Yesterday, the “IE6 funeral” took place in Denver. This is what appeared on the funeral site:

Internet Explorer Six, resident of the interwebs for over 8 years, died the morning of March 1, 2010 in Mountain View, California, as a result of a workplace injury sustained at the headquarters of Google, Inc. Internet Explorer Six, known to friends and family as “IE6,” is survived by son Internet Explorer Seven, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer Eight.

Those mourning the Web browser, but unable to attend, were asked to send flowers. So, Microsoft sent a big bouquet!

In the photo above, a funeral guest is showing off the card that arrived with Microsoft’s bouquet. Microsoft confirmed the test and also that it sent the flowers (according to SeattlePI.com.)

The card reads:

Thanks for the good times IE6, see you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven.

The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft

Internet Explorer 8 has been in existence for over 8 years and Microsoft plans to continue support until 2014, but many in the tech world are happily ready to move on and ‘kill’ IE6 – especially with all the problems and bugs it has caused users.

Still using IE6? Please, either upgrade or I recommend switching to Firefox or Chrome!

What’s your browser of choice? Would love your feedback, leave me a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Marketing Manager, Inman News

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Over the last few years many of the major real estate search sites have moved over to Google Maps from Microsoft’s Virtual Earth as their mapping API of choice (Redfin being the most recent notable defector). HomeGain, Trulia, Homefinder, Estately and others all use Google Maps. But, interestingly, both the #1 and #2 sites; Realtor.com and Zillow, are still Microsoft clients.

Given that, they will likely be interested to hear that Microsoft has announced that they are now rolling in Photosynth technology into the Virtual Earth platform.

Photosynth is a platform that grew out of Microsoft Live Labs (see Next Generation Virtual Tours) and allows for amazing 3D environments (“Synths”) to be stitched together out of 2D photographs.

From the press release:

Photosynth software analyzes digital photographs and generates a 3-D model by “stitching” the photos together. These models, or “synths,” can now be viewed using Silverlight technology across multiple platforms. Virtual Earth brings together features, functionality and content that help consumers, businesses, citizens and governments bring location to life. It helps businesses and governments share location-based information, build better connections with consumers or citizens, and helps organizations make better operational decisions. With the integration of Photosynth into Virtual Earth customers will be able to create detailed 3-D views of anything from places to products and from hotels to homes.

Most recently, it was used to create an immersive view of President Obama’s inauguration on CNN.com called The Moment. (If you haven’t seen it, go check it out – it really is pretty amazing)

Rolling Photosynth in Virtual Earth has some pretty big implications for real estate as one could imagine a developer could take widely available assets (listing photos) and roll them into a pretty nifty 3D representation of a property that’s for sale.

You can see a sample “house Synth” on the Microsoft Virtual Earth site. (Click on the sales sheet for a really slick representation of what’s possible)

Cool factor aside. Whether or not this is a big enough feature to get some of these other sites to switch to VE, that’s another question all together.

Update: Here’s Microsoft’s video on the integration.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGWwOAz2AiQ[/youtube]

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Microsoft launches a $44.6 Billion unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo.

Let’s assume for a moment that the deal will stick (and it certainly sounds like it’s farther along than we think) – what does it mean for online real estate?

First and foremost, it likely means consolidation at the top of the real estate portals as the #2 and #3 sites (according to ComScore) will probably merge.

MSN Real Estate has been the ugly stepchild of the Real Estate 2.0 crowd to date – merely an afterthought, despite its massive monthly traffic.

Yahoo Real Estate, by contrast, has been pushing out new features steadily and is clearly the superior of the two destinations. No doubt in my mind – Y!RE will win out and become the dominant destination. This is surely great news in the minds of the folks at Yahoo who have been troubled by their future for weeks (see What’s in Store for Yahoo Real Estate).

Who this impacts most is Move.com – partly because they’ll see a combined entity nipping at the heels of Realtor.com, but also because they currently power MSN’s real estate searches (and no doubt draw a bunch of their own traffic from those searches).

Will Y!RE under its tent, MSN will likely push that relationship to the side and focus on tying all of its new properties under a revamped real estate destination.

A revitalized MicroHoo mega-portal is something that the other Real Estate 2.0 participants must dread as well. Especially since most are now into the second and third years of operations and are still hoping to gain traction amongst consumers. This could be the final nail in their coffins.

In any case, all speculation at this stage. But definitely fun to think about.

More:

• Greg Sterling gives ‘Micro-Hoo’ the Local Angle

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Microsoft is adding 3D maps to Virtual Earth, reports Marshall Kirkpatrick on Techcrunch. You can see an implementation on Live Search right now.

It is very impressive. This is a huge step forward for Live Search, giving it capabilities previously only found in desktop applications like Google Earth.

Check out this view of the Las Vegas strip (Click on each image for a closer look).

It does require downloading and installing a separate package in order to see the 3D imagery – but once you’ve installed it, the effect is stunning and you quickly forget you’re using an web-based application.

It was particularly thrilling to be able to overlay realtime traffic data onto the map and imagine the possibility of navigating other data sets in three dimensions (Zestimates, home for sale, etc.).

Virtual Earth 3D is currently only available in 15 cities and you’ll need a high end computer and the latest versions of Internet Explorer to view it (sorry, no Firefox).

What’s even more interesting is Seattle real estate broker John L. Scott and discount broker ZipRealty are part of a beta group of advertisers who have launched virtual billboards inside Virtual Earth 3D maps. The 3D billboards are clickable hyperlinks.

This is really moving online advertising into a whole new arena. I’ve written before about advertising in virtual worlds, but I’d always though Google Earth would be the first mover here. Kudos to the Microsoft Virtual Earth teams for delivering a knockout product.

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