“Destination Maps” for Your Holiday / New Year’s Parties

Over the next few weeks, there will be many holiday and New Year’s parties across the globe as we spend time with our families and welcome in 2011. I wanted to briefly re-visit a previously released Map App that is very timely for this time of the year – “Destination Maps”. When planning your party, this Map App lets you create custom mini-maps that you can save, print, or share via URL.

These maps can either help people who don’t know your location very well or just be a fun addition to a party invitation. And if you’re not having a party anytime soon, check it out anyways! You can choose from 4 different map styles, including the Treasure Map style as seen in the below example. Please note that the app takes between 2 and 4 minutes to generate the map.

Destination Maps Example

On behalf of everyone at Bing Maps, have a happy holiday and a great final few weeks in 2010. Enjoy!

Three new 3D cities released on Japan

It’s been a while since Google has officially released a 3D city (though new buildings are added weekly), so it was nice to see them add three more — Yokohama, Sendai and Saitama, Japan.

The cities each feature thousands of buildings, and look excellent!

yokohama.jpg

As they often do, Google has produced a nice little video to show off the highlights in the new cities, so check it out here:

To see them for yourself, here are some KML files that will fly you directly to each city: YokohamaSendai.kmlSaitama.kml

For more, check out the full entry on the Google Lat Long Blog.