New Bing Map App: Coin Search

“Find a penny, pick it up and all day long you’ll have good luck.” If you believe this to be true, you may want to go buy some Lotto tickets today. The latest Bing Map App in the gallery, Coin Search, lets us explore Bing Maps in Streetside to find random coins throughout beautiful New York City. Four areas have been marked on the map; inside each of these areas there are five randomly distributed coins. Find all of the coins in each area to win the game. Yes! It’s a Bing Maps game! And, it’s a code sample!

How to play:

1. Click the Begin button.
2. Click an area button in the left hand panel or hover over an area on the map and then click the area’s name to enter Streetside.
3. Navigate around the area in Streetside and click on any spinning coins you come across. Note: you can use the directional arrows on your keyboard to walk through Streetside. Sometimes that’s easier if you want to explore more carefully.
4. Once all the coins in the area are found, you will be removed from Streetside so you may select a different area to search.

I also mentioned it’s a code sample. You can now download the code for the Coin Search game from Microsoft Connect (Windows Live ID required). The whole idea is to show you how to render images and use advanced features such as the Streetside interface and isolated storage in Bing Map Apps. See, we’re trying to help your map apps be even better!

Remember how exciting it was as a kid to find a coin on the ground? I would light up like Charlie Bucket when I found a quarter somewhere so I could jam it in a Gauntlet video game at the arcade. Or, Dragon’s Lair! Which, by the way, was one of the first games to be 50 cents and I’ve now conquered it via the iPhone implementation. I digress. So, this is a fun exploring game. Go get your Dora backpack and walk around Streetside until you find all the coins. You can leave Map in the pack since you have Bing! He’s lame anyway.

Follow me @BingMaps, ^CP