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ViaWindowsLive on Via Virtual Earth Blog
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 on Via Virtual Earth Blog
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:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=5"></script>
If you have been effected a forum thread has been started here
Silverlight Virtual Earth viewer on Via Virtual Earth Blog
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. on Via Virtual Earth Blog
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! on Via Virtual Earth Blog
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)
Implementation - Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft
Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft by Dr. Neil on 7 Apr 06 @ 18:43:00 UTC
Today I had a really good meeting with some of the Virtual Earth development team. I brought some of the concerns over the v1 commercial control that I have seen here on the forum and in this community to their attention. They know something needs to be done and are working to improve licensing and make the controls more available for developers of all kinds.
Starting immediately, commercial applications can be built with the v2 Map Control under a simple, flexible transactional license just like the one used for MapPoint Web Service. With this license, you get access to the control, all the functionality of the web service: geo-coding, driving directions, proximity search, data management, reporting and more, as well as service guarantees and professional support. If you are interested in licensing the control today, contact maplic@microsoft.com for more information. Microsoft is posting details on the licensing model online as materials are developed. You can find out more by checking out the new www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/ site and staying tuned to their developer blog at blogs.msdn.com/virtualearth/.
As for the general terms of use on the v1 commercial control and other controls moving forward, they are trying to work out details and asked me what I would like to see. I have a few ideas and I mentioned them, but I think this is a great opportunity for this community to help drive the direction of the product. So, what do you think terms for a commercial mashup should look like?
What restrictions should be placed on the commercial control?
What do you think of the “what / where” restriction on the current commercial control?
What would you consider to be excessive usage?
Should Microsoft charge for excessive usage of the map servers or make up their costs somehow else?
What kind of commercial applications should be allowed on the control?
Some of the map providers out there are experimenting with putting advertising on mashups. How do you think a successful advertising program would work?
What are the requirements for you to accept ads on your site?
Let me know and I will pass the information on.
RE: Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft by Dave From Sydney on 9 Apr 06 @ 23:24:00 UTC
This site:
http://irv.yellowpages.com/
is using the latest Virtual Earth suff, including Birds Eye, and with no What/Where controls and inside their own window.
They are obviously not using the V1 Commercial Contrtol.
What do we need to do to do similar things in our commercial website?
RE: Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft by Dave From Sydney on 9 Apr 06 @ 23:35:00 UTC
To answer, sort of, your questions:
In our commercial site, where users pay for subscriptions, we would not want any What/Where or advertising stuff degrading the map. It is irrelevant to our users anyway, who are not usig the site for personal purposes.
Some form of Microsoft branding on or near the image would be ok.
We would not expect high volumes. Certainly less than 10000 maps per day. Probably less than 1000. We would hope that such access was not "excessive" and therefore would not be charged. If there were charges and they exceeeded $10000 per year we would probably not use the service.
Above all, especially if you are going to charge, then give it some support. The V1 Commercial control is poorly documented and is broken.
RE: Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft by FreshLogicStudios on 10 Apr 06 @ 04:04:00 UTC
Q: What restrictions should be placed on the commercial control?
A: Whatever needs to happen in order to eliminate a pay-per-transaction license model.
Q: What do you think of the “what / where” restriction on the current commercial control?
A: Perfect. I much prefer this to a transactional license model.
Q: Should Microsoft charge for excessive usage of the map servers or make up their costs somehow else?
A: No charges for excessive usage. If they can't make up their costs using the current "what/where" advertisement restriction, then we need to think up another way for them to make money. But don't charge X for one amount of usage and Y for another amount of usage. That's unnecessary complication and it's a huge turn-off. This needs to be a one size fits all solution.
Q: What kind of commercial applications should be allowed on the control?
A: The "kind" of commercial applications shouldn't matter. If you're offering a web based mapping platform, I'm going to build some type of web based map product. Who's to say what kind of map application is right and what kind is wrong?
Q: Some of the map providers out there are experimenting with putting advertising on mashups. How do you think a successful advertising program would work?
A: For mashup creators it makes a lot of sense to incorporate advertisements along with the data they are using from a 3rd party. The mashup creator gets the data that they want, the data provider gets the opportunity to have advertisements displayed on another spot they might not have reached on the web. It's a win/win. In the Virtual Earth map control case advertisements for local searches can be highly targeted to not only to what the person is looking for, but also to where they are looking for it at. We love the ads at Fresh Logic Studios; we're constantly clicking on them when we do a local search in our Atlas product because they're done so well. We've taken advantage of a couple good deals because someone was offering a coupon nearby.
RE: Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft by ghammSTA on 11 Apr 06 @ 14:17:00 UTC
What restrictions should be placed on the commercial control?
Make sure that my commercial usage is just that. I'm assuming telling the difference between calls to VE from a commercial use page vs local.live.com will not be an issue, but for a product that is entirely javascript based, where would liscence/key info be stored so that any @$$ out there couldn't just look through my javascript and use my liscence in their code.
What would you consider to be excessive usage?
When the servers are so tied up that tiles are taking a noticable amount of time to come back. Not that this has been much of an issue lately, but just an answer to the question.
Should Microsoft charge for excessive usage of the map servers or make up their costs somehow else?
If this is truely an issue, you should offer a seperate pricing model so that a large commercial user could host VE locally with their other servers and have a maintenance contract, quarterly updates or something like that.
What kind of commercial applications should be allowed on the control?
All commercial applications should be allowed, as also stated by FreshLogicStudios.
What are the requirements for you to accept ads on your site?
If its a commercial site and I'm paying per transaction, I don't want to see any ads.
RE: Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft by Dave From Sydney on 11 Apr 06 @ 22:04:00 UTC
"What are the requirements for you to accept ads on your site?"
In our site the users can be professionals involved in site acquisition for fast food chains etc. They have no personal interest in the areas under investigation. Andvertisenents aimed at people who live or work or visit the areas shown on the map would be irrelevant to them.
RE: Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft by vefan on 12 Apr 06 @ 15:04:00 UTC
I think it's well said by FreshLogicStudios.
Ads or What/Where boxes are no problem. Don't like the pay-per-transaction model. And I think most sites are low volume users.
Virtual Earth distincts itself among other map providers with the commercial model. I believe other providers are working on the same model, that is, delivering ads in return for free maps.
As for the quality of the current v1 commercial control, I just want it to be comparable with Google Maps! Am I dreaming?!
Wish list:
- Connect pushpins with lines
- Pushpin popup window in a shape with an arrow (like google, or yahoo's)
- The zoom control is broken in current v1 commercial js. It won't show up.
RE: Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft by whitey on 23 Apr 06 @ 11:36:00 UTC
With other map search engines going from pushpin to push pin is a lot easier as it follows the pushpins (icons)when giving milage and directions. This program is "preprogrammed" to give you the directions as the "crow flies". This is a major problem when working on special routes and trying to get directions. I like one of your competitors as you only have to click at any place along the route to create a pushpin (icon) and it gives directions from pushpin to push pin regardless....(not preprogrammed). It also does not have a limit of pushpins/icons as this program has.
RE: Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft by ronenm on 23 Apr 06 @ 14:55:00 UTC
We see this map as a lot more then a directions control and geo searches for web sites.
My company wants to embed the component inside our product in order to have our customers geo info presented on this powerfull control.
(Of course web based)
This means that we do not want our customers to have any attachments with our third party (Microsoft in this case)
So we need a license that allows full usage of the control, no ads and option to no search controls, and of course no transactional license.
Full money should be paid on free use of this control. (or some single amount per customer of ours)
The expected traffic on this is very low.
I read above the following idea that sounds great to solve the performance problem -
"If this is truly an issue, you should offer a separate pricing model so that a large commercial user could host VE locally with their other servers and have a maintenance contract, quarterly updates or something like that"
RE: Commercial Control - Feedback from and to Microsoft by jeffwsmith on 4 Jun 06 @ 19:22:00 UTC
When's v2 of the Commercial control coming out? Just an e-fix version would be great. I can't even print pushpins as it is now. Nor can I get the "What" working. BTW, I've looked all over the place and have yet to see a fully functional Commercial Control.