For those of you who may want to get access to the 85 million unique rooftop or parcel centroid accurate points we've aggregated in the Virtual Earth Web Service (VEWS), I figured it was only fair that I post a little something to help move you along. Hopefully, this helps you get past a sticking point in your application development. Also, I did all of this on staging so everyone who has an account can do this. Okay, so, first things first, you need to authenticate - see my post Authentication and Tokens with Virtual Earth for authentication. You'll need a token to use any part of the VEWS and there's a good explanation on how to do that for VEWS in my other post (and information on getting...
We're looking for a few good 3D designers to submit their best 3D work in Microsoft Virtual Earth (or Live Search Maps ). A new addition to the Caligari (trueSpace) 3D Authoring and Collaboration site is a Virtual Earth Gallery specifically dedicated projects with geolocation in mind. You can browse through user submitted 3D objects to place them in your collection in Live Search Maps. For more information on how to do this, you can review my post - Announcing trueSpace for Virtual Earth 3D Development - please note trueSpace 7.6 is FREE. Don't pay for it on some rip off web site - Register and Download trueSpace 7.6 for free . In addition to my post, the Caligari team has improved some of their...
The most basic element of Virtual Earth - maps. The Virtual Earth AJAX control is pretty simple because you could just copy and paste code into notepad, save it and run it in a browser. Well, the Virtual Earth Web Service (VEWS) is a bit of a different animal. It uses WCF and WSDL to specify service pointers of where you should be getting maps, directions, YP and Collections, and routes. I figured it would be helpful, what with my deep background in MapPoint Web Service which has a similar architecture, to provide some help on how the Virtual Earth Web Service works. So, over the next few weeks I'll post some (hopefully) helpful samples that will get you past some sticking points. We'll start...
Ok, so let's just jump in with both feet here. I have a post for "Getting a Map with the Virtual Earth Web Service" to tip your toe in the water, but with all of the emails I'm getting about this I better go ahead and just write it up and get it out there so I can just point people to it. This will be an architectural overview to get you started. I haven't written the code, my iPhone is on order, and my Objective-C needs work, but for the folks who are building iPhone applications and saw Loopt and Weather Central's applications and saw my post about Announcing The Virtual Earth Web Service and Virtual Earth Map Control 6.2 , well, it's time to party on iPhone. "This is so exciting...
If you follow Microsoft Virtual Earth I'm sure you've picked up some blog posts that posted some of the features for this release, but those posts mysteriously disappeared. Information leaked out and you wondered, "Was that real?" Well, finally the definitive source on the new Virtual Earth Web Service and the new Virtual Earth Map Control 6.2 I deliver to you. If you want to skip the descriptor and just get coding you'll be happy to know the Virtual Earth AJAX Control SDK on MSDN , as well as, the Virtual Earth Interactive SDK have both been updated. New Mobile Support Users can now build mobile applications with Virtual Earth, which offers more features and enhancements to support mobile platforms...
We've just made updates to our consumer site, Live Search Maps which are tied back to some of the updates in the Virtual Earth platform - there's a slough of posts coming from me today! For the release we've included some AWESOME new features for users to enjoy, so please...enjoy! Communities Community submitted collections are now indexed immediately after upload and can be searched seconds after they are created. In addition to this, we provide better overall information retrieval by using collections data to augment search results in the “business” scope in cases where limited or no business listings exist that meet the search criteria. Local Search Vertical Search refinement - Searches can...
We've released a new version of Virtual Earth 3D today. When you get to Live Search Maps and click 3D you'll be prompted to update your 3D control. As a part of this, you can also download the latest and greatest bits of 3DVia from Dassault Systèmes (or go to the 3DVia download center on Live.com ). As for Dassault, well, they've just opened up their 3D model inventory hosted in 3DVia.com's 3D online content library as a part of a program called "remix" which is effectively a 3D mashup creator with Virtual Earth. You now have access to thousands of models hosted on 3DVia.com that can be "remixed" in 3DVia and hosted on Live Search Maps for rendering in your Virtual Earth...
So, there's an MSDN technical article posted online showing users how to authenticate and grab tokens for their Virtual Earth application - Implementing Customer Identification . Microsoft Virtual Earth authentication is required for (1) Enterprise Customers with a Virtual Earth license; (2) access to the staging platform; (3) access to certain features like traffic overlays and extracting route geometry. I found some of these things didn't work as I thought they should, so I started troubleshooting. I added my ASMX web reference and found CommonServiceSoap() didn't exist (a MapPoint Web Service relic), so I changed it to CommonService() and it worked fine. If you're having issues getting tokens...
Microsoft Virtual Earth has a very helpful indicator window that lets you know when Bird's Eye View is available in a particular spot on the map; however, you may find the indicator annoying or a nuisance for smaller maps, so here's how you disable it. First, here's an application centered on Las Vegas. Check out the Bird's Eye indicator just getting in the way, because the map is so small (400 x 300). Now, here's the code for the application of just getting a map and by default the Bird's Eye indicator pops up when you get to zoom level 10. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" " http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd" > <html>...
And, Virtual Earth loves Texas! Check out the Texas Department of Transportation web sites that are leveraging Microsoft Virtual Earth to better visualize their traffic flow and incident information. Check out these cities with their respective information visualization. El Paso launched a few months ago with a simple checkbox format. Check the box for turning on information (1) along certain routes - Interstate Highway 10, US Freeway 54, the 375 Loop, Mesa St, Montana Ave, or all side streets where data is available; (2) live web cameras; (3) Digital Messaging Signs (which I LOVE, btw - being able to see what it is displayed on the road signs from the web - so cool!); (4) incidents; and (5)...
If you have Internet Explorer 7, you may be aware of the ability to add custom search providers to your browser. This allows you to add not just Live, Google and Yahoo!, but the likes of specific web site searches such as ESPN, Facebook or Target (yes, the retailer)! I figured there's enough map lovers out there who may just want to search the Virtual Earth-based consumer site Live Search Maps right from the comfort of their own browser. So, how do you do it? Well, first make sure you have IE 7. It might work on IE 8, but I've yet to return to it since Beta 1 when Virtual Earth 3D didn't work right - I AM the team's evangelist and this stuff MUST work right when I demo it! Well, in the browser...
Melissa Data has just published a unique application that highlights postal delivery areas for any given postal code on a Microsoft Virtual Earth map. I was thinking WOW this would be an awesome data set of robust polygons and routes to see how hard our tax dollars are being used....but, apparently Newman and crew's delivery areas aren't that impressive at all. The application, however, is a great way to visualize this unique data set. You'll need to sign up, but that's free with some limitations on the number of queries and data sets you have access to. The data set, while robust and accurate in content actually highlights how small an area our federal workers actually have to cover. Maybe each...
We've just launched the new Live Search Maps India site and for a v1 it is SUPER robust. Check out this list of features: Street Maps for 9 important Indian cities Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur and National Road Network of India with roughly 20,000 cities/towns/major localities (as points on the map). Political Map of India with important geographical features that includes national roads connecting around 20,000 Indian cities are on the offer. Highlight is the detailed maps for 9 important Indian cities as mentioned earlier. Within these 9 cities, important places likes monuments, restaurants, hotels are also presented as icons in the maps...
For those of you who follow the imagery releases, there was no release for August. September, however, is now live and contains the following 46TB of imagery and vector updates. Orthos Yakima, WA Springfield, MO Spokane, WA Portland, ME Grand Rapids, MI Billings, MT Minneapolis, MN (UltraCam Refresh) Seattle, WA (UltraCam Refresh) Las Vegas, NV (UltraCam Refresh) Phoenix, AZ (UltraCam Refresh) Tampa, Fl (UltraCam Refresh) Vector Vector overlays for Navteq and MDS data sources for orthos and Bird's Eye All mobile tiles New British Isles Map style 3D Tampa, FL CP
If you've visited us at the Microsoft booth at the Shop.org conference , you may have seen the Microsoft Virtual Earth demonstration application illustrating Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 and Virtual Earth working together. The concept for the application is based on inventory data in Commerce Server being used to help end users find the nearest location that carries the item you're searching for - an advanced store locator and inventory search scenario. The demonstration application is posted online branded as " Soundshift Multi-Channel Retailing. " To use the application, you'll want to go to the "stores" tab and enter '90210' in the address box. You'll be presented with...
