LiveSide - Interview Blog : Live Local

Interview with Stephen Lawler - Virtual Earth

Chris — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 04:07:00 GMT

Last week, Harrison got the chance to talk with Stephen Lawler, General Manager for Live Local/Virtual Earth product development, about their new release, making its debut this week. He has some really interesting things to say about their vision for Virtual Earth, innovative monetization, and where Virtual Earth is going from here. So, enjoy the new release and give this one a listen.

0:00 Introductions
0:15 The Vision
1:10 The Problem with Search Today
1:37 Extending Search into the Real World
2:36 The Announcement
3:58 Photorealistic Cities
6:20 What does this mean for 3rd party developers?
7:00 Advertising in Virtual Earth's New 3D Mode (Virtual Billboards)
9:40 How does it work?
11:35 How does Streetside fit into the picture?
13:18 Where is the 3D view launching?
14:16 Extent of the integration in 3rd party application
15:28 Are there any plans for a standalone client?
17:28 Virtual Earth Mobile application?
18:03 Any plans for Virtual Earth branded hardware?
18:38 Wrap-up

LiveSide with Stephen Lawler

Length: 19 minutes and 13 seconds
File Size: 17.5 MB

Round Table Discussion with Live Search

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 22:21:00 GMT

Last week LiveSide sat down with some people from Live Search to talk about a wide range of topics, including the switch from MSN Search to Live Search, the Windows Live name and brand, migrating MSN Search users and acquiring new ones, Live Local, QnA, Google and Page Rank, and a lot more.

My apologies if I spell some names wrong, but the participants were:

Neil Freeland:      Marketing Programs and Acquisition
Laura Kern:         User Experience
Sebastian Gard: Evangelism for Live Search
Sean Nordberg:   Group Program Manager,Windows Live Local Search
and thanks to Kevin Briody from Windows Live for putting it all together.

A couple of links referenced in the discussion:

Nicholas Carr: Beyond Question - Oct 2, 2006
Comscore: Local Search Continues to Gain Momentum - Sept. 28, 2006

I broke up the interview into two parts to make it a bit easier to download, or you can listen to the whole thing at once:

Download the full Interview (20mb mp3 - 44 minutes)
Download Part One (8.5mb mp3 - 18 minutes)
Download Part Two (11.5mb mp3 - 26 minutes)

(edit: fixed links to point to direct download)