I’m a fan of Live Maps – since getting to the US I’ve used them a lot to find my way around strange cities (even used them to get a look of my office before I went for interview!)

There is always work going on with the Virtual Earth team to improve the quality of the product and they’ve just rolled out another release.

This update is much bigger release than originally planned – it includes three full sprints of development (the milestones used by the team). As always the changes visible in the user interface only scratch the surface of the dozens of improvements across the application tiers including Geocoding enhancements, browser compatibility (Safari and IE8), parsing improvements, reverse geocoding, printing improvements, integration with GPS devices, Map Cruncher integration, 1-click “party” directions and tons more.

For sites that host their own functionality on top of Live Maps the team have also released an upgrade of the Map Control to version 6.1 for developers.

Get the full scoop on the update on from the Virtual Earth blog.