Bing Maps for Enterprise?

No way, no how will I ever refer to Virtual Earth as Bing Maps for Enterprise.  I’m putting my foot down on this.

I dont want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough water! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough water! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

38 Comments

  1. HandsomeJohnny says:

    you’ll call it BING like you call it a GIS SYSTEM.

  2. James Fee says:

    I’ll probably be calling it Yahoo! Maps in about 6 months. ;)

  3. Probably Jerry Seinfeld’s idea. How edgy.

  4. Micah says:

    The first thing bing.com did to my PC was cause it to black screen and reboot when I clicked on ‘Find out more’.

    Thanks for that! Can’t wait for the full release to see what’s really in store for me. Would that be Silverlight or something else that’s the culprit? I’m afraid to go back…..

  5. Terry says:

    Ah, I see that you have the machine that goes: Bing!

  6. Chad says:

    What if they called it “Bling” instead.. and put a lot of sparkley stuff around the frame?

  7. Doug says:

    “Do you integrate with Bing?”
    “Are you compatible with Bing?”
    “Hey what is the spatial reference for Bing?”
    “Yeah I got that route from Bing”
    “You can mashup your data with Bing”
    “You can use Bing for your background imagery”
    “Bing was just updated with 15 TB of new images”
    “Microsoft Bing”

    Fail

  8. MSN->Live->Bing->Whatever

  9. This is not good.

    With 5% mashup share (last time I checked), this is a step back from “Live” and 10 steps back from “Virtual Earth” in terms of branding.

    As an independent consultant, only a change in licensing to free-anytime-anywhere will make me risk the embarrassment of explaining “Bing” to my clients. Otherwise it’s all Google all the time.

    The worst part is, MS has some really solid folks working on their geospatial products, but there is no coherent marketing “story” and this says to me all those marketing MBAs aren’t going to make it right anytime soon.

    Brian

    • yodel says:

      Thanks for inadvertent compliment! I’m one of those formerly solid geospatial people who worked on VE in Boulder and now just looking for work in all the wrong places after the May 5th bloodletting.

      • No time to lose says:

        Hi Yodel,
        Have you considered working towards an Open GIS instead of the Gorilla that loses interest (and focus) every 6 months? At a conference last year with a Google and MS rep, Google said they were in it for the advertising. MS said they were in it to defeat Google.

        OpenGIS on the other hand is in it for the users. You could work on a project, consult, or help organizations transition to sustainable and professional projects (especially right now with the economy….), and in the long run secure your position as a GIS professional developer….

  10. Anon y mouse says:

    Makes me think of the machine that goes bing in Monty Python’s The meaning of life. It too was pointless.

  11. KoS says:

    Heck they should have gone all the way…called it “Bing Bong”.

    For such a large corporation, their marketing dept is one of the worst. Nothing like shooting yourself in the foot not long after the wounds have healed from the last time.

  12. Archie Belaney says:

    GALAHAD: Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
    FRENCH GUARD: No. Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a! [sniff]
    ARTHUR: Now, this is your last chance. I’ve been more than reasonable.
    FRENCH GUARD: (Fetchez la vache.)
    OTHER FRENCH GUARD: Quoi?
    FRENCH GUARD: (Fetchez la vache!)
    [mooo]
    ARTHUR: If you do not agree to my commands, then I shall–
    [twong]
    [mooooooo]
    Jesus Christ!

  13. Douglas says:

    And yet “Google” is a professional word.

  14. Gus says:

    I know Microsoft has lots of money to throw around, but what will happen when they throw all this money around advertising Bing and no one uses it? Really, the last thing this economy needs is a massive round of layoffs at Microsoft.

  15. LRH says:

    Reminds me of Chandler Bing from Friends. It is too dorky for a product name.

  16. Nuke says:

    BING = Bing Is Not Google

    • Regina says:

      I like that one got to remember that. Honestly what’s wrong with bing. It slides off the tongue faster than google.

  17. Yall are way too hung up about names.

    Not many people would’ve initially thought companies with names like Yahoo and Google would ever become the biggest players.

    Still, I do wonder what Bing means in Chinese.

    Lakers fans don’t seem too bothered that there are so few lakes around LA.

  18. Archie Belaney says:

    Bob

  19. ChrisW says:

    @Bigguth Diccuth:
    “Still, I do wonder what Bing means in Chinese”

    According to the handy online dictionary at http://www.mandarintools.com/, you can choose from the following 24 options, depending on the intonation:

    1. bīng soldiers; a force; an army; weapons; arms; military; warlike
    2. bīng ice
    3. bīng arrow-quiver
    4. bīng Trachycarpus excelsa
    5. bīng areca
    6. bǐng the third of the ten heavenly stems; the third position; third; number three
    7. bǐng get rid of; put aside; reject; keep control; hold back
    8. bǐng sad; mournful
    9. bǐng bright; glorious
    10. bǐng authority; handle; hilt
    11. bǐng bright; brilliant; luminous
    12. bǐng (surname); to grasp; hold; maintain
    13. bǐng natural property or endowment; report to (a superior)
    14. bǐng bright ; shining, splendid
    15. bǐng (surname); ancient city name; happy
    16. bǐng plate
    17. bǐng scabbard
    18. bǐng round flat cake; cookie; cake; pastry
    19. bìng and; furthermore; (not) at all; simultaneously; also; together with; to combine; to join; to merge
    20. bìng amalgamate; combine
    21. bìng nightmare; start in sleep
    22. bìng and; also; together with
    23. bìng arrange; drive off; expel
    24. bìng ailment; sickness; illness; disease; fall ill; sick; defect

    None of these are especially inspiring as product names. Number 9 might be tempting except for the awkward conflict with number8. My money’s on number 24, though.

    I wonder what today’s special is…?

    • ChrisW- Thanks for posting the definitions for Bing. More choices there than on a chinese restaurant menu.

      We need to be looking beyond the presentation level and pay more attention to the heavy lifting on the back end.

      Microsoft is also getting serious about high performance computing. A windows machine (in Shanghai) is the 10th fastest supercomputer:
      http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/microsoft/35913/

      ESRI’s new routing service looks good …
      http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline/world_routing.html
      … but it seems like the world is ready for more sophisticated routing services.

      I wonder whose server will be best at solving the Chinese Postman problem.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_postman

      • Sven Mogul says:

        Just got done integrating Bing with Java server talking to back-end Bing routing and geocoding services. Not too painful to generate Java SOAP bindings. Goecoding is good with rooftop, parcel, and interpolation possibilities but routing is horrid with no useable major roads option and no optimization for stops for traveling salesman problem. Unfortunately it appears ESRI still has the most sophisticated routing services, Google, on the other hand,has NO accessable back-end SOAP API, its all through Javascript front-end.

  20. RobertW says:

    For those of you that want to play with Bing and are still using IE6, BEWARE!!

    http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22484943-Microsofts-new-Bing-search-hijacks-Google-toolbar-in-IE6

  21. GaGaTak says:

    No one beat Google… Google Rocks!

  22. Jade says:

    Bing does give search results much like Google but i would have to say that Google still gives more relevant search results.