Steve Coast, the founder of OpenStreetMap – a project enabling users to draw over aerial imagery – has been hired by Microsoft for the role of Principal Architect at Bing Mobile in Seattle.  Microsoft will also be contributing free access to its global orthorectified aerial imagery to the OpenStreetMap project.  From Coast’s blog:

“Today, OpenStreetMap has a patchwork of imagery available that is sometimes good but sometimes not very high resolution or simply unavailable. This [Microsoft’s contribution to OSM] is the first step of what I believe will be an awesome series of announcements from Microsoft.”

This prediction may just turn out to be true for Bing at least, as the search engine has grown a great deal recently. Gaming is no exception though for Microsoft, as a recent update to MSN Games now enabling players to search for games on Bing, log into Windows Live Messenger and chat with friends during game play.  Looking at the bigger picture beyond maps, Bing overall has seen 108% growth in the past year.

In the midst of all this good news for Microsoft, there is also competition, and fierce too. Both Microsoft and Google are investing a lot of resources in developing location-based apps, as global services focus mobile advertising around local maps search results.  Yelp‘s integration of offers into its mobile check-in tool is evidence of this trend.

Traffic and location data provider NAVTEQ’s acquisition of PixelActive exemplifies its shift to 3D maps, providing a bigger factor for this growing sector. Microsoft is pushing on all fronts, as with a little ambition and great marketing it may just achieve some of the goals it has set for itself.