MSN Maps and Directions

Another Big Player in the Web Portal mapping space is obviously MSN with their “MSN Maps and Directions”. This app is powered by Microsoft’s MapPoint technology. What sets this service apart from the others is the vast amount of data from a number of countries and the ease in which people can link to maps and directions from their applications and websites.

Some notable new features available to MSN Maps’ users include:

MSN Maps & Directions is now available in 11 countries and is available for the first time in Australia, Belgium and Spain, and on MSN Latino, the Spanish-language version of the U.S. MSN site.
MSN Maps & Directions now offers the Brand Finder tool, which enables customers to locate and display featured businesses and services near their mapped location or along their driving route.
MSN Maps & Directions is the only free online mapping service to offer users the option to paste a full address and display that address on a map, instead of having to fill in individual boxes for the address, city, state and ZIP code.
MSN Maps & Directions now allows customers to link to the MSN Maps & Directions site from their personal Internet site to provide maps and directions. All they have to do is build the URL and paste it into their own programming code.
More information about the latest features are available for viewing Here

Here’s something pretty cool about MSN Maps… you can create URLs that return MSN Maps & Directions maps in the following ways:

• By providing a street address or place name.

• By providing the latitude and longitude for a location.

• By providing a starting point, an end point, or both, to get a map and driving directions.

Creating simple hyperlinks that lead to popup maps is very simple. For example: Create a map of Whistler Golf Course using this hyperlink – (http://maps.msn.com/home.aspx?plce1=whistler golf course &regn1=0)

Pretty simple!

Of interest, here’s some country codes for the region parameter to try this for yourself. (default is 0)

United States
0

Canada
1

United Kingdom
2

France
3

Germany
4

Austria
5

Switzerland
6

Belgium
7

Luxembourg
8

Denmark
9

Spain
10

Italy
11

Netherlands
12

Finland (Helsinki only)
13

Norway
14

Portugal
15

Sweden
16

Australia
17

Brazil
18

Greece (Athens only)
19

Other valid parameters to specify locations include:

strt1 – The street address—for example, 1 Microsoft Way.
city1 – The city name—for example, Redmond.
stnm1 – The state or province name—for example, Washington or WA. You can use either the entire state or province name, or a standard abbreviation. Note This parameter is not required for finding addresses in the following countries/regions: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom, and Sweden.
zipc1 – The ZIP Code or postal code—for example, 98052.
cnty1 – Optional. A numeric value ranging from 0 through 19 that indicates the country/region in which the address is located. If this parameter is omitted, the default value 0 (United States) is used.
plce1 – A named place—for example, Eiffel Tower.

The complete document can be accessed from http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/msnmaps/mws_linking.mspx