVis). That is why our News team here at ninemsn does a great job of differentiating us from our competitors - offering more visual information to a story that may be lacking in depth.

View the article: One dead in Sydney air crash

You will notice as you zoom in on certain parts of the world in Live Search Maps, the Bird's eye button will turn from grayed-out into white text.

You can now start exploring and get to know your favourite city, from a different angle and very close up ...

Centerpoint (AMP) Tower

Sydney Opera House 

Sydney Harbour Bridge (close-up)

At the moment, you can use Bird's eye view images of Sydney CBD, Gold Coast, Wollongong and Hobart. More imagery of Australia is on the way.

An article in the press today, which mentions maps.live.com.au.

From 'Position' magazine