Want to get traffic warnings with your driving directions? There are a number of online services that’ll help you with that. Google Maps is one. Yahoo, too. MapQuest recently introduced its own accident and road construction notifications overlay. Microsoft, however, wants to do you one better. Through it Live Maps service, the company seeks to implement a new software technology called Clearflow, to help users more easily navigate their way around artificially induced bottlenecks and obstacles.

According to John Markoff of The New York Times, Clearflow was “developed over the last five years by a group artificial-intelligence researchers at the Microsoft Research laboratories. It is mean to observe and analyze complete data associated with traffic congestion not only on main stagnant thoroughfares but those located nearby. Microsoft recognizes, as do virtually all who watch traffic patterns, the tendency for traffic to “back up” and even spread over to adjacent city streets. With Clearflow, it hopes to help drivers steer clear of delays more effectively than would otherwise be possible through services provided by market competitors. Microsoft describes part of the methodology of producing efficient algorithms as being as simple as “collecting trip data from…employees who volunteered to carry G.P.S. units in their cars.”

Upon initial rollout, scheduled to officially begin today, Microsoft plans to allow users the option to employ the Clearflow technology in 72 American cities, enabling them to obtain alternate route data prescribed through AI according to “current traffic patterns.”

An analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence in San Francisco, Calif., was quoted as saying that consumer demand for smarter services like the Clearflow-enhanced Live Maps utility is only bound to increase. The analyst, Greg Sterling, alludes to a killer application in the form of a mobile software solution for with on-the-go intelligent navigation. While a number of G.P.S. devices provide such abilities to drivers at present, if Microsoft were to develop its own mobile phone software to deliver the promise of Clearflow-like precision, the company could well demonstrated crucial value in the today’s burgeoning mobile Web industry.

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