Why should geeks on the fringe have all the fun?  Microsoft Research has made a big move into the map-mashup space by releasing their own service called MapCruncher  that allows nearly any image to have a Microsoft Virtual Earth map placed over it.   Interesting - why stop at integrating an outside dataset represented only in numbers? Yahoo Maps has had its own API for some time as well, but neither of these two company's offerings seem to be getting the traction that Google Maps has gotten.  Putting some of your own energy into the mix seems like a great way to kick start take-up, especially if you're a giant.   There's a virtual cottage industry of 3rd party services for accessing the Google Maps API - it only makes sense for Microsoft to makes its own equivalent.   

Speaking of mashups, I recently interviewed Taylor McKnight, one of the creators of Podbop, the project voted best at MashupCamp.

Found via John Musser's ProgrammableWeb

Who knew that invading robots could be so charming?  MSN is having a contest for IM bot development, the creation of automated IM buddies you can add to notify you whenever something in particular is available.  Like the MakeBot or AIM's handy news bots.  My girlfriend often hears my Adium quack and asks "who's IMing you?"  We both get a kick out of saying, "it's only a robot."

What are your favorite IM bots?  What functionalities would you like to see in a robot buddy?  I don't use many right now, but my favorite hands down is Peter Brown's immedi.at.  What would I like in a future bot?  A bot that knows whether I'm online and sends me an SMS if I'm not, like Rasasa does to people other than US Verizon users like me.  And the ability to differentiate between message instructions, as in "for these 3 alerts, text me if I'm off-line, for all my other alerts just send an IM or nothing."  I'd also like to have some thresh-hold setting capabilities.  As in, notify me once more than 3 people have tagged the Social Software Weblog "brilliant" or "foolish" in del.icio.us.  Ok, so not that in particular - but you can imagine.

What about you?  What would you like to see an army of invading MSN bots bring?
Contesty goodness found via Programmable Web.