Here on the Live Maps team my feature area of focus is Collections. Collections allow you to create custom map layers of stuff you 'collect', from favorite businesses to bike trails or whatever else you want, then share them with others. For our next release we have some pretty neat Collection enhancements coming and could use your help right now in preparation. Helping is easy! All I need you to do is create a Collection showing off your neighborhood to share with others. Collect your favorite movie theater, the new park, the best club for electronic duos, the dog park,  the must avoid and overhyped bistro, etc..., Tag it 'MyHood', and send it to me. As an example, here is a Collection I started this morning for my hood.

The Tag is really important as it will tell me that you created your Collection to assist with this feature. When you create your Collection, add the tag MyHood on the properties page for the Collection as shown to the left. Also be sure to leave the 'Turn on sharing' checkbox on, or no one will be able to read your Collection.

Add Photos, trails and weblinks to your Collection to personalize it, then let me know about it (you can still make edits and changes anytime after sending it to me). there are a few ways to let me know about your MyHood Collection -

1. Email it to me. My email is SteveLom at Microsoft dot com. grab a link to your collection on the share menu:

2. Post it here in Comments. Add a comment to this blog post and paste in the link to your Collection. As above, grab the link to your Collection on the Share menu. it will look something like this: http://maps.live.com/?v=2&cid=2BBC66E99FDCDB98!9081&encType=1 

3. View your Collection on the public viewer. As long as you have it tagged properly as MyHood, all you need to do is paste the link for your Collection in your browser. I'll be able to grab a report of all Collections with that tag and your will be included.

THANKS!! I really appreciate your help in shaping the Collection features in our next release. Go ahead and share this post widely as I need about a thousand MyHood Collections for my analysis to be valid. Blog it, Spam your friends, tell yer ma. Show us your hood!

Currently North American Scum by LCD Soundsystem is playing