Washington — The greatest cycling competition, the Tour de France, just got underway yesterday and lovers of the sport have every reason to be excited. Bing Maps has just announced the release of its new app for cycling fans around the world that helps visualize the various stages of the race and provides you with information such as results and weather.
For the next 21 days, the world’s best riders will battle it out for the greatest honor in cycling, to be the winner of the Tour de France. The newly released Bing Maps app allows users to preview the course that cyclists are taking on the map, including important points such as beginning and the ends of stages, as well as view the race in progress and check the standings of participating teams. Distances, times and weather forecasts are also shown for each stage, and results are updated as they come in.
This is the latest contribution from Bing Maps as it continues to differentiate itself from Google Maps, part of the larger Bing strategy to appeal to groups of specialized searchers bound by shared enthusiasm.
Bing explains that the best 2010 Tour de France map experience is the Bird’s Eye view. “We have reprojected the ortho photos to provide a unique visual context; however, that combined with the elevation information gives you a great feel for just how tough these hills really are,” said Chris Pendleton in a Bing Maps blog post.
Credit: Bing
A lot of people will be camping out and following the tour on site, but most of us will be watching back home. Users of this application can now comfortably follow the race and have the option of a standard road view, wherein one can preview the entire course of the race, or can opt for a aerial view or switch to a Birds eye view option.
This year’s 97th Tour de France already in progress from Saturday, July 3 to Sunday, July 25. Starting with a prologue segment in Rotterdam followed by 20 individual races called stages, the race will cover a total of about 2,263 miles (3,642 kilometers) — roughly the distance from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles — over the three weeks.
The app also delivers visually illustrative features that allow one to even view the elevation and slope changes of a particular stage, stage descriptions, weather forecasts and even offers daily results using a results tab.
Each stage is indicated on the map along with pushpins to represent the start and finish and important waypoints including feed zones and hill climbs. Along the top of the map is an interactive profile panel where users can take a glimpse of elevation and slope changes for the selected stage. The stage description and weather prediction are shown in the “Stages” tab on the left panel. Fans can view daily results in the “Results” tab.
Bing Maps has piece together an app full of data on each of the 21 stages. Bing offers 37 map apps in addition to the Tour de France, including World Cup for soccer fans, local Parking Finder for travelers in cities and airports, Worldwide Telescope for stargazers, and Newseum to browse the front pages of newspapers from around the world.
The app, built with Silverlight, is an impressive tool for anyone wishing to check out future stages or collect more context for the ones underway. Expect more map apps in the coming months from developers competing in King of Bing Maps contest that closes for entries July 25.