By Michael Flanakin @ 6:16 PM :: 152 Views :: 3 Comments :: Windows Live, (Open), (Reported) :: Digg it!

This is a major aggravation for me. I see two "business"-use purposes for Live Local: (1) to obtain directions; and, (2) to look for places you might be interested in going. Sure, there are others, but these are the two that I think most people will be productively using the system for.

With that said, Live Local only really covers one of these fully -- obtaining directions. I am happy with its direction-giving, for the most part, but I am absolutely left to my own devices when it comes to the latter usage. Sure, if I know exactly what I'm looking for (i.e. fast food), I can do a quick search to find where the local McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Wendy's are, but what if I want to search for something a little more abstract. Let's just say furniture. Do a search for furniture stores and you'll get a good enough list of places. That's all fine and dandy if you know the places and what they're all about, but what happens when you've never heard of one? You'll want to visit their website to see what they're all about and what they might have to offer instead of wasting time and money (in gas) driving across town. Is it so much to ask that there be a link to a website so I can browse directly to it? I hate to say it, but Google Maps does it and I loved that feature. Now, I have to open a new window (read: tab) and search Live myself. That's just aggravating.

Ya know, in a world -- and especially a product -- more and more driven by the concepts of Web 2.0, you'd think that this type of thing would be a gimme. I'm not sure why it was left out. Hell, grasping a hold of the Web 2.0 concept a bit more, I'll even go as far as to say that I want to see ratings on the map results, as well. Show me an average rating of what people have said about the place. Let me give it my own rating, while we're at it. From there, if ratings are what I'm interested in, I can take a look at what people have said. I want to say that Yahoo does this. Wouldn't it be nice to bring both of these together into our product? Ok, that was rhetorical and I'm probably going a bit far, but you get the idea.

I just noticed that there are now web results below the locations when you do a search in WL Local/Maps. I still don't think this cuts it, but it's a step in the right direction, I guess. What I want is search links that map specifically to the locations found. Ideally, I'm hoping to get the website of the place I'm searching for.

I just took another look at WL Maps and you can click on Details for a specific item to get "related" links. This is nice, but I'd rather not have the extra click when you can show me a handful of those links on the page. I won't even get into the fact that those links don't always have anything at all to do with the location you've chosen... that's a different issue.

I just submitted a request for this feature and also complained about the unrelated links in the Detail view. We'll see what they do with it.