Microsoft looks to be playing a little catchup with the many traffic-avoidance solutions already available. The new service called Clearflow is a the culmination of a five-year project that was enabled by Microsoft employees in Seattle adding GPS units to their vehicles for data tracking. After gathering the data and applying algorithms and looking for patterns in the Seattle area, Clearflow was applied to 72 other cities and combined with data from traffic sensors.Clearflow will be free and found as part of the Microsoft Windows Live.com services but there’s no word on when that will happen. I just searched in Philadelphia, assuming it’s one of the 72 cities, but don’t see any integration of the Clearflow data yet. I’d hope that the traffic information is available on the mobile versions of Windows Live since you’ll need alternate routes when you’re away from the desktop, but we’ll see, hopefully as early as later today.