Microsoft Research India, based out of Bangalore, has taken a great first step towards creating Virtual India - the Windows Local version of India.

To start with, there are some wonderful street-level maps of Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, with the promise of more.

It will be great to see the day when we have properly implemented driving directions in India.

For those who didn’t know already, I am currently at Rockville, Maryland (USA). Whenever you are in the US, you will realize the importance of online maps (and offline too at times) and the way these maps can familiarize you quickly with an unknown territory.

Mapquest and Yahoo were probably the forerunners of online maps till Google came around. Google Maps and Google Earth were simply too good and they used some neat AJAX-ing to get the wonderful effect of these “sliding maps” when you moved around.

Yesterday I was talking to Rosh, who was busy looking to see if he could see a satellite image of me when he was talking to me over the phone, and then I told him that MSN Virtual Earth is also a good alternative.

I had myself visited MSN Virtual Earth very long ago, and so decided to check it out. For one, MSN Virtual Earth now powers Windows Live Local and the interface seemed very confusing some time ago. But now it all makes sense.

It is simply the best web-based map tool interface – and I’m not being partial. The Scratch Pad is such a wonderful concept. I hate it when I have to keep typing the address again and again in other tools once you’ve moved elsewhere.

The best feature of all is the “Bird’s Eye View”. Seeing is definitely believing here – you got to see it to appreciate it. It gives you a much clearer idea of the map than the satellite map which shows you the rooftops of buildings that you wouldn’t anyway be able to see.

I also like the nifty tools and the neat menu interface on the top. Also try the directions when you are viewing in bird’s eye view, the map shows you step-wise landmarks of where you have to take a right or a left.

To the friends at Redmond – GREAT WORK!

This was a moment to cherish!

Being at the Golden Gate is just an experience. The bridge is so massively huge, it just brushes you aside and completely overwhelms you.

This is the one of the entry points to the USA from the wide, wide Pacific. That's also where it gets its name from.

http://www.jayanthan.com/blog/2005/08/28/so-there-is-a-god-after-all/

Hilarious!

If you haven't seen http://earth.google.com or http://moon.google.com - visit it.

Neat improvisation of the Google Maps interface.

Its been messy. And frustrating.

www.cenvo.com where we had the earlier hosting of thinkingms.com gave us a lot of issues. First of all comments and any new blog entry went poof. Thanks to some access rights issues. And then when we sought cenvo support, we did not get any response. It can be frustrating when an online transaction ceases to respond and there is no way to walk into an office and slap somebody tight on their face.

However, we've now moved to our new home at discountasp.net - which looks far more reliable. We are also on a state-of-the-art hosting provider that hardly seems to have any complaints.

What did happen though in this transition, are a few changes:

1. Unfortunately the sub-domain registration at discountasp.net is priced a little too high for our budget and hence we have a change in our individual blog URLs.  I am blogging at http://www.thinkingMS.com/pandurang - please update your bookmarks. You can visit our homepage for the blog addresses of the remaining bloggers on TMS.

2. Vyasaraj Kulkarni joins the blog bandwagon on ThinkingMS.com - I am looking forward to some exciting blogs about some of the exciting technologies he's been working on. Welcome, Vyas.

3. We've moved to a newer version of dasBlog - hence with some newer features and better look.

4. Some of our earlier posts might have some broken links or broken images, thanks to the change in URL mentioned in point 1. We are on our way to fix these - drop us a mail if you find anything, it will be appreciated.

Overall, it took some time, took some hit on our blogging which was beginning to be a good habit - but then a break is always rejuvenating.

There are other changes in life and everything, that I will leave to the individual bloggers to announce.

It is good to be back. And thanks to everyone who kept mailing or asking us about when we'll be back. Here we are, and sorry it took so long.

In Douglas Adam's words, Sorry for all the inconvenience.