Via Virtual Earth Blog

ViaWindowsLive

Dr Neil — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:31:00 GMT

The new ViaWindowsLive community site has launched and features not only a definitive set of resources on all Live Services from Microsoft but also a special section on Virtual Earth including a new site gallery for you to upload your sites, new articles on Version 6, including getting started guide, an interactive quick guide, location finder and more. Subscribe to the VWL aggregated blog to stay in touch with everything Live Services related. Find all the great content from this site and much, much more. Explore how other Live Services can compliment Virtual Earth and your applications.

Version 5 URL changed - Error: 'VEMap' is undefined

Dr Neil — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:35:00 GMT

It has been reported that the old url to access the Version5 javascript for Virtual Earth no longer works. This is effecting sites worldwide.

The correct way to reference the Version 5 javascript is:

If you have been effected a forum thread has been started here

Silverlight Virtual Earth viewer

Dr Neil — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:08:00 GMT

With the launch of silverlight yesterday I was digging around and found this viewer for Virtual Earth by Greg Schechter. It does use the 1.1 alpha of silverlight. It gives some interesting ideas for where Virtual Earth could be headed. Certainly the demo of the performance of silverlight compared to javascript for processing showed a significant increase. This could be very useful.

And of course on the gamer front check this out by Andy Beaulieu and shoot down some UFO's over Birdseye images.

John.

So much new Virtual Earth Imagery Worldwide.

Dr Neil — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:45:00 GMT

I subscribe to all the VE blogs and recently the posts about updated imagery has been more and more frequent.

The latest is here and for myself downunder we saw three updates, Canberra, Newcastle and Uluru:

Derek Chan posts 3 Articles in a month!

Dr Neil — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 07:09:00 GMT

A big thank you to the efforts of Derek Chan who posted his third VE article today (he actually had it ready weeks ago but had to wait for Mr Bottleneck here at VVE ;) )

The 3 articles are all relivant to Version 5 of Virtual Earth and deal with the Mini Map, debugging javascript and now custom pins in routes.

All these can now be found in our articles section.

If you have something to contribute send us an email.

John (The bottleneck)

Microsoft Announce Intermap Technologies for highly accurate and up-to-date elevation data for all of Great Britain

Dr Neil — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 22:35:00 GMT

The announcement details the integration of Intermap Technologies' highly accurate 3D elevation data into Virtual Earth starting with Great Britain.

"This is a fundamental change for the industry as Microsoft raises the bar for accuracy and realistic 3-D experiences," said Eric DesRoche, senior vice president of automotive and consumer electronics at Intermap. "While an accurate visualization application is important to deliver to consumers, our relationship with Microsoft begins to pave the way for the delivery of additional value-added products for the business and consumer markets within Great Britain, Europe and the U.S."

Gallery Additions

Dr Neil — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 22:49:00 GMT

This week we have a had a few additions to our Virtual Earth Gallery, the US Open map from Naviciti shows us how useful Virtual Earth can be for an event while ShareMyRoutes.com show us what a second generation VE site can look and feel like. The is a awesome site that every VE should take a look at, you will take away at least two or three well implimented ideas. The site is running Version 5 of Virtual Earth.

If you have a Virtual Earth site that you want people to know about, submit it to the gallery.

The ViaVE Gallery

Virtual Earth 5 Article Published

Dr Neil — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:26:00 GMT

We released the long awaited article on clustering Virtual Earth with the latest Version 5 of the API today.

This third installment covers the upgrade to version 5 and reworks the Javascript as ASP.NET AJAX classes

The pins load content on demand and a new shape differential logic removes the flicker effect from previous articles

If you have an article to submit send us an email to articles@viavirtualearth.com

Sample code for drawing in VE Version 5 posted in the wiki

Dr Neil — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 05:11:00 GMT

Some kind sole posted a great piece of sample code showing how to enable drawing of points, lines, polygons and even circles to the VE wiki.

http://www.viavirtualearth.com/wiki/Drawing-Tool+for+VE+v5.ashx

All you need to do is put the code into a htm file and js file and your away!

Great stuff, and remember to let me know who the contributor is, I promise the new wiki upgrade will keep track of the users that submit posts but for now include that in your entry.

John

VE article in .NET mag

Dr Neil — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:58:00 GMT

Our friend and regular contributor Rob Blackwell has written a Getting Started with VE article for .NET Magazine.

If you prefer to do your reading the old fashioned way (on paper) then get your hands the latest issue.

Great work Rob!

.NetRocks! interview with Rob McGovern

Dr Neil — Thu, 24 May 2007 04:23:00 GMT

Bronwen - Check out .NetRocks! for an interview with Rob McGovern on his experiences with Virtual Earth here http://www.dotnetrocks.com

New imagery for Europe - Germany and France updated

Dr Neil — Thu, 24 May 2007 01:55:00 GMT

New imagery for Germany was launched tonight along with several cities in France including Marseille, Lyon and Orleans.

Have a look at Berlin here.

We expect to see many more European released over the coming months. John.

Terms of Use

Dr Neil — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:14:00 GMT

At the MIX conference in Las Vegas the Live Platform team announced a new pricing model. You can view all the legal text here

On Friday I sat down with Scott Swanson, of the Live Platform team, to clarify what I thought this meant to those of us developing with Virtual Earth.

This does change the way Virtual Earth is charged for. If your application uses less than 3 million map tiles per month and has less than 1 million unique users then the Virtual Earth service is free to use.

Once you go above this threshold you will need to have a commercial agreement with Microsoft for Virtual Earth usage.

For some of the Live Services the cost per unique user above the 1 million threshold is USD 0.25.

For Virtual Earth the cost beyond the threshold is not defined.

UseAMap

Dr Neil — Wed, 09 May 2007 23:44:00 GMT

The second email in my inbox today relating to online mapping was much more positive. The team at UseAMap have built a cool mashup application that allows you to save your location with any name, so your location could be saved as useamap.com/virtualearth. This allows you to share with others you exact location for meetings, events ,etc. The site also comes with full driving directions to your location.

Nice work.

Stop it you're stealing our data that we put on the web for free

Dr Neil — Wed, 09 May 2007 23:27:00 GMT

This morning I recieved a very interesting email from a solicitor claiming to represent Telstra and Sensis.

Essentially the email contains a PDF that is a letter requesting that all use of the term "WhereIs" is removed from the web site and that any usage of "WhereIs" imagery is stopped.

They also ask that any copies of the WhereIs aerial imagery be returned to them.

To this end it is important that you all go to your browser cache and retrieve all WhereIs imagery and send it to the offices of Sensis ;)

Joking aside, this indicates the lack of understanding from companies such as Telstra and Sensis of the concept of the mashup. Of course no data is stored on our servers as the data is pulled directly from their servers to a browser that is viewing the mashup.

It also indicates a lack of commercial intelligence. Rather than send out a legal 'cease and desist' letter about a 'proof of concept' mashup it would surely be more sensible to work out how to monetize from this opportunity.

A smarter move would have been to contact us and discuss what business opportunities might exist from licencing their aerial imagery for usage, instead they have taken the heavy handed approach of spending money on lawyers.

So if you are building a mashup with Sensis or Telsta data please stop it, they don't get it.

The 'official' support line - an update

Dr Neil — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:39:00 GMT

In the last post the contact details were apparently only for customers. If you use Virtual Earth I guess you are not a customer until you pay, so I have been asked by Microsoft to replace:

If you have questions or need customer support for Virtual Earth 5.0, contact support at XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX or contact a Virtual Earth Solution Specialist (see contact information below).

With:

If you have questions or need support with Virtual Earth 5.0, please go to the Virtual Earth Map Control Forum or contact a Virtual Earth Solution Specialist (see contact information below).

Of course there is this whole resource here dedicated to helping you build better apps with maps :)

Virtual Earth version 5 is released (again)

Dr Neil — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:03:00 GMT

Two weeks after Virtual Earth version 5 has gone live we are 'allowed' to talk about it.

Here is the official messaging (including typos and spelling mistakes).

The new Virtual Earth platform

The Virtual Earth platform is an integrated set of services that combines unique bird?s eye, aerial, and 3D imagery with best-of-breed mapping, location and search functionality. With ongoing investments in innovation that are driven by customer feedback, the Virtual Earth platform 5.0 continues to offer new tools, advanced feature enhancements, and robust platform capabilities. In this latest release, the new Virtual Earth platform is even more flexible, providing a wider range of supported capabilities that allow businesses to strengthen customer relationships with innovative solutions and breakthrough experiences. By combining comprehensive support for feature customization, richer features for end-users, and a new level of control and flexibility in the platform, Virtual Earth provides the ability to create unique environments to connect with customers.

Improved Support for Feature Customization

The Virtual Earth platform enables businesses to easily and cost-effectively customize unique location experiences for end- customers. By providing multiple tools and greater control to change the way location solutions can be developed, businesses can continuously provide and update their online experience to ensure they remain competitive.

- Virtual Earth Shapes. Easily customize and modify pushpins, polylines, and polygons with the new Virtual Earth Shape class. Customize line colors, widths, and transparencies of shapes, as well as add custom icons.

- Info Boxes. Shapes now have associated info boxes which can be shown and hidden as a response to user actions (e.g. clicking on the shape). The info box text and text style are completely customizable.

- Find Method. More customizable find method integrates the new Shape class to find locations and businesses easier than ever before.

- Keyboard and Mouse Events. Override almost any keyboard or mouse event, and use it to execute any Virtual Earth map action.

Rich End-User Experience

Improve customer satisfaction and retention by leveraging benefits of the latest features and technology. Employ newly supported functionality to offer dynamic experiences including interactive mapping, 3D imagery, bird?s eye panning, and mini maps.

- Bird?s Eye Panning. Pan continuously across the map in bird?s eye view.

- Tile Over-fetching. Programmatically enable tile downloading to either increase panning performance or optimize page load time.

- Small Navigation Controls. New choices for end-users to customize the interface by utilizing two new options for smaller navigation controls.

- Mini Map. The mini map provides a small map legend, giving the user better bearings as they navigate.

- Compressed Map Control. The map control code base is now compressed, reducing the initial download file size from approximately 500kb to a 120kb.

- Programmatic Market Selection. Localized market support, beginning with Japan, which is now supported in the Virtual Earth API.

New Level of Control and Flexibility

With new features and enhancements to the Virtual Earth API, organizations can utilize the unique imagery, dynamic maps, and various content layers to provide the tailored experience for their end-users. This enhanced API exposes rich, new features, encouraging more efficient development and providing stability for future improvements.

- Pushpins, Polylines, and Polygons. Once separately-coded objects, the new Virtual Earth shapes are now richer and easier to customize. Move shapes on the fly, show and hide them programmatically, and give them custom icons using images or HTML.

- GeoRSS Imports. Import pushpins, polylines, and polygons using the GeoRSS feed, the de facto standard for geographically encoded objects, for RSS feeds.

- Info Boxes. Shapes can now store HTML and CSS content for custom info boxes, which can be shown or hidden programmatically.

- Shape Layers. New and improved shape management capabilities allow grouping of pushpins, polylines, and polygons. Show or hide a group of shapes, or make changes to the individual shapes within them.

- Find Method. Easily customize search results with the updated find method which sends the resulting pushpins directly to a shape layer.

- Tile Layers. The tile layer interface, used for adding, deleting, showing, and hiding tile layers, is now more straightforward and easier to use.

Take the Next Step

To begin incorporating the latest features of Virtual Earth 5.0, begin with the intuitive, easy to use, and newly updated Virtual Earth Interactive SDK. The Interactive SDK provides scenario-based, hands-on demonstrations with associated source code and references. To access the Interactive SKD, go here: http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/

If you have questions or need customer support for Virtual Earth 5.0, contact support at vesupp@microsoft.com or contact a Virtual Earth Solution Specialist (see contact information below).

If you are interested in learning more about Virtual Earth 5.0 or would like to purchase Virtual Earth platform services, contact a Virtual Earth Sales Specialist:

North, Central, and South America

Phone: 1-800-426-9400, ext. 11315

Europe, Africa, Middle East, and the Asia Pacific region

Virtual Earth for Scalable Applications - Presentation material available.

Dr Neil — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 01:30:00 GMT

John and I(Bronwen) recently presented "Virtual Earth for Scalable Applications" at the QLD MSDN User Group. John spoke tirelessly for 1.5 hours and we only had a few minor glitches and even had an internet connection so we didn't need the "backup video demos" we'd made just in case.

For anyone who missed the presentation of for those who attended and wanted to see the slides, code or demo again we have put all the content into an article here.

For those who attended, we'd appreciate any feedback (good, bad, indifferent) so we can refine this talk and know what to concentrate on for next time.

Around the World in 30 Days

Dr Neil — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 04:31:00 GMT

In the last month I (Dr. Neil) have been in the USA, UK, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand talking about Virtual Earth and the Via Virtual Earth developer community.

There have been a number of Microsoft Partner events and 'brown bags' held on how to get started with Virtual Earth, as well as discussions on what you would like to see appear on this community site.

As an outcome you should be seeing some more activity on this site now. We commence this with a new article by Rob Blackwell on Accessing WMS from Virtual Earth. For which Rob has been awarded the prize of 3 beautiful mugs with stunning imagery from Virtual Earth 3D. If you want to submit some content to the site in the next few weeks we have a limited supply of Virtual Earth goodies to give away :)

So get coding and sumbit articles via email to us, or add content to our Wiki.

3D Mashups

Dr Neil — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 22:00:00 GMT

The 3D feature of Virtual Earth seems to have a low usage in the mashup scenario. Keith from the VE team has built a neat mashup of 3D scenes.

My personal opinion is the 3D has issues with being an ActiveX control that runs on Windows and IE only, it is not really web.

In fact as a developer, if I know I am only targetting the Windows platform then a browser is not going to provide the richest user experience. I would be better off building a Windows application.

What is your opinion?

why are you not building VE mashups using 3D features?

Put the Aussie Aerial Images in Live.com

Dr Neil — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 02:13:00 GMT

Today the Look Up And Smile Live.com gadget was released that scrolls across the images taken on the map.

Live.com gadgets with maps in are so very cool, you can find out how to get started with a Live.com gadget on the wiki.

Australia Images on the map

Dr Neil — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:46:00 GMT

Phase 3 of the Look Up And Smile project has gone live and you can now see 4 images taken from the sky overlaid on the map.

Centennial Park, Sydney

Opera House, Sydney

Kirra Beach, QLD

Desert art, WA

The Image of WA is a satellite image, the other 3 are high level aerial images.

Do you have some Virtual Earth overlay Mashups you would like to show the world?

What should be fixed?

Dr Neil — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:43:00 GMT

Steve Lombardi of the Virtual Earth API team wants to know what you want fixed.

We all know there are some annoying bugs in the VE API, give Steve your list and he will put them in priority order (I guess based on requests) and start work on getting them fixed.

This is an awesome opportunity for us as a community to provide our feedback to Microsoft, so let's hear the bitching begin.

Australia Day, put your photo on the map

Dr Neil — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:46:00 GMT

Today it is Australia Day, a public holiday downunder. Microsoft Australia has launched phase 2 of the Look Up And Smile project.

Where ever you are in the world, and no matter what you are doing to celebrate being alive you can take a photo and add it to the map.

Lawyers Blogging on the map

Dr Neil — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:27:00 GMT

I like it when a community site uses Virtual Earth. There is something that feels right about a community site learning to use Virtual Earth from this community site :)

This time it's the lawyers on Blawg.com. They have a Virtual Earth map of where the blogging lawyers are.

Maybe we should suggest a lawyer tracking system so we can avoid them when we want and find them when we need them!

Site Gallery Pick

Dr Neil — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 05:24:00 GMT

The latest Site Gallery Pick is a wonderful application built by the ViaWindowsLive team.

Look Up And Smile is a site commissioned by Microsoft Australia for Australia Day events around the country. There are plans for custom imagery to be overlaid on to VE maps to compliment the events listings and user contributed photos.

Behind the scenes the VE map uses some interesting technology that you can explore including: Pushpin clustering, Custom Pushpin Popup's, on demand content loading for popups, Web service throttling, MS AJAX RC 1.

Roll your own Tile Server

Dr Neil — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 23:28:00 GMT

I just recieved an email from Danyel at Microsoft who correclty points out that in the latest version of Virtual Earth the hacks provided by Rob Blackwell in the "Roll Your Own Tileserver" article are no longer needed.

Danyel went on to say:

you can write a custom tile server and link that into the new layer mechanisms with the standard MapControl:

var tileSourceSpec = new VETileSourceSpecification();

tileSourceSpec.ID = ?SeattleTransit?

tileSourceSpec.TileSource =

http://jbhatia1.members.winisp.net/SeattleTransit/%4.png;

tileSourceSpec.NumServers = 1;

tileSourceSpec.MinZoom = 2;

tileSourceSpec.MaxZoom = 16;

See that .TileSource? Change the .png to a .aspx, and?presto!?dynamic tiles. That?s a lot easier than the javascript hacks in the article.

Thanks Danyel, I have added this to the Wiki also

Using the areas of this site

Dr Neil — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 20:54:00 GMT

I have noticed that questions are being asked in blog comments , code is being posted to the forums and some posts are not openly sharing their ideas.

To make this community more valuable for everyone please will you:

Post questions to the forum

Post code in the Wiki

Respond to blog posts in blog comments

Microsoft Local Live Search Mobile

Dr Neil — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 22:09:00 GMT

To date we have seen a few different mobile phone applications that use Virtual Earth. Now Microsoft is officially getting in the game with Windows Live Search Mobile Beta

It is worth checking out if you have either a Windows Mobile or a J2ME enabled phone.

I think they need to do some further work on the offline caching scenario. I searched for a place and then went back to the app a few minutes later only to find that unless I went online the map was blank.

Do you have maps on your mobile phone?

What application do you use?

You don't have to be called John and live in Brisbane, but it helps

Dr Neil — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:21:00 GMT

First up is John O'Brien from SoulSolutions in Brisbane. In his article The building of mygeoloand.com John explains how simple it is to build a site that leverages the power of the Virtual Earth platform. John also explores some third party tools for Virtual Earth development. We have added John's Mygeoland site to our gallery.

Also new in the gallery this week is TrailShare by another John, this time John McTainsh an avid cyclist from Brisbane. TrailShare lets you share adventures with friends in the form of GPS log files.

Are you called John and come from Brisbane?

Do you have some thing to contribute to the ViaVirtualEarth community?

Chandu moves on...

Dr Neil — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:16:00 GMT

Over the last few years the name Chandu Thota has become tied closely to all things mapping to come out of Microsoft. His blog has been a resource for all MapPoint and Virtual Earth developers. Chandu's fantastic articles in MSDN and his book on MapPoint development have been wonderful points of reference for this developer community.

It is therefore with deep regret (and a slight glint in my eye) that I have to tell you Chandu is leaving the MapPoint/VirtualEarth team at Microsoft.

It is with extreme happiness that Chandu is moving to the ASP.NET developer tools team to carry on his passion for helping us build great software.

Good luck Chandu!

What a week!

Dr Neil — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 02:41:00 GMT

If travelling half way around the globe to Las Vegas to give 4 presentations at DevConnections wasn't enough to stress out Dr. Neil then the new version of Virtual Earth was released. The issues this created have been well documented in the previous posts. Overall this has been a high quality problem for us in the ViaVirtualEarth team to deal with. We are very happy to be here to help you build better software that uses the Virtual Earth platform.

You may also have noticed that the Terms and Conditions for using Virtual Earth have been updated. The big change seems to be the increase to 100,000 transactions as the limit in a 24 hour period.

What do you think of the new features in Virtual Earth?

How do these new features add value to your business?

New Servers!

Dr Neil — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 15:08:00 GMT

Congratulations - you melted our server.

After an emergency migration, VVE now has a new home suitable for handling the extreme amounts of traffic we are starting to receive. It's great to the see the community growing around VE as a platform, and great to see people using VVE as the basis for this community.

The Problems with v3 (resolved)

Dr Neil — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:29:00 GMT

After a few hiccups related the the v4 release today, Microsoft has now got the v3 control working again. This should mean that apps running on the v2, v3 or v4 map controls should all be functioning again.

Thank you Microsoft for reacting promptly and getting this fixed!

New Wiki!

Dr Neil — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:46:00 GMT

Following the release of v4 (Codename "Spaceland") the VVE team decided it'd be a great time to launch a VE Wiki. The wiki is a really easy place to access and share VE code snippets with your fellow developers.

Thanks again to John from Soul Solutions in Australia for helping us get the wiki up.

The Problems with v3 (part 2)

Dr Neil — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:16:00 GMT

It seems that your site is guaranteed to break if you're loading the v3 control from dev.virtualearth.net as recommended by Microsoft.

The problem is pretty simple (and obvious). If you take a look at ../v3/mapcontrol.js, it is now returning a dynamic loading script instead of the actual map control.

function ____downloadMapControl() { document.write(""); };____downloadMapControl();

If you follow the trail and look at http://local.live.com/veapi.asjx?v=1.3.0908172755.52 you'll notice this little gem of code has replaced the map control:

/* #vesb */var err = new Object();err.message="The server is temporarily unavailable. Try again later.";throw err;

Looking at ../v4/mapcontrol.js you will see the same style of dynamic loading script, however without reference to a specific version. This file works, and (with very basic testing) it seems that just swapping the "v3" in your reference to "v4" will get most things working again.

Microsoft doesn't appear to have made this mistake with the v2 control. It is still being served at ../v2/MapControl.js.

The Problems with v3

Dr Neil — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:02:00 GMT

In my previous post, I mentioned that developers will need to jump in and start updating their mashups because it seems Microsoft has broken the v3 control with their v4 release. The Virtual Earth team posted a service notice last week that indicated they intended to keep both the v2 and v3 controls live, however this doesn't seem to have happened.

A post from the team on forums.microsoft.com indicates that they have updated the v3 control to v3.2, although the post doesn't list all of the changes they made. I'm going to jump on some of my own v3 mashups and start working out the migration fixes now.

Stay tuned!

Version 4 ("Spaceland") is live!

Dr Neil — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:51:00 GMT

The Virtual Earth team has just announced that the latest version (v4) of the platform has now gone live!

This new version of the API includes some impressive client-side 3D rendering using DirectX within the browser. Unfortunately these new features only work in IE6 or IE7, however Firefox users still get full support of aerial and birds eye imagery.

Developers: It seems that this release has broken the v3 control, in turn breaking a lot of our applications. At a first glance, upgrading to the v4 control appears to fix a lot of issues.

We have a lot of documentation and samples to update, but will keep you updated here as we explore this new API.

Supporting you to support us

Dr Neil — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 06:39:00 GMT

For a while we have had links to interesting products for Virtual Earth developers on Amazon. This site does get a small percentage of each sale and that helps support hosting costs and adding new features.

Today we have added a forum to each product we recommend. Now you can discuss the products with like minded 'geeks', ask questions and hopefully help each other make better buying decisions.

If you have any suggestions for other products we should recommend and discuss, please will you let us know?

Forums are back!

Dr Neil — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 06:39:00 GMT

It had to happen at some stage, we have brought the forums back.

This has happened for a few reasons.

You the community asked for it. In emails, conversations at conferences and user groups and on this site.

We realized having an independant forum space was worth having. Somewhere that was not Microsoft vetted and developers could speak their minds without fear of having the post removed. Somewhere that discussions such as this can take place.

We wanted the forums back for a new feature. Each gallery entry now has a forum thread. This let's us, as a community, comment on the gallery entry and provide feedback to the developer.

We have other new features planned that require the forums to be running.

Please let us know what you think.

Virtual Earth and MapPoint Web Service?

Dr Neil — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 02:52:00 GMT

A recent email thread has been questioning the difference between Virtual Earth and the MapPoint Web Service.

Tatham has posted a great overview on his blog.

Tim Kramer adds:

I would like to add that while the Mappoint web services add a lot of features, such as geocoding and landmarks coordinates, it is not the only enterprise option.

The Virtual Earth Map Control has a nicer user experience, has a flexible API, and does have a Commercial licensing version.

EyeViewer360

Dr Neil — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 04:30:00 GMT

I recieved an interesting email yesterday from Herman Miranda. Herman has been busy working on an amazing mashup called EyeViewer360.

You can see a preview of the application on a video demo Herman has put together on his website.

I am looking forward to seeing this released for us all to play with and include in the Gallery.

Maps in Gadgets

Dr Neil — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 08:47:00 GMT

In IE7 the default home page is Live.com. I thought it would be fun to build a Where Was Dr. Neil Live.com Gadget.

The source code is all there for you to explore and learn from. Look in these files:

The Gadget can be added to your Live.com page here.

Have you written a Gadget with a map that you would like to tell us about?

Fresh Logic Studios Scripts

Dr Neil — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 21:47:00 GMT

Those clever people over at Fresh Logic Studios are (as ever) sharing some more of the goodness they have been creating. How wonderful!

This time their output has a strong developer flavor. They are sharing some of the JavaScript they have built to help them develop their wonderful Atlas product.

They describe it as "an object oriented JavaScript framework with a programming model similar to the Microsoft .NET Framework".

Go and check it out, if you develop a cool mashup be sure to let us know so we can post a link in the Gallery.

Good Gallery Entries Come in Threes

Dr Neil — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:29:00 GMT

Things often come in threes and this time we have three new entries in the Gallery for your viewing pleasure.

The first is our new Site Gallery Pick, some clever people at Sydney based SSW have been playing around with showing local Real Estate ads on a map. They have done a great job with the presentation and UI.

Next up is a fantastic example of using the new API to add overlays from your own tile server. Morten from SharpGIS has written about his work here.

The last of the new three comes from the labs at Microsoft. They have built a mashup of Microsoft events and Virtual Earth, the UI is interesting in the way the map comes up in a floating window.

A final mention must go to the Fresh Logic Studios team who are adding yet more features to their wonderful Atlas application.

Please go and rate these great new gallery entries now.

Do you have something you would like to see in the gallery?

Forums are still solving issues

Dr Neil — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 03:45:00 GMT

Even this long after pointing all new forum posts to the MSDN forums our ViaVirtualEarth forums are solving issues.

It is awesome to see people like Tim helping to solve other peoples issues.

Maybe we should bring our forums back?

What do you think?

I guess this is version 4

Dr Neil — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 19:56:00 GMT

It has been quiet for a while on the VirtualEarth developer front and it is now clear this was the calm before the storm.

A new release of VirtualEarth was made 2 days ago and once more lots has changed.

A few of the more noticable changes on local.live are:

A new header UI with tighter integration to Live Search

A new toolbar on the scratch pad (look at the bottom of the scratchpad)

User created polylines and polygons - this rocks!

Searches in Sydney are working :)

For developers these changes do break some of the undoccumented APIs that I know many of you are using. Keep you eye on the forums for fixes, and if you have issues then post them on the forums.

Forums and Articles

Dr Neil — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 00:46:00 GMT

We have implemented the change now so that there is one place for all new forum posts. We no longer allow new posts to be created in our forums but you can reply to existing posts.

We are also linking through to the MSDN forums.

There are 2 new articles you should investigate if you are working with VirtualEarth (and if you are not then why do you read this?).

The first article is from community member John on clustering. The article pulls together the work John has been sharing with us over the last few weeks in the forums.

The second article is from Chandu Thota, of the Microsoft Virtual Earth team. It is an introduction article that will be published on MSDN. If you have been working with VE for a while now you might find it a bit too basic. It makes a great starting point for those of you new to the topic.

Do you have something you would like to write about?

Where's the jam?

Dr Neil — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 16:27:00 GMT

In the USA local.live has traffic information for some cities. Wouldn't it be cool if you could show traffic information on your Virtual Earth application?

Johannes, who works for Microsoft in the UK, has put together an article showing us how to integrate traffic data on to a Virtual Earth map.

If you build an application showing traffic on Virtual Earth let us know and we will add it to the gallery.

Have you got an article you want to contribute?

Australia gets better maps

Dr Neil — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:45:00 GMT

It has been pointed out in the forum that better Australian maps have now been deployed on the Virtual Earth platform.

I have built a little collection of places in Sydney using the Local Live collection feature.

Articles, Lunch and Traffic

Dr Neil — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 15:31:00 GMT

As mentioned in my latest podcast I had lunch with some of the AWS team yesterday. These are the guys that put together the latest article on how to roll your own tile server.

One of the topics of conversation over lunch was putting traffic on maps. As you may know in the USA local.live.com has traffic data for some cities. We have just added a new entry to the gallery called TrafficEye that displays traffic information for the UK.

Do you have an article you like to see published on this site?

The forums will be changing

Dr Neil — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 13:04:00 GMT

As you may know there are now MSDN hosted forums for discussing VirtualEarth development. There are many questions posted there and here that are the same and I find myself now monitoring both sets of forums. I discussed this today in my PodCast, which often includes information on ViaVirtualEarth.

I spoke to Alex Daley from Microsoft yesterday and he suggested that ViaVirtualEarth links to the MSDN forum the same way that dev.live does. That way I don't have to worry about supporting my own forum technology. Alex also mentioned that some of the MapPoint MVPs will be encouraged to start answering your questions on the MSDN forums so I won't have to be the only resource to help you build better VirtualEarth solutions.

This will certainly make life easier for me.

What do you think?

Got a question? Post it in the forums

Dr Neil — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 10:13:00 GMT

As more and more folks are developing Virtual Earth based solutions I am recieving an increasing amount of email in my inbox. Many of the emails ask questions about development topics for Virtual Earth, some ask about the feature of Virtual Earth and some are business related questions.

I cannot possibly answer all these emails directly, especially as many of them overlap with each other. So I post solutions to commonly asked asked questions either as articles or as forum posts.

If you have a question please post it in a forum. You will have a much better chance of getting an answer.

Do your Pins overlap?

Dr Neil — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 07:36:00 GMT

I have posted another pushpin example in the forum.

The example uses an array of pins and detects if there is any collision everytime the map view changes.

Remember that the overlap will depend on the zoom level of the map. To see a collision zoom out in the example map.

More clicking on pins

Dr Neil — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:37:00 GMT

An email in my inbox this morning pointed out that the example didn't differentiate between pins. I have updated the DynamicPushpin example to now work with an array of pins.

The click method now has a parameter that is the ID of the pin. Of course you could put anything you want in there.

Do you have a hack you would like to share?

Yet more stuff on maps

Dr Neil — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 10:30:00 GMT

The guys at GrabAMap have been busy platting losts of useless, useful and sometimes funny data on maps. We have added 4 new entries from them to the Gallery today.

Why not go and rate them?

If you have anything to add to the gallery plase let us know.

How to click on pins

Dr Neil — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 02:05:00 GMT

Inspired by questions and the creativity of all you folks I have updated my DynamicPushpin example.

I have posted a description here in the forum.

Do you have a hack you would like to share?

Do you have a Virtual Earth application you would like to show off?

Place Maps by Zip Code

Dr Neil — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 07:17:00 GMT

The content that appears in the ViaVirtualEarth forums amazes me. This community is so resourceful and inventive.

The effort put in by this contributor to get what he wants is fantastic.

Do you have something you want to share?

Head over to the forums and post something you have discovered.

Creating 'Celebfavorites.com'

Dr Neil — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:33:00 GMT

re:merged, the impartial designer resource that explores Windows Live technologies, has just published an article by Tricky on the design process for CelebFavourites.

If you want to see what version 1 of the site looked like we are still hosting it here on our servers.

SDK docs

Dr Neil — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 23:32:00 GMT

A recent forum post pointed out that there are still some missing elements of the SDK. We must remember Virtual Earth is still a beta product.

If you are looking for a quick guide on how to write the code to do something on the map the Interactive SDK is an awesome place to start.

Welcome back VEWorldWind

Dr Neil — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 00:56:00 GMT

A few weeks back we were asked to remove Casey's Virtual Earth for WorldWind article from our site.

We are glad to bring it back online now that it has been ok'd

I really hope Casey finds the time to do some more work on this project, it is so awesome.

New range of mashups in the gallery

Dr Neil — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 01:09:00 GMT

Have you seen the new entries in the gallery?

The new Site Gallery Pick, LeBron's Bike-a-thon, has recieved an awesome amount of traffic in the last few days, no doubt the link on the MSN.com homepage helped.

Then we have 3 new simple but effective mashups that plot some interesting data points; Haunted Haunts, Wacky Ville and College 101.

Show Time Maps provides a map based UI for finding movies and buying tickets in LA and Austin.

The final new gallery entry of note is the clever Sketchy Earth that lets you view a map with different surface textures.

Do you have a mashup you think should be in the gallery? Let us know

Dev.Live

Dr Neil — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 02:21:00 GMT

Microsoft has released a new online community web site for developers working with any of the new Live.com technologies.

It can be found at dev.live.com

Within this site there is a new area dedicated to Virtual Earth.

Check it out

New site: Maps4MyApps.com

Dr Neil — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:16:00 GMT

Maps4MyApps.com provides you with detailed descriptions of the MapPoint location based services and a step-by-step process for purchasing usage transactions to obtain access to the MapPoint mapping services platform.

The existing MapPoint Web Service is evolving to become the Virtual Earth Platform, an integrated set of services offered by Microsoft that combines unique bird's-eye aerial, and satellite imagery with best-of-breed mapping, Microsoft MapPoint Web Service for location intelligence and search functionality. Maps4MyApps.com will provide usage transactions to access the combined platform as pricing becomes available for the web site developer.

Upgrading to Version 3

Dr Neil — Wed, 31 May 2006 01:00:00 GMT

The last few days have been rather busy getting mashups fixed, writing articles and producing new samples for this site. I know many of you are busy trying to solve issues and have an urgent need to get your applications working again also. To this end I have posted two new samples and accompanying getting started guides in the articles section.

Celeb Favourites Versions

Dr Neil — Wed, 31 May 2006 00:30:00 GMT

Over the last few months the Poly9 team worked on an awesome mashup called CelebFavorites. The new release of Virtual Earth has meant the CelebFavorites application needed to change. The original mashup can still be found on our server.

The new version can be found at http://www.celebfavorites.com.

If you look at how the second version has been implemented you can see that it essentially uses the collections feature of Virtual Earth thus saving a lot of work. This is a great example of how the product is improving and saving us developers from a lot of the work we have had to do in the past.

To find out more about the new features have a look at the new MSDN Documentation.

How useful do you find the MSDN documentation? What else would you like us to provide here on ViaVirtualEarth to help you build better Virtual Earth applications?

MSDN Webcast: Location Solutions with Microsoft Virtual Earth (Level 200)

Dr Neil — Wed, 31 May 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Tomorrow at 11 am PST, Steve Milroy will be conducting a MSDN webcast covering the new features and functionality available in VE API v3.

MSDN Webcast: Location Solutions with Microsoft Virtual Earth (Level 200)

Live Webcast, Thu, 01 Jun 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Many applications can benefit from location capabilities, such as store locators, data analysis/business intelligence, and fleet solutions. This webcast provides a comprehensive introduction to the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform, including a look at the SOAP and JavaScript APIs that provide rendering, map navigation, geo-coding, proximity searching, and routing features. We also present code demonstrations, best practices, and solution tips to help you begin adding maps and geographic information.

Version 3 released!

Dr Neil — Wed, 24 May 2006 00:00:00 GMT

If you've been watching the http://local.live.com/ site closely you'll notice that Microsoft just release v3 of the platform. This release includes a number of improvements such improved searching, print support, traffic data, and shared collections. The team have also expanded international coverage, including birds eye imagery in the UK and street level mapping for Western Europe, Australia and a few other areas. We will be releasing a number of new articles over the weekend regarding development on the new platform. Luckily, the v3 servers are fully compatible with any v2 mashups you have already developed. Stay tuned!

Coming Soon

Dr Neil — Sun, 21 May 2006 00:00:00 GMT

On my last trip to Redmond I was shown a sneak preview of some of the new features coming in Virtual Earth. The word that springs to mind is awesome, many of things we have been asking for in this community are starting to show up in the product and the SDK. This is great news for all of us building applications with Virtual Earth. The only downside is that in order to make the changes some of the unsupported functionality that we have discussed and explored on this site will no longer work in the same way.

If you are using the version 1 commercial control this might be an issue for your business so please get in touch and I will try to help you get your application working on the new code as it is released.

A busy few weeks

Dr Neil — Thu, 18 May 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Lots has been going on in the last few weeks. The Poly9 team have been working hard with Microsoft on a super cool new mashup called CelebFavorites.

The ViaVirtualEarth web team has been busy upgrading the whole web site to use ASP.NET 2.0 You will also notice we have linked through to some products from Amazon that we think you might find useful as a Virtual Earth developer.

WinForms Earth is still proving to be a hugely popular download.

Meanwhile the team at Microsoft Research have been busy with another project that allows you to build your own overlays for VirtualEarth maps called Map Cruncher.

Mobile VE MEDC App: Find it on the Fly

Dr Neil — Fri, 05 May 2006 21:34:00 GMT

For those of you who are going to MEDC next week (or just visiting Vegas), check out http://fiotf.com (or http://finditonthefly.com/vegas) from your mobile phone. This mobile site will let you see all of the local Vegas attractions on Virtual Earth Satellite maps. You can use MSN Local search to get the addresses and phone numbers for places around the city, and then view them directly on your device--overlaid on a VE satellite map. I also talk more about MEDC in my PodCast.

Talking to Microsoft VirtualEarth team

Dr Neil — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 18:52:00 GMT

This last week some of the ViaVirtualEarth team have been lucky enough to visit Redmond and talk to the VirtualEarth development team about the product. One of the topics of conversation was the commercial control and I have posted more on this topic in the forum. This a great opportunity for us as a community to make ourselves heard.

Mobile VE CTIA App: Vegas Personal Assistant

Dr Neil — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 05:30:00 GMT

Some of us have been working on a project for CTIA next week in Vegas: For those of you who are going to CTIA next week (or just visiting Vegas), check out http://ctiamobile.com/ from your mobile phone. This mobile site will let you see all of the local Vegas attractions on Virtual Earth Satellite maps. You can use MSN Local search to get the addresses and phone numbers for places around the city, and then view them directly on your device--overlaid on a VE satellite map.

QuickStarts are back

Dr Neil — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 23:46:00 GMT

One of the fastest ways to get started with Virtual Earth is to look through the QuickStart Samples. The samples have been updated and tested with the version 2 control. For more information and details on how to get features working you should have a look through the articles.

More Images for the V2 MapControl

Dr Neil — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 09:59:00 GMT

Want to change the way the compass and zoombar controls look on your mashup? We have updated the V1 image sets to work with the V2 mapcontrol, you can downlaod them here. Part 2 of the Getting Started Guide shows you how to use these images on your applications. Remember to let us know when you have created an application that works with VirtualEarth and we can add it to the gallery. You might also want to enter your application into the competition and try to win an XBox 360.

New Features

Dr Neil — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 10:21:00 GMT

This week has seen some changes to the ViaVirtualEarth site. Firstly a profiles area where you can change your details and your password. You will also notice that we have started to list a couple of products you might find interesting and useful as a developer of web mapping software. We hope you find our recommendations useful. We have also been working on updating the quickstarts and should have them posted soon, keep your eyes on the Resources section

Getting There

Dr Neil — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 01:30:00 GMT

I have nearly finsihed the article on building your own driving directions in your application. You can start exploring the code and the sample now.

Map tiles not updating properly

Dr Neil — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 22:03:00 GMT

It seems that many VirtualEarth application developers are seeing issues with missing tiles. There has been a discussion on the forum relating to this and you can subscribe to forum posts now so you can follow this thread from your email inbox.

Virtual Earth Madness Competition - win an XBox 360!

Dr Neil — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 22:25:00 GMT

The Virtual Earth Madness competition was announced last week. The competition has started and Thom Robbins has posted the details on his Weblog. View Virtual Earth Madness – The Rules (SWF Format) View Virtual Earth Madness – The Rules (WMV Format) Download the Rules PPT

Two Great New Articles

Dr Neil — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 04:53:00 GMT

On the same day O'Reilly has published two articles on developing with Virtual Earth. The first is by Luke Burton, author of several articles on this site. Luke has been busy extending the OSX Dashboard Virtual Earth Widget he built. The second article is by MSN's Dare Obasanjo. Dare explains how he built the Seattle Movie Finder using ASP.NET and Virtual Earth. Both articles are worth reading.

Street Level Images

Dr Neil — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:16:00 GMT

The latest inovation from the Virtual Earth team is mind blowing. Check it the street level preview that lets you drive around town.

Virtual Earth Madness Forum is open

Dr Neil — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:33:00 GMT

The Virtual Earth Madness event is nearly upon us, have you registered yet? If you can't get to the event you can always attend the virtual session . To help out with the competition we have opened a discussion forum dedicated to the event and the competition that will run for the next couple of months. Attend the event to hear about how you could win a chance at a new XBOX 360 by putting your coding skills to the test with the First East Region Virtual Earth Mashup.

More FreshLogic Features

Dr Neil — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 22:05:00 GMT

Those clever folks at FreshLogic Studios have added 2 new features to their Atlas application. They will now show you Movies around a given zipcode. They have a nice interface for seeing the movie listings and times built into the popup window. From a provided zipcode you can also see who is blogging in the neighborhood. Very slick.

Virtual Earth Madness in Live Meeting

Dr Neil — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 23:43:00 GMT

A few days back I posted about the developer community in Massachusetts hosting a range of activities around building cool mashups with Virtual Earth. As the interest in this event is not limited to those wonderful folks living in that part of the world they have created a virtual event, so there no excuse not to attend.

IE Developer Toolbar (beta 2) and Virtual Earth images

Dr Neil — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 20:35:00 GMT

Julia Lerman of the data farm has been investigating the benefits of the IE developer toolbar. Read how she uses it to find out about the image files in Virtual Earth in her blog.

Help the Fire Department

Dr Neil — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 01:52:00 GMT

This thread in the General Chatter Forum grabbed my attention. Sounds like a very cool project. Come on VirtualEarth developers give this project a helping hand.

Virtual Earth Madness Developer Event

Dr Neil — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:09:00 GMT

The amazing group of evangelists and supporters of the developer community in Massachusetts are hosting a range of activities around building cool mashups with Virtual Earth.

Their description:

Virtual Earth is a new map and search system. It brings together a number of components that allow the user to find out what is here? and where are the nearest things to here? The components of Virtual Earth consist of maps, aerial imagery, photos, business directories, ratings and reviews. The Virtual Earth Standard control includes the capability to choose a map style, add pushpins, zoom in or out on the map with the mouse wheel, zoom in by double-clicking a location, move the map by dragging it, and more. In this session we will learn how to build applications that take advantage of these new components. Stay to the end of the session to hear how you could win a chance at a new XBOX 360 by putting your coding skills to the test with the First East Region Virtual Earth Mashup!

If you are in that part of the world get yourself registered.

Virtual Earth Mobile Gets Updated

Dr Neil — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 01:57:00 GMT

The VirtualEarth application for Windows Mobile has been updated to use the new V2 map servers. I have just downloaded the new cab and installed it on my Windows Mobile 5.0 device. It rocks. Well done guys! Let me know if you have updated your application and I'll review it.

One week left to update your site

Dr Neil — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 06:05:00 GMT

As we have pointed out before the version 1 map servers for Virtual Earth are going to be shut down on Feb 12th. While you are updating why not get some of the new features like Birds Eye working? The documentation on MSDN explains how to do some of this and we have some articles on this site.

Find my way through the directions code

Dr Neil — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 23:26:00 GMT

I have been playing around with the driving directions code. As with the search and birds eye functions you will need to create a server side proxy to get this working for your site. I have been putting one together in ASP.NET (1.1). you can see the results here . You need to pass the start and end points to this page. The code for this can be found in a text file here.

Super Bowl comes to Virtual Earth

Dr Neil — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 09:05:00 GMT

The Poly9 team has been busy again! This time they have brought us a mashup for the Super Bowl. It shows the location of all the past Super Bowls and if you are lucky enough to be going to Detroit you can find all the great places to visit on your trip. The new Birds Eye images for Detroit are awesome, be sure to check them out.

Local Search Gadget

Dr Neil — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:29:00 GMT

Find what your looking for; from parking near the big game to that little restauraunt in Italy with this gadget by Fresh Logic Studios.

First, enter "what" your looking for. Second, enter "where" you'd like to find it. Hit the search button and you'll be taken to a map that shows your results.

FreshLogic gets Gas Prices and Traffic Info

Dr Neil — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:25:00 GMT

Our friends at FreshLogic have added a couple of features to their mashup. They have added gas prices and traffic info. You do have to sign up to their site to get this info. I am not sure what the reason for this is. Personally I don’t think it is necessary, I would much prefer to just have the features available without having to sign in. Maybe they are planning something else for which it makes sense to sign in?

Dev servers now fixed

Dr Neil — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:00:00 GMT

There have been a number of issues with the control on the dev servers in the last few days, including missing tiles and out of date Birds Eye data.

This is all now resolved and we can go back to developing our applications using the hosted map control.

Dude, where are my getting started articles?

Dr Neil — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:33:00 GMT

We have now removed the first two getting started articles from the site. They only served to confuse people as they were dedicated to version 1 of the Virtual Earth Map control and that has now been updated.

Alex Daley has posted on the forthcoming demise of the version 1 servers, so it is time to get your site updated.

You should now use the updated articles for guidance.

Undocumented Features

Dr Neil — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:18:00 GMT

As I have been playing around with the new Virtual Earth control it has been interesting to discover some of the undocumented features of Virtual Earth that are emerging in the product.The most obvious one for me was the appearance of detailed street level maps in the UK and some of northern mainland Europe.Along with this the Where search has been updated. Now you can search for “Edinburgh, Scotland” and “Liverpool, England”. Much of Northern France (North of Paris) has detailed street level maps. These areas also support driving directions. Try plotting a route from Wrexham, Wales to Ashford, England. Any other cool things you have discovered about Windows Live Local?

Linking Images

Dr Neil — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT

If you are using Virtual Earth technology on your site or playing with some of the examples, or you simply want to show off that you are part of the Web 2.0 AJAX revolution why not add a link to our site on your site?

We have created some graphics for you to use for your links.

Forum Subscriptions

Dr Neil — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT

The ViaVirtualEarth team has been hard at work to improve your experience using this site. If you are a registered user on this site (which costs you nothing remember) you can subscribe to be notified by email when a new thread is added to a forum or when a particular thread changes. Go to the forums now and try it out or tell us what you think of the new feature.

New version of Dashboard Widget

Dr Neil — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 22:32:00 GMT

Our friend Luke has released a new version of his Virtual Earth Dashboard Widget for Apple's OSX Dashboard. I just installed it on my Powerbook, very sweet. The Virtual Earth widget is number 15 in Apple's top 50 widgets list. Great work Luke.