Bing Change to the Bing Maps for Government Blogging</h1> <article> <h1>Bing Change to the Bing Maps for Government Blogging</h1> <p>2010-05-04T17:33:00Z</p> <p>Those of you who read the Bing Maps for Government Blog have likely noticed that, for some time now, my blogging activity has slowed. I have, for several years, straddled two businesses in Microsoft: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps">Bing Maps</a> and our <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/ultracam">UltraCam digital aerial camera</a> business that helps drive the Bing Maps content. These businesses have always kept me pretty busy but in the past year, the demands of both have increased to the point where it has been challenging to keep up on all my responsibilites and still find time for blogging. With this in mind, and to help meet the needs of the growing camera business, I am shifting my focus on that business and will no longer keep this blog.</p> <p>The good news for my public sector readers is that our Bing Maps Technical Evangelist, Chris Pendleton, will now also cover Bing Maps news relevant to government and education audiences in <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/">his blog.</a> If you have not already been reading Chris' blog, he has in-depth technical knowledge of Bing Maps and how it is used to develop mapping applications. Developers in the public sector will appreciate the level of detail that Chris provides when writing on our platform and customer applications. </p> <p>This blog will remain in place, both here and where it was <a target="_blank" href="http://virtualearth4gov.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?sa=20082080">originally hosted on Windows Live Spaces</a>, for archival purposes.</p> <p>I have had a blast keeping this blog these last three years and sharing all the exciting news about Virtual Earth, now Bing Maps. I hope that it has been useful to those of you who have followed it and thank you all for allowing me onto your computers!</p> <p>Signing out for the last time as ... <em>-=Virtual Jerry</em></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Microsoft & IDV Solutions Buisiness Intelligence Event: April 31, 2010</h1> <p>2010-03-24T17:52:00Z</p> <p><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #333333; FONT-SIZE: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Hey Public and Private Sector organizations ... don't miss this opportunity to catch a presentation from <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com">Microsoft</a> and partner, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.idvsolutions.com">IDV Solutions</a>, that will demonstrate how to leverage Microsoft <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps">Bing Maps</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pages/Default.aspx">Sharepoint</a>, along with IDV's <a target="_blank" href="http://www.idvsolutions.com/products_overview.aspx">Visual Fusion</a>, to learn howbusiness intelligence and data visualization are driving returns in today's economy.</span></p> <p><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #333333; FONT-SIZE: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">See the invite below for a description of the event. Here are the details:</span></p> <p><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #333333; FONT-SIZE: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><strong><a target="_blank" href="http://idvsolutions.cmail1.com/t/y/l/ooei/kldtddyht/d">REGISTER HERE.</a></strong></span></p> <p><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #333333; FONT-SIZE: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><strong><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Date: </span></strong><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br />Wednesday, March 31 2010<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Time:</span></strong><br />9:30 AM to 1:00 PM EST<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Location:</span></strong><br /><b>Chevy Chase Microsoft Offices</b><br />5404 Wisconsin Ave, Suite 700<br />Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815<br />(301) 771-8000<br /><a href="http://idvsolutions.cmail1.com/t/y/l/ooei/kldtddyht/t"><strong><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Locate on Bing Maps></span></strong></a><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Attendee Benefits:</span></strong><br /><b>One Attendee</b> - a FREE <a href="http://idvsolutions.cmail1.com/t/y/l/ooei/kldtddyht/i"><strong><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Zune HD 32 GB </span></strong><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Video MP3 Player</span></a> (public sector customers ineligible)<br /><br /><b>All Attendees</b> - up to 60 hours of FREE services work from IDV Solutions<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Contact:</span></strong><br /><a href="mailto:scott.parker@idvsolutions.com"><strong><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">scott.parker@idvsolutions.com</span></strong></a><br />(517) 853-3755 ext.250</span> </p> <p><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #333333; FONT-SIZE: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Join Microsoft and IDV Solutions at the Chevy Chase Microsoft offices for a morning discussion on <b>IDV’s Visual Fusion</b>, and <b>Microsoft's SharePoint</b> and <b>Bing Maps</b>.<br /><br />Learn how these three products combine to form an enterprise platform to flexibly and agilely develop business-focused applications that unite disparate data sources visually, in the context of location and time, for more informed, faster decision making.<br /><br /><br />Attention to business user experience and empowerment is a hallmark of solutions built on this platform, making rapid adoption and ongoing user satisfaction fundamental characteristics of these business applications.<br /><br />The use of interactive data visualization combined with business intelligence will be demonstrated and applied to numerous real world scenarios. Current case studies from several organizations across a number of industries will be examined, as well as specific return on investment evidence.<br /><br />Learn how your organization can benefit when these tools are applied to better understand and act on the key information driving your business.<br /><br /><b>All attendees are eligible for up to 60 hours of free services work from IDV Solutions.</b></span></p> <p><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #333333; FONT-SIZE: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">The event will conclude with lunch.<br /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break" /><em>-=Virtual Jerry</em><br style="mso-special-character: line-break" /></span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Bing Maps Roadshow--Next Stop: New York!</h1> <p>2010-03-08T18:52:00Z</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin: 5pt 0.1in 5pt 0in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: #333333;">Don’t miss your opportunity to hear from the Bing Maps Platform team about the latest innovations including Streetside and the Silverlight Control. Whether you are building on an existing application or creating a completely new Web mapping solution, this event has something for you.</span><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 63.35pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Ø</span><span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><b><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: small;">On the Road with Bing Maps:<br />Learn Exciting New Ways to Bring Location-Based Data to Life</span></span></b><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: #333333;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Join Bing Maps experts, as they provide an overview of how the Bing Maps Platform can be a powerful visualization tool for geographic and location–based information. Learn solution implementation and best practices -- and leave with the tools and resources to tap the power of location using Bing Maps. </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin: 5pt 0.1in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Date:</span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: #333333;"> Wednesday, March 24, 2010<br /><b>Time:</b> 1:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M. <br /><b>Place:</b> 1290 Avenue of the Americas 6<sup><span style="position: relative; top: -2.5pt; mso-text-raise: 2.5pt;">th</span></sup> Floor, New York, NY </span><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin: 5pt 0.1in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;"><b><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: #333333;"><br /><a target="_blank" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032442089&Culture=en-US"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: small;">Register today</span></span></a></span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: #333333;"> to attend this event. </span><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin: 5pt 0.1in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;"><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Learn more:<br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps"><span style="color: #333333;">http://www.microsoft.com/maps</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin: 5pt 0.1in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: #333333;"></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin: 5pt 0.1in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: #333333;">-= Virtual Jerry</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Ontario Selects Bing Maps for Economic Development Site</h1> <p>2010-03-08T17:59:00Z</p> <p><span style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: blue;">Bing Maps</span></a></span><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> has been steadily gaining ground with economic development agencies looking to add visualization of GIS data to web sites aimed to spur regional growth and investment. The latest adoption of Bing Maps for this type of application is up north. With the launch of its </span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.ontario.ca/siteselection/WebPages/dashboard/dashboard.aspx?LANGUAGE=en-CA"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">SelectOntario web site</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, Ontario</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-ansi-language: EN;">is now the first province in Canada to implement a state-of-the-art geographic information system (GIS) tool for the purposes of investment attraction, and they are using my favorite mapping platform (is there another?!), Bing Maps.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Developed by Microsoft partner </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="http://www.oriongis.com/"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: blue;">Orion Technology</span></a></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.esri.com/"><span style="color: blue;">ESRI Canada</span></a>, SelectOntario was launched February 4<sup>th</sup> </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">by the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ontario.ca/en/residents/index.htm"><span style="color: blue;">Ontario </span></a><a target="_blank" href="http://www.ontario.ca/en/residents/index.htm"><span style="color: blue;">Minister of Economic Development and Trade</span></a>, Sandra Pupatello. The app </span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;">is a flexible and dynamic search tool that showcases investment properties, infrastructure and location advantages and workforce skills for site selectors to help make investment decision-making faster and easier. In addition to Bing Maps, the site leverages Orion’s OnPoint .NET solution acting as the configuration middleware and ESRI ArcGIS Server 9.3.1.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Orion, along with ESRI, did a great job in developing this application. It is full of features and functionality and more importantly, allows for visualization of an extensive amount of GIS data. SelectOntario allows you to conduct searches under general categories: site search, community search, industry sector search, and skills search. Within each category, you are presented with a form to allow you to set your criteria. I chose to execute a site search, specifying industrial/commercial properties for lease with office space, and within a 50 mile drive from an airport, anywhere in Ontario. There are a lot of other parameters I could have specified, but I am not actually looking to set up shop in Ontario. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span></p> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span></p> <p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The results are displayed on the map through pushpins that you can click on to get site details. And you can pull up property comparison and summary reports. </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;">And of course, once you locate sites of interest, you can then turn on the Bing Maps aerial views to visualize the region and get insight into that location, its surroundings and the quality of life.</span></span></p> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Want to know more? </span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.ontario.ca/siteselection/WebPages/dashboard/dashboard.aspx?LANGUAGE=en-CA"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Check out the application</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. As with most Bing Maps applications, it is pretty intuitive--the beauty of a web mapping application that runs in a browser, an inteface that web users (most everyone) are already familiar with.</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Congrats to both Orion Technology and the Ontario Minister of Economic Development and Trade for their vision and initiative. Let’s see how quickly other agencies in Canada follow their lead!</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN;">-= Virtual Jerry</span></i></span></p> </p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Bing Maps at Microsoft CIO Summit - ISC Wins Azure Contest</h1> <p>2010-03-02T23:36:00Z</p> <p>Had the pleasure of attending the Microsoft hosted <a target="_blank" href="http://www.uspsciosummit.com/">CIO Summit</a> at the Microsoft conference center in Redmond, WA last week. The annual summit hosts 400+ government and education leaders from across the country who come together to learn from Microsoft and its partners about technology trends that are solving business problems in their sector. One such technology is <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps">Bing Maps</a> for visualization of location relevant data. (If you have been reading this blog long enough, you probably knew I would say that next!)</p> <p>The Bing Maps public sector team showed up at this event prepared to showcase some great applications for state and local government , including a new application from Microsoft partner, <a target="_blank" href="http://www. goisc.com">IS Consulting</a>. <a target="_blank" href="http://miami311.cloudapp.net/default.aspx">Miami 311</a> is a public facing, open government transparency application where the citizens of Miami can monitor and analyze non-emergency event information happening in their area. Citizens can report non-emergency requests, like pothole repair or missed trash pickup by dialing 3-1-1 on their telephone. They can then log on Miami 311 to monitor the progress of their request. Miami 311 also serves as a dashboard for City Commissioners to see and monitor citizen requests in their district. The system integrates with the larger Miami-Dade Motorola CSR system and will soon be extended to take service request input from citizens. </p> <p>The application leverages Bing Maps, ISC's <a href="http://www.mapdotnet.com/Pages3.0/products-services/azure.aspx">MapDotNet UX Studio</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/azure">Microsoft Azure</a> cloud computing platform to publish their spatial data to the “cloud” and to build the map configuration file. Remember that Bing Maps applications built on the Azure platform equal minimal IT infrastructure for your mapping applicatins. Development and hosting is the cloud ... the data is served over the cloud. Your users need only an Internet-enabled PC with a browser. Download? If the application is using <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/">Silverlight</a>, as this one is (and it looks really slick!), then the Silverlight control (think "plug-in"). That simple.</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="http://miami311.cloudapp.net/default.aspx">Give it a look</a>. It is chock full of data, as you can see from the screenshot below, and is really very cool. So cool, in fact, that it won first place in the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/azurecontest/vote.aspx">Microsoft Windows Azure Development contest</a> and was<a target="_blank" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/bright_side_of_government/archive/2010/02/25/microsoft-windows-azure-development-contest-winners-announced.aspx"> announced</a> at the CIO Summit. I thought I might cry! ;-)</p> <p>Congrats to our friends at ISC on a job well done and for winning the contest.</p> <p><em>-= Virtual Jerry</em></p> <p><a target="_blank" href="http://miami311.cloudapp.net/default.aspx"></a></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Bing Maps Server Webcast</h1> <p>2010-02-23T00:54:00Z</p> <p>Many Government customers are looking for the kind of powerful mapping features and functionality found with <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps">Bing Maps</a> but have a classified network and need a premise-based server solution disconnected from the Internet.</p> <p>No problem. Microsoft's geospatial subsidiary, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vexcel.com">Vexcel Corporation</a>, offers the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vexcel.com/geospatial/bingmapsserver/index.asp">Bing Maps Server</a> (formerly the Virtual Earth Server) for just such scenarios. I've seen the Bing Maps Server in action and it is ripping fast. Meanwhile, it is scalable, from a laptop version to a rack mounted system, depending on how much data you need: city, county, state, even worldwide.</p> <p>The Vexcel team is hosting a webcast that provides details on the Bing Maps Server. Don't miss it! Details below.</p> <p><em>-= Virtual Jerry</em></p> <p> </p> <p> <table width="522" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="1" class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 522px; background: white; height: 1004px; mso-cellspacing: 0in; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; border: #0384c9 1pt solid;"> <tbody> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 0; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes;"> <td colspan="2" width="99%" valign="top" style="background-color: transparent; width: 99%; border: #0384c9; padding: 0in;"> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center"><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 9pt;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f" id="_x0000_t75"><v:stroke joinstyle="miter"></v:stroke><v:formulas><v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"></v:f></v:formulas><v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"></v:path><o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"></o:lock></v:shapetype><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 9pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f" id="_x0000_t75"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"></v:stroke><v:formulas><v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"></v:f></v:formulas><v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"></v:path><o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"></o:lock></v:shapetype><v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\jerrysk\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.jpg" o:href="cid:image001.jpg@01CAB39D.44ECFDE0"></v:imagedata></span><v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\jerrysk\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.jpg" o:href="cid:image001.jpg@01CAB39D.44ECFDE0"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></v:imagedata></span><o:p></o:p></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;"> <td width="18%" valign="top" id="left-color" style="width: 18%; background: #dcdddd; border: #0074d3 1pt solid; padding: 7.5pt;"> <h1 style="margin: auto 0in;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="color: #0174ce;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Webcast Invite <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></h1> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: black;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> </td> <td width="80%" valign="top" style="padding-bottom: 0in; background-color: transparent; padding-left: 11.25pt; width: 80%; padding-right: 11.25pt; padding-top: 11.25pt; border: #0384c9;"> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><b><span style="color: black;">Deep Dive for Developers, Partners, and Customers on Bing Maps Server</span></b><span style="color: black;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: black;">Join Vexcel, Microsoft´s geospatial subsidiary, in a 3-part webcast on leveraging Microsoft's on-premise Bing Maps Server, when internet is not an option. </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p><b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Wednesday, 24 February 2010, 08:00 AM Pacific time:</span></span></b><span style="color: black;"><br /><a href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032441159&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US"><span style="color: #e39f1b;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Microsoft Bing Maps Server (Part 1 of 3): When the Internet Isn't an Option</span></span></a></span><o:p></o:p></p> <p><b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Wednesday, 3 March 2010, 08:00 AM Pacific time:</span></span></b><span style="color: black;"><br /><a href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032441911&Culture=en-US"><span style="color: #e39f1b;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Microsoft Bing Maps Server (Part 2 of 3): Configuration and Management</span></span></a></span><o:p></o:p></p> <p><b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Wednesday, 10 March 2010, 08:00 AM Pacific time:</span></span></b><span style="color: black;"><br /><a href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032441913&Culture=en-US"><span style="color: #e39f1b;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Microsoft Bing Maps Server (Part 3 of 3): Developing Geospatial Applications</span></span></a></span><o:p></o:p></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2;"> <td width="18%" valign="top" id="left-color" style="width: 18%; background: #dcdddd; border: #0074d3 1pt solid; padding: 7.5pt;"> <h1 style="margin: auto 0in;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="color: #0174ce;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Solution Overview<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></h1> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: black;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> </td> <td width="80%" valign="top" style="padding-bottom: 0in; background-color: transparent; padding-left: 11.25pt; width: 80%; padding-right: 11.25pt; padding-top: 11.25pt; border: #0384c9;"> <p><b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">What is Bing Maps Server?</span></span></b><span style="color: black;"><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Bing Maps Server is the on-premise, off-line version of Microsoft's </span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps/"><span style="color: #e39f1b;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Bing Maps for Enterprise</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"> web mapping platform. Bing Maps Server brings capabilities from Bing Maps for Enterprise behind a customer's firewall, onto private or classified networks, and onto portable platforms. It's an integrated set of visualization and search capabilities that delivers maps, imagery and geospatial analysis through a web browser. </span></span><o:p></o:p></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: black;">Many customers who are interested in using Bing Maps, for example defense/intelligence customers or first responders (police, fire, etc), have concerns about a dependency upon, or connection to, the internet in order to access this service. Either their application is too critical to rely on internet connectivity, they don´t have an internet connection, their internet connection isn't sufficiently reliable or fast, or they have other security concerns. The Bing Maps Server product allow these customers to take advantage of the Bing Maps platform without the need to have an internet connection.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: black;">But Bing Maps Server also provides additional capabilities to support the needs of these enterprise customers. It is configured to work with SQL Server 2008 for customer data storage, allowing users to import their own imagery and KML files, store them in the database, query for specific results, and visualize the results — all on a Microsoft platform.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">As Microsoft's geospatial subsidiary, </span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.vexcel.com/"><span style="color: #e39f1b;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Vexcel</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"> provides Bing Maps Server development, support, updates, and other geospatial services.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p> </td> </tr> <tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"> <td width="18%" valign="top" id="left-color" style="width: 18%; background: #dcdddd; border: #0074d3 1pt solid; padding: 7.5pt;"> <h1 style="margin: auto 0in;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="color: #0174ce;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Contact<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></h1> </td> <td width="80%" valign="top" style="padding-bottom: 0in; background-color: transparent; padding-left: 11.25pt; width: 80%; padding-right: 11.25pt; padding-top: 11.25pt; border: #0384c9;"> <p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: black;">The Bing Map Server team at Vexcel is happy to assist you with any questions you may have. Please feel free to contact either of us.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <ul type="square" style="margin-top: 0in;"> <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; color: black; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">John Lee | Sales and Marketing</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> (<a href="mailto:john.e.lee@microsoft.com"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: #e39f1b;">john.e.lee@microsoft.com</span></a>)</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; color: black; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Jeff Orrey | Product Manager</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> (<a href="mailto:jorrey@microsoft.com"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: #e39f1b;">jorrey@microsoft.com</span></a>)</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Follow-up to Bing Maps at TED Conference: Video of Presentation</h1> <p>2010-02-16T23:10:00Z</p> <p>As follow-up to my last post about the Bing Maps tech preview at the TED conference, I have a link to a video of the actual presentation given by Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Bing Maps architect. A really cool moment in the video is when Blaise shows a real-time video feed being registered onto Bing Maps streetside imagery at Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington. Talk about the power of location!</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html">Take a look.</a></p> <p><em>-= Virtual Jerry</em></p> <p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html"></a></p> <p><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"></span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Bing Maps Tech Preview at TED Conference</h1> <p>2010-02-12T00:48:00Z</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Microsoft <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps/industry/publicsector.aspx">Bing Maps</a> architect, presented today at the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ted.com">TED conference</a> in Palm Springs, California, wowing the audience with a tech preview of some new direction for Bing Maps. If you are not familiar with TED, it is a small nonprofit devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” TED holds annual conferences in annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford bring together the world's most “fascinating thinkers and doers.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Included in Blaise’s presentation was the Streetside mode recently added to Bing Maps but with a new twist: the ability to mine <a target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com">Flickr</a> for geotagged photos and overlay onto Bing Maps streetside imagery for a perfect visual lock. It’s pretty cool and if I were an Economic Development, DoD or Intelligence organization, I think I’d be pretty impressed with this ability to provide a more reality-augmented location experience for my users.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Blaise also showed integration of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/Home.aspx">Microsoft Worldwide Telescope</a> with Bing Maps for a location continuum experience that is closer to human experience.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">But rather than read it from me, take a look at this explanation from the Microsoft Bing Maps team that includes the link to a video of Blaise discussing some of what he shared today at the TED conference.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Then sit back and let your imagination show you how this same technology could benefit your agency web (online or offline) applications.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">--Virtual Jerry</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Spatial Search: The Next Frontier</span></span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Have you ever thought about all the content and media out there on the Web? Information that we use daily to help make decisions, like reviews of the best restaurant for chicken parmesan or the t-shirt shop perfect for a vintage G&R t-shirt? We all know that you can find nearly anything on the web in the form of blogs, websites, user reviews, tweets, etc. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">But the Web is changing. In the past we have been forced to ‘disassociate’ all this content from its physical context. Sure, you can write a review of that great B&B. But once you do that, it escapes into the ether and loses its connection to the real world - the place that gave you the idea to write it in the first place. We thought there was probably a better way to reconnect all this data with its home, to provide greater context, and to ultimately help you use it to make a better decisions about things you’re trying to get done in real life, not just on a search engine.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We began talking about this idea of Spatial Search a bit back in December when we </span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2009/12/02/bing-maps-connecting-people-places-and-things.aspx"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">launched</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> our new version of </span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Bing Maps</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> and today at </span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://conferences.ted.com/TED2010/"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">TED</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Bing Maps architect will be unveiling some more work that demonstrates how we’re reuniting data with context. Some of what we’re showing is in research stage, some you can use today, and some you’ll be able to use shortly. But before we geek out on the features, it might be helpful to frame in a context. So, let’s do that…</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">The idea behind Spatial Search came from looking at human psychology and trying to understand how we as humans make decisions. We use all our senses: sight, touch, smell, sound, and taste. Today’s blue-link model doesn’t do a good job in tapping any of those senses and instead made you visually recreate models in your head to get through complex tasks. In other words, when you read a review of that French bistro, you had to manufacture everything: the street location, the ambience, where exactly in the city it was, and more. While we’re not working on smell-o-search (yet!), we do think we can do a better job with the ‘sight’ and ‘touch’ senses you rely on every day. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">So when we think about Spatial Search, we think about the modes you all go through when you’re out and about, interacting with people and places rather than machines. First, you <b>Explore:</b> you orient yourself. You get a feel for what’s around and figure out your environment. Next, you <b>Discover</b>. Using your senses and visual cues you try and make sense of your surroundings. You look at storefront signage, street signs, and other clues to let you know where you might want to go to get your task done. Finally, you <b>Decide: </b>you take in and process all of the input around you to try and make the best decision for the task at hand. Maybe it’s the opening hours of the dry cleaners (oops – its closed) that tells you that you need to go to the bakery you can smell around the corner until it opens, and hop on their wi-fi network to get some work done while you wait. The challenge for Spatial Search is how we use technology to augment all those tasks, bring context to you so that information transforms into knowledge, which leads to actions taken to make your life easier and more informed. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For <b>Exploring</b>, we’ve made a number of updates to the Bing Maps platform to bring this idea to life through high resolution imagery from outer space all the way down to the front door of the bakery. Today at TED, we’re announcing a next step in this evolution of making this imagery more useful and interactive with the release of the technology preview of the </span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/#5003/0.6044=s:http%253A%2f%2ffarm4.static.flickr.com%2f3259%2f2722117853_f1ce2c5090.jpg&o=&a=0&n=0/5872/lat=47.60874&lon=-122.340456&alt=15.36&z=30&h=212.5&p=11.2&pid=5082"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Streetside Photos application</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. This tech preview mines geo-tagged photos from Flickr, and relates them to our Streetside imagery to show images matched to its original spatial context. Why is this cool? You’re now able to see what that club looks like at night (is it really THAT scary?), see if you’re really going to get a good sunset at that B&B you’re looking to book, or check out the crowds on a Saturday morning at Pike Place Market in Seattle or get a view of the same market from </span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing-int.com/mapsqfe/explore/#5003/0.6044=s:http%253A%2f%2ffarm4.static.flickr.com%2f3234%2f2738578635_86d6e22faa.jpg&o=&a=0/5872/lat=47.609149&lon=-122.341296&alt=13.81&z=30&h=139.3&p=-1.8&pid=5082"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">decades prior</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. As more people share imagery, our challenge is to reunite those photos with where they were taken – again, provide context to the data in the ether. Watch Blaise’s </span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/bing/videoGallery.aspx?contentID=BingMapsFlickr"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">demo</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> to see Streetside Photos in action. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass"></a></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">But we’re not just stopping at the street. Today, we’re also excited to demonstrate integration with the WorldWide Telescope, a project out of Microsoft Research. Once launched, you will be able to walk outside in Streetside mode, look up, and see what’s above – way above – right now where you’re standing. Constellations come to life as you pan – you can even set the time of day so you can see what you’ll see at 9pm – great for exploring with your daughter to get her ready for what she’ll see when the sun goes down.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the same time as we’re getting more “universal” with World Wide Telescope, we’re also getting more intimate. At TED, Blaise showed the first results of our indoor panoramas work. This will provide an experience identical to Streetside, but won’t be limited to places you can take a vehicle. Whether you’re exploring Seattle’s Pike Place Market, or your favorite theme park, Bing Maps will give you the most immersive experience of the place. We’ve already given you a taste of this with the integration of </span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/#5003/0.6793=ps::dtpfilter:All:poi:Normal&1.40326=&o=&a=0:1/5872/style=auto&lat=47.668999&lon=-122.124001&z=11&pid=5874"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Photosynths</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> into Bing Maps (</span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/#/61b0kylz1kd0fsjh"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">18,000 of them</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> and counting), and you can expect Photosynth and Streetside to converge in a way that allows all of us to document the important places in the world – indoor or outdoor – and explore them in a completely natural way.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When it comes to <b>Discovering</b>, we launched our “Map Apps” gallery to bring that disconnected data home. From our </span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/#5003/0.28492=hyperlocal:hyperlocal:North:47.7842389646421:South:47.5535034564637:East:-121.812263488453:West:-122.435737609547&o=&a=0/5872/style=auto&lat=47.668999&lon=-122.124001&z=11&pid=5874"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Local Lens</span></span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> to </span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/#5003/0.40326=&o=&a=0/5872/style=auto&lat=47.668999&lon=-122.124001&z=11&pid=5874"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Twitter</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">, we’re bringing data back to where it can help you discover what’s in a physical area. And sometimes, there’s no substitute for absolute real-time. At TED we also demonstrated live Webcam feeds perfectly which enables real-time video to be overlaid seamlessly on street-level imagery, adding another dimension to the mapping experience. Imagine – you can see how long the line is at Five Guys before you head over for a burger. In the coming year, we think you will be pleasantly surprised with how far Bing takes this new technology. Stay tuned. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Finally when it comes to <b>Deciding, </b>we’ve just scratched the surface with Bing maps. We introduced innovations around our Opinion Index which lets you see just how good that </span></span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/#5003/0.6002=bid:YN925x15775230:adj:0&1.6002=cid:2942:tree:0:lat:47.668871492553:long:-122.124001:nosp:0:adj:0:notr:0:pg:1&2.6793=ps::dtpfilter:All:poi:Micro&3.40326=&o=&a=0:1:2:3/5872/style=auto&lat=47.631542&lon=-122.138259&z=14&pid=5874"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Vietnamese Pho restaurant</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> is based on what the community is saying. Our next step is to continue to augment the Spatial Search experience with these types of data. The potential for ‘augmenting’ your physical world with data pulled from everywhere, in real-time, and in context is exciting. The chance of getting lost diminishes greatly. You may never have to enter a fabric store only to realize you should have gone somewhere else to get your remnant. The ability to re-route before hitting a road closure due to construction will be right at your fingertips. The technology to enable the <b>Deciding </b>pillar of our Spatial Search strategy is daunting – but this is a key element in our quest to better understand how we naturally process information to make a decision. So that’s where we’re headed. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">It’s going to take a little while to get there. But we believe our focus on your needs as searchers and more importantly as people will ultimately help us build technology to reconnect the wandering data to where it wants to be – the real world. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">The Bing Maps team</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></o:p></p> <p><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Bing Maps Mapping Economic Development in Arlington, VA</h1> <p>2010-02-11T17:19:00Z</p> <p><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Arlington Economic Development (AED) is the department of Arlington County Government dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of an economically vital, competitive, and sustainable community. It provides leadership and services to the commercial, visitors and housing development sectors of Arlington's economy.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">And it is now using <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps/industry/publicsector.aspx">Bing Maps</a> to do all this better than even before!</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The web site is pretty straight forward and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.arlingtonvirginiausa.com/map/arlingtonmap.cfml">can be found here</a>. The site allows users to visualize detailed data about principal buildings in the area, and to search by property name and location. The site also has links that take visitors directly to specific neighborhoods. Those links are listed at the bottom of the map and linked from the appropriate sections under SUBMARKET.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Glad to see another EDC recognizing Bing Maps as the go-to mapping platform for mapping economic development.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">If you would like to see more examples, take a look at this <a target="_blank" href="http://bit.ly/9SJwz7">case study</a> on the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps/industry/publicsector.aspx">Bing Maps web site</a>.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><em>--Virtual Jerry</em><br /></span></p> <p><span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Bing Maps provides new imagery of Haiti</h1> <p>2010-01-15T22:05:00Z</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">The Microsoft <a>Bing </a>team has responded to this week’s catastrophic event in Haiti by working with satellite imagery provider, <a href="http://www.digitalglobe.com">DigitalGlobe</a>, to rapidly publish current imagery of Haiti captured by the company’s Quickbird and WordView II satellite sensors. The imagery collected by the satellites is respectively 60 and 50 cm accurate and covers much of Haiti but centers around Port-Au-Prince just 10-16 kilometers from the earthquake’s epicenter and where the damage is extensive. The Bing Imagery Technologies team in Boulder, Colorado that is responsible for acquisition, processing and publishing of the imagery found in the <a href="http://www.bing.com/maps">Bing maps</a> site, published this data in less than 16 hours from the time of receipt. Processing includes “cleaning up” the raw imagery collected by the satellites to ensure nadir projection and proper registration with the Bing maps image mosaic, a<span style="color: #1f497d;">s </span>well as “slicing” into tiles to more efficiently serve up the data. Microsoft’s aim is that the imagery will help people across the world better understand the location and extent of the catastrophe and that it might perhaps prove useful to those coordinating relief efforts.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">You can see the imagery <a href="http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=18.54986860847643~-72.32425399124622&lvl=17&sty=h&where1=Haiti">here on our Bing maps site</a> or on our <a href="http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/#5872/style=a&lat=18.576285&lon=-72.295216&z=18&pid=5874/5003/o=&a=&s=w&p=c ">new beta site here</a> (requires you to download Silverlight but very much worth it.)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Meanwhile, Microsoft joined organizations across the world in supporting relief efforts through an initial contribution of $125 million through non-profit partner, NetHope, and with a focus on establishing temporary telecommunications structure to allow communciations between humanitarian organizations working to provide relief to victims. More information on this and how you can assist can be found on <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/our-actions/in-the-community/disaster-and-humanitarian-response/community-involvement.aspx">the Microsoft Corporate Citzenship site.</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"></span></p> <p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><em>-=Virtual Jerry</em></span></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Bing Maps Demo: A Single View of Collision Data from Microsoft & IDV Solutions</h1> <p>2009-12-14T22:30:00Z</p> <p>Microsoft partner, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.idvsolutions.com">IDV Solutions</a>, recently released a new interactive application demo that visualizes vehicle collision data. The demo is built using their data visualization product--<a target="_blank" href="http://idvsolutions.com/products_overview.aspx">Visual Fusion</a>--and integrates<a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/"> Microsoft Silverlight</a> and a stack of other Microsoft technologies that make up the Microsoft <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/solutions/Single_View_Platform/default.aspx">SingleView platform</a>: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps/industry/publicsector.aspx">Bing Maps</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pages/Default.aspx">Sharepoint </a>and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/default.aspx">SQL Server 2008</a>. SingleView brings together these Microsoft technologies to allow organizations to better manage their data and to collaborate around that data in a visual manner (thanks to Bing Maps!). It provides a consolidated, geo-spatial representation of an entire data and information landscape. You can deploy Microsoft SVP easily across multiple roles and user interfaces to support faster and better-informed decision-making with timely and effective coordination among all stakeholders.</p> <p><a target="_blank" href="http://vfdemo.idvsolutions.com/collisions/">Collision Watch</a> visualizes data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration. It shows automobile collisions occurring in 2007, that resulted in one or more fatalities, and details the conditions that were involved. The data set contains over 36,000 incidents and is visualized in two ways: as discrete points and as a heat map wieghted for the number of fatalities per incident. </p> <p></p> <p>The demo features several interactive capabilities:</p> <ul> <li>Pan and zoom both the map and its timeline</li> <li>Filter on contributing factors such as alcohol, drowsiness and speeding</li> <li>Filter on time attributes such as month, day and time of day</li> <li>Filter on characteristics such as the number of vehicles involved in a collision, the number of fatalities, and the posted speed limit</li> <li>Bring in additional data sources such as web feeds or search results from Bing, Wikipedia and Flickr</li> </ul> <p></p> <p>This is a great example of what I have been preaching to customers over the last several years: when data is plotted on a map, the geospatial relationship between those datapoints becomes more clear and trends and patterns become more apparent more quickly. For example, the default speed filter setting in Collision Watch is 75 MPH. When "turning down" this filter, the number of datapoints in the heat map drops significantly. This suggests, not surprisingly, that accidents occurring at higher speeds are more likely to result in fatalities. Also not a big surprise ... when you zoom out from the default zoom factor over the default location--the San Fransco bay area--you will see that the heat map over Los Angeles is much brighter due to a higher concentratoin of data points in that area. In other words, there are more traffic accident related fatalities in the Los Angeles region than in the Bay Area. </p> <p>Using this application, analysis could be taken a step further to leverage the Bing Maps high resolution aerial imagery for a closer look at locations, such as a turn in a road or a particular intersection, where the map data may show a trend of recurring accidents involving fatalities. Through the Bing Maps imagery, we might discover something about that location that could be contributing to these accidents.</p> <p>Good stuff from our friends at IDV Solutions. Check it out: <a href="http://vfdemo.idvsolutions.com/collisions/">http://vfdemo.idvsolutions.com/collisions/</a></p> <p><em>-=Virtual Jerry</em></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing See How to Add Latest Bing Maps Features to Web Mapping Applications</h1> <p>2009-12-10T17:28:00Z</p> <p><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; COLOR: #333333; FONT-SIZE: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">The new imagery features that the community has been buzzing about on the new <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/">Bing Maps beta site</a> are also available for developers on the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps">Bing Maps Platform</a>! Chris Pendleton shares how to download the necessary DLLs on his blog today. Be sure to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2009/12/10/adding-streetside-and-enhanced-birds-eye-to-your-applications.aspx">take a look</a> for step-by-step instructions on getting and using those DLLs.</span></p> <p><span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; COLOR: #333333; FONT-SIZE: 8.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">BUT ... you can </span> also see hear about all the latest and greatest from Bing Maps TODAY during the webcast Chris will be hosting. Get webcast information <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2009/12/01/bing-maps-platform-web-cast-fall-2009-release.aspx">here</a>.</p> <p>BETTER YET ... for those of you in the Reston, VA area ... it is not too late to register for the free Bing Maps Roadshow presentation at Microsoft's office there. See these features explained in person and get your questions answered by the Bing Maps staff that will be on hand! </p> <p><a target="_blank" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032432471&Culture=en-US">Register here!</a></p> <p></p> <p><em>-=Virtual Jerry</em></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing REMINDER: Bing Maps Roadshow - Reston Stop</h1> <p>2009-12-03T21:29:00Z</p> <p>Yesterday I reported on some fantastic new updates to the Bing Maps platform and advised you of an upcoming webcast that will focus on the new features and functionality. But those of you in the Reston, VA area can get a front row seat: as a reminder, Bing Maps is visiting Reston on December 14th from 1-5 PM. In addition to the agenda descibed in a previous blog post about the roadshow, we will be showcasing the new Bing Map features and how can integrate these capabilities into your applications.</p> <p>If you haven't already, <a target="_blank" href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032432471&Culture=en-US">register here</a> for the event.</p> <p><em>-=Virtual Jerry</em></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Bing Maps Gets Major Overhaul ... Check Out in Upcoming Webcast</h1> <p>2009-12-02T23:39:00Z</p> <p>What a HUGE day for Microsoft Bing Maps! </p> <p>Not only did the Development team release 46.7 TB of new imagery but they also released a beta <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/">Silverlight version of Bing Maps</a> with some pretty cool new features including a new Streetside mode that allows you to navigate fully stitched and continuous ground level photographs for a full 360 degree panoramic experience. </p> <p></p> <p>There are many other great features that Bing Maps technical evangelist, Chris Pendleton, has covered in his blog entry today that you can read <a href="http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2009/12/02/bing-maps-adds-streetside-enhanced-bird-s-eye-photosynth-and-more.aspx">here</a> and you can see videos on the topic <a target="_blank" href="http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LauraFoy/First-Look-Streetside-in-Bing-Maps/">here</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/bing/">here</a>. But for a chance to look under the hood and see how to code your own cool mapping applications based on the Bing Maps Silverlight Control, be sure to attend the upcoming webcast "Build More Powerful Solutions with Bing Maps", scheduled for Thursday December 10, 2009 @ 10AM PST. Details are below.</p> <p><a href="http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032432830&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US"><span style="color: #0033cc;">Register Now</span></a></p> <p><strong>Build More Powerful Solutions with Bing Maps (Level 200) </strong><br /><em>Attend this webcast to learn how recent updates to the Bing Maps platform can help you build more compelling Web mapping solutions. Developers already using the Bing Maps platform can visualize data in more innovative, powerful, and faster ways, and developers who are newly deploying Bing Maps can develop mapping solutions more easily than was previously possible. </em></p> <p><em>The Bing Maps platform brings location data to life by making it easier to visualize, understand, and analyze. The rich imagery, quality geospatial data, and leading-edge technology of Bing Maps is already being used by thousands of organizations, governments, and developers worldwide. Choose from four robust APIs to build innovative applications that allow you to better display data, excite end users, and improve business insight.</em></p> <p><em>-=Virtual Jerry</em></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Bing Bing Maps Assisting Northwest Florida Rural Area of Critical Economic Concern (NW RACEC)</h1> <p>2009-12-01T21:37:00Z</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">It would seem that Microsoft partner, <a href="http://www.goisc.com">ISC</a>, is carving out quite a niche for themselves supporting agency economic development efforts through mapping applications that integrate the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/maps">Microsoft Bing Maps platform</a> and their <a href="http://www.mapdotnet.com">MapDotNet</a> UX platform. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">ISC recently developed an application for the <span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Northwest Florida Rural Area of Critical Economic Concern (NW RACEC) that, as part of the requirements to receive stimulus funding, needed to include map graphics showing a number of different data spatially in their submissions to the Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) and Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). Data types <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>included demographic data from the 2000 Census at the Tract, Block Group and Block Level levels, fiber LIT building locations, existing fiber networks, exiting towers, existing businesses, schools, proposed middle-mile and last-mile project locations. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally, ISC turned to Bing Maps for the mapping platform for this application.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">Using Bing Maps along with the ISC </span><a href="http://www.mapdotnet.com/"><span style="font-family: Calibri; color: #0000ff; font-size: small;">MapDotNet UX</span></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> Data Analysis Template—a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>configuration driven <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight">Silverlight 3.0</a> application—ISC was able to rapidly setup an application for the RACEC to start using. ISC provided further data analysis services by collecting and aggregating a variety of spatial data and loading it into SQL Server 2008 for overlay on top of Bing Maps Road, Aerial and Hybrid tiles. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Features of the Data Analysis Template include:<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">-</span><span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Integration with Bing Maps data via the Bing Maps Web Services<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">-</span><span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Completely configuration-driven with no programming required<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">-</span><span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Thematic (choropleth) maps<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">-</span><span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Feature Querying<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">-</span><span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Shapefile export<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">-</span><span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Printing<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">-</span><span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Drawing and collaboration using MapShare<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">-</span><span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rich interactive application with intuitive navigation and tiled maps<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A demo version of the application can be found here: </span></span><a href="http://demo.mapdotnet.com/FBBPMap/default.aspx?branding=NW"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">http://demo.mapdotnet.com/FBBPMap/default.aspx?branding=NW</span></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The different spatial data layers can be found and toggled on/off in the right hand panel. For the purposes of this explanation, I have zoomed in on Holmes County and selected the MyFloridaNetwork layer that contains all the data points for Stage owned properties in that county known to have internet connectivity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then in the panel found on the left side of the page, you will find application features that include “Data Anaylsis” tools.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These tools allow you to not only markup and annotate the map with points, lines, polygons and text boxes, but to also use those shapes to define areas for spatial data queries. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the screenshot below, you can see that I used the “Circle” tool to define a cluster of datapoints in the MyFloridaNetwork layer and then clicked on the “Query” and “Done” buttons to pull up the location data on those points. Just to test the “Point” tool, I added a point and then used the “Text Box” tool to add a description to that datapoint. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note that the application keeps a record of your actions and when you use the “Clear” button, it un-does those actions in reverse sequential order. Very cool.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The “Collaboration” options allow you to share the data either through email or through print. The “Navigation” tools allow you to quickly advance or return to map locations you have viewed as you work in the application.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I understand that the NW RACEC is still waiting to find out if they will be awarded stimulus funds, but there is no doubt that they had the best looking maps of all the submissions!<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">-=Virtual Jerry</span></span></span></i></p><div style="clear:both;"></div> </article> </main></body></html>