Harley-Davidson Great Roads Now Live with Virtual Earth
http://www.harley-davidson.com/wcm/Content/Pages/Great_Roads/hdEarth.jsp?locale=en_US
Harley-Davison just launched its Great Roads application using Virtual Earth and it is sick! If you're a rider and want to find killer routes to drive on you should check out the new H-D site. Check out these features:
- Pushpins representing different killer rides
- Tile overlays drawing the actual route
- Ratings and reviews of routes
- Route details such as length, time to allow and road characteristics for gas, hills, couples, traffic, road type, best season to ride and curvature
- Locate Best Western Hotels on the map (motorcyclist friendly!)
- Locate Harley-Davidson dealers on the map
- Geocoding
- Aerial and map data
- Plus they provide more data for each route in a details pane such as places to visit, rider reviews, photos, a sample itinerary and local links
The site is really a great example illustrating the flexibility of the Virtual Earth platform!
I love how simple the the UI is considering the robust amount of information they have packed into it. Partnering with Best Western is a great way to co-market a site such as this to cover costs. And showing their dealer locations with a simple click changes the way store locators should be viewed! Instead of the old school store locator they could send people to this app with locations turned on; but, now they be driving traffic to their community site! H-D really did a great job of putting this together.
