I’m a massive fan of the new “Bing” search service from Microsoft newly release this month. It seems we now have a suitable competitor to Google’s offerings.

Firstly, web search seems to have come of age. The results feel a lot more relevant and snappy than previous incarnations. However, the big “wow” for me is the new mapping tool – a gestalt based on Multimap and Virtual Earth. If you want to start using these on your own web pages, it’s almost trivially easy. To embed a Bing map on your web page, simply:

1. Head over to www.bing.com and click on Maps
2. Key in the location and navigate to your desired map point
   
3. Optionally, right click and set the red circle over your target
4. Hit the “link” button in the top-right corner of the map
   
5. If you’re happy just linking to the map, copy and paste the Url and you’re done. If you actually want to embed the Bing map in your web page, you need to accept their terms and conditions
   
6. Once you’ve accepted the T’s and C’s you can simply copy and paste the DIV tag into you web page. If you want to change the size of the map, you can customise the view on a summary screen.

For some, presumably licensing, reason, Microsoft won’t let you embed bird’s eye views, which restricts you to choosing Map or Aerial views. If you can live with this restriction – and for free, I certainly can – then you’re good to go and enjoy your new map.

Happy embedding!