It's not real easy to tell from the tiny bit of map you can see in the logo, but it covers lots of famous places, for Chicago anyway..



To the west, NAVTEQ's headquarters and the Merchandise Mart are just off the map. NAVTEQ supplies the street data for MapPoint and Bing Maps, and Microsoft has a close collaboration in mobile with NAVTEQ's parent, Nokia. It's rumored Microsoft may one day own all or part of Nokia [ Microsoft Nokia - Bing ] BTW, up until a few years ago, NAVTEQ's headquarters were across the river at the Merchandise Mart.

You can see start of the south branch of the Chicago River in the "M", and the Thompson Center or State of Illinois building in the "p" and "F", which has a new M Burger in the food court. They have a "Hurt Burger" which is meant to hurt - is spicy and can be ordered "third degree" or something like that. nice. But what is really terrific is their fries. I only ate them once, and I was admittedly hungry, but I do think they figured out fries far better than McD or BK somehow. I'm on a pretty committed low carb diet, but I couldn't stop tasting them a little bit, again and again.

You can see a bit of the the Ford Oriental Theater in the "o" and the iconic Chicago Theatre (now owned by Madison Square Garden or MSG Productions).

Michigan Ave is clearly visible in the "u" as well as the Prudential Building. AON Center, where Microsoft has their Chicago offices, is in the "m".

And the "s" has a bit of Chicago's beautiful new Lakeshore East Park and site of the fantastic new Mariano's Fresh Market.

What did I miss?

The logo is obviously not a work of art, but it stretched my very meager graphic design abilities. It was created with HyperSnap and Inkscape, and of course Microsoft MapPoint.

Anyway, hopefully that gives the new logo a little more meaning!