Microsoft Virtual Earth is out…

This is getting a lot of play everywhere, but Microsoft’s new mapping application, Virtual Earth is now live. In most respects, I find it very similar to Google’s offering, but the API seems a bit more refined, and it doesn’t have the problems associated with generating usage keys. You can find information about programming the api here, or the simplest example here. You can pan around, or double click somewhere to zoom in. I’ll try to work up some bigger examples later.