Live Maps Collections Feature Screencast

Last week, I lamented the fact that Virtual Earth has been virtually ignored and provided some thoughts as to why I thought that was so:  Poor marketing.  I still think that's a major issue, and have been sharing my thoughts on that with the product team. 

Robert Scoble linked to me with his own post saying that he also thought it was because Live Maps just isn't as intuitive to use.  He pointed out several areas where Google Maps is better on the usability front.  I agree with Scoble on these things.  While I like Live Maps and the useful features it provides, I admit, sometimes they're not easy to discover or use them!

Scoble was frustrated that he couldn't figure out how to use the Collections feature.  So, on a whim, I decided to make my first screencast ever to show how to use Collections in Live Maps.  The screencast shows how to create a collection, save it out, retrieve it in another browser session, and then finally how to share it with a friend. 

I fully accept that me posting a screencast of how to use Collections doesn't account for the fact that it wasn't intuitive for Scoble (or others) to use.  I just wanted to show how it's done.  Full kudos to Google Maps for introducing their myMaps feature and one-upping Live Maps on the user experience front!

I love the smell of competition in the morning!

Thanks to Andrew Duthie for graciously posting the screencast up on Channel 9 for me.  You can view it here in all it's glory.

[Update:] Note, I also just saw this follow up post by Steve Lombardi from the Live Maps team that shows some screenshots explaining the Collections feature.

[Update #2:] Man!  The blogosphere moves fast.  Looks like someone else also posted a screencast before me on Scoble's blog.