Mark Brown's Web Platform Blog : Virtual Earth

Announcing PHP SDK for Windows Azure!

mjbrown — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:35:52 GMT

Hey busy day blogging today about the Microsoft Web Platform today!!!

Check this out, a new SDK for PHP developers to build applications using PHP on Azure. They have 4 sample projects that you can download from CodePlex for you to peruse.

Of course I’m a bit partial to the Virtual Earth PHP Kit but these others with Silverlight and SQL Server are great as well.

Interoperability @ Microsoft : Announcing PHP SDK for Windows Azure… and much more!

And don’t forget, the easiest way to get set up doing PHP on Windows and IIS is to use our Web Platform Installer :)

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Web PI,Azure,PHP,Virtual Earth,SQL Server,SilverLight

Virtual Earth Presence at PDC

mjbrown — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:35:34 GMT

Hey everybody. Sorry for not posting much lately. I've been on the road nearly non-stop for the past three weeks. And again, here I am on the road, but at least this time it is for the PDC.

I've got a bunch in store for any of you coming to PDC this year.

First up we have a booth in the Pavilion area. We are right at the entrance to the Big Hall and you can't miss us. Just look for the 42" Flat Screen with all that great imagery from Virtual Earth on it.
We also have two HOL's this year. One is on the updated Virtual Earth Map Control 6.2 and the other walks you through our brand new Virtual Earth Web Services. Secret tip. If you get all the way to the end of the HOL there is a secret password that if you say to one of the guys working our booth at the Pavilion, will give you a very special, limited edition, Virtual Earth t-shirt.
There are also a bunch of Senior Engineers from the Virtual Earth product team here and they will be hanging out at the booth as well as the Lounge areas. Be sure to come see us at the Ask The Experts event in Hall G on Wednesday at 6pm.
Finally I am delivering a session. BB10: Deep Dive on Virtual Earth. I'll walk through our updated map control, the new Web Services. I am also going to do a line of business demo showing Virtual Earth and SQL Spatial and finally, we are doing a Panel Q&A with the same product team engineers who are here at this conference. And if that isn't enough everyone who stays until the end of the session will also receive a Virtual Earth t-shirt.

So come check us out.

Technorati Tags: Virtual Earth,PDC,PDC2008,PDC 2008

Announcing: Virtual Earth 6.2 and Virtual Earth Web Services 1.0

mjbrown — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:38:30 GMT

Well here it is everybody. The next version of Virtual Earth is out. Not only that but we now have our 1.0 version of the Virtual Earth Web Services here live as well. Let’s dig in to some of the features in this release.

Maps for Mobile Devices. Develop mobile applications with rich imagery optimized specifically for mobile devices, including the iPhone. The new mobile-optimized features are supported in the new Virtual Earth Web Services.
Bird’s Eye Views and Bird’s Eye Hybrid. Exclusive to Microsoft, these unique views of real-world locations provide insight into “what it’s like there.” Bird’s eye hybrid adds street names to the bird’s eye maps to provide end users better visual context and orientation.
Aerial Imagery. Leverage the impact of high-resolution aerial images from leading imagery providers.
3D Imagery. Create more realistic 3D views of buildings and landscapes, featuring denser city models.
Geocoding and Reverse Geocoding. Get the most accurate locations around the world through integration of multiple geocoders and datasets with MapView, Reverse IP, and Culture to provide the most relevant and accurate results. And find the closest street address based only on latitude and longitude coordinates from a GPS or other geospatial device.
International Geocoding. Your customers can now find international addresses with reverse geocoding, available anywhere Virtual Earth has routing.
Localized Directions. Get localized driving or walking directions in 15 languages.
Localized Maps. Create better connections with your global customers. Provide localized maps in U.S. English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian in Western Europe.
Extended International Parsing Capabilities. Users will experience better match rates for addresses in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
Expanded Number of Rooftop Views. Provide more detailed maps to help users find locations with rooftop accuracy. Virtual Earth now offers 85 million unique addresses—more than 70 percent of all rooftops in the U.S.
Near-Matching Capabilities. using alternate and similar spellings, resulting in a more relevant search experience.
Imagery Metadata. Users can now find out the relative age of a given aerial image. This level of detail will help them assess if the imagery is relevant to their needs.
New Virtual Earth Web Services. Developers can now take advantage of the new Virtual Earth Web Services API, which offers static map images (.gif, .jpeg, and .png), direct map tile access, one-box search functionality, geocoding, reverse geocoding, and routing.
One-Click Directions. From your Virtual Earth Web application, allow your customers to get directions in one click, choosing from route options by shortest time, shortest distance, or traffic flow. With one-click directions, users instantly get directions without having to enter a starting address.
Shapes and Shape Layers. Customize and modify pushpins, polylines and polygons, line colors and widths, and transparencies of shapes, as well as add custom icons.
Pushpin Clustering. Provide customers the ability to zoom in on a map to better visualize a cluster of points. When many locations exist in a dense area, the pushpins can be clustered or hidden from view at smaller zoom levels.
Landmark-Based Routing. Provide customers in the U.S. and Canada with turn-by-turn maps that feature such familiar landmarks as gas stations and fast-food restaurants by name.
Driving Directions with Traffic-Based Routing. Provide optimized driving directions with step-by-step instructions.
Walking Directions. When traveling on foot, users can now find the most direct route to walk to their destination, ignoring one-way streets, medians, and other detours that pertain to motor vehicles.
Multipoint Routing. Optimize travel schedules and improve driver efficiency by implementing the Virtual Earth trip planner and multipoint routing.
Traffic Reports. Avoid time-consuming traffic jams by using traffic reports that overlay the Virtual Earth map with color-coded traffic flow visuals above the roads that they correspond to. NOTE: These traffic overlays are available to licensed customers that implement the client token authentication infrastructure.
GeoRSS Feeds. Import shapes, pushpins, and polylines, with GeoRSS feeds, the de facto standard for geographically encoded objects.
Weather Integration. With 3D view, get near real-time weather and cloud formation data.

Get more information:

We have two webcasts coming up next week for you to learn more and get started.

See Chris Pendleton’s Blog Post on his Launch Webcast on October 2nd at 9AM.
Mark Brown’s Blog Post for his Technical Webcast the next day on October 3rd at 10am.

Finally, if you haven’t already get out to http://dev.live.com/virtualearth and check out our updated Interactive SDK and Virtual Earth Web Services SDK. Plus we’re also going to be publishing a bunch more content out on this portal including a whole new round of white papers and other community created content. There’s tons of more options now for building your applications with Virtual Earth so this site should be your one-stop shop for everything Virtual Earth related.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth

Virtual Earth 6.2 Technical Webcast

mjbrown — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:36:50 GMT

Hey everybody. Sorry for being so quiet lately. Most of you may know that we’re getting ready to release our next version of Virtual Earth. There’s a ton of AWESOME features we got into this release and to help you all get a good start playing with them on October 3, 2008 I will be delivering a 90 minute webcast where I’ll dig into each of these features and show you some source code for how to use them.

Now this webcast is going to be delivered using our Live Meeting Service which is a little bit different for many of us who have attended Microsoft webcasts in the past. But I wanted to give this a try. For many of you this means that you’ll have to install our Live Meeting client to view the webcast. I have some instructions below on getting yourselves setup and running so when you click on the meeting link below you won’t miss a single second of this webcast :) Seriously, I would strongly encourage you to click on the test link below to make sure you are all set.

Virtual Earth 6.2 Technical Webcast

Event Date: Friday, October 3, 2008
Event Time: 10:00 AM PT
Duration: 90 minutes

Join Mark Brown, Senior Product Manager for Virtual Earth to get a deep dive review of the next version of Virtual Earth 6.2 with demos throughout to show you how to leverage these in your applications. In addition we are releasing Virtual Earth Web Services v1.0. This SOAP-based web service was designed for developers looking to build and deploy mapping applications in a server-side environment and provides support for building desktop and mobile applications. Mark will also go through a number of the features in this v1 release with some demos and sample code as well.

Test your System (do this today)

Join the Event (10/3/08, 10am Pacific)

Telephone Dial in (if you don’t have computer mic/speakers)

US/Canada: (877) 220-6697
International: (503) 295-8000
PIN: 8074

If you have any problems getting your system set up or have other related issues with connecting the day of the event this information below will help.

That’s it! I’m excited about our next release and I hope to see you all there.

EDIT: Hey, I almost forgot. Chris Pendleton is also giving a webcast on the upcoming release just one day before mine. I would definitely check it out to get a good overview of what’s coming. Plus nobody delivers a smoother webcast than Chris so you gotta check it out. Read his blog post here for details, http://blogs.msdn.com/virtualearth/archive/2008/09/11/virtual-earth-webcast-for-upcoming-release.aspx

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More technical details for troubleshooting Live Meeting

Requirements for Attending this Event

We strongly suggest you test your computer’s configuration: https://events.livemeeting.com/LM2007test.htm to ensure you are running the most current version of Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

When you enter the test event, you will be prompted to install and run the Office Live Meeting Client software if you have not downloaded it already. If you cancel the software installation, you will be given a link to attend the event using the Microsoft Web Access, a browser-based client.
Once entered, you should see the Office Live Meeting client with a slide that indicates your test is successful.
If you are not able to see the slides, please contact Event Support (see the section “Contact Office Live Meeting Event Support” below).

Login Details for Live Event Session

Day of Event:

15 minutes before the event begins.

Join the Event

or click the meeting URL:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/lmevents/join?id=msft100308mb&role=attend&pw=ATT12766

or if you can’t click the above meeting URL, click the following link:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/lmevents/join

When you click on either URL, the Join Meeting page appears. In the following fields, verify or enter this information:

Name: (Enter your first and last name)
Meeting ID: msft100308mb
Entry Code: ATT12766

1. If prompted, install and run the Office Live Meeting software (recommended) or launch the Microsoft Web Access client (for Attendees unable to install the software, as well as anyone joining using a Macintosh). It will take a few moments for the Office Live Meeting client to launch.

2. On the next page, please enter your e-mail and company name in their respective fields, if necessary, and click Continue.

Listen to the audio portion of the event

Once you log in to the Office Live Meeting client, you should hear the event’s streaming audio. If you do not hear the audio, please confirm that your PC speakers are on and that the volume is turned up. If you continue to experience difficulties, please contact Event Support (see “Contact Office Live Meeting Event Support” below).

Note: If you are using the Microsoft Web Access client, you will not hear the audio over your computer speakers. Please see “Back-up telephone audio” below or contact your meeting organizer to view the replay of the event.

Back-up telephone audio

If you are unable to connect to the audio through the Computer Audio, you can dial in to the audio over a traditional telephony line:

US/Canada: (877) 220-6697
International: (503) 295-8000
PIN: 8074

Contact Office Live Meeting Event Support

For technical assistance, contact Event Support at:

US/Canada toll free: (1) (800) 893-8779
International: (1) (971) 544-3222
Online: http://www.livemeeting.com/ask (Please reference: “Virtual Earth 6.2 Launch - Technical Webcast” in the Subject line of the e-mail.)

Additional Information

Note: Your event experience when using the Microsoft Web Access client will be very similar to using the Windows-based Office Live Meeting Client software, but the functionality and layout of the Microsoft Web Access client is slightly different. If using the Microsoft Web Access client, you will be unable to listen to streaming audio or watch the active presenter video during the Live Meeting presentation. Contact your meeting organizer to view a replay of the event.

Thank you and enjoy the Event!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth

Tech Ed Interview with Carl Franklin

mjbrown — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:15:46 GMT

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. Been a little crazy for me lately getting everything ramped up for our upcoming release of Virtual Earth which is due here very very soon.

When we were all at Tech Ed North America in Orlando, FL this past June I sat down with Angus Logan, Dr. Neil and Carl Franklin of .NET Rocks! fame for a little interview. We covered a bunch of stuff including our upcoming Virtual Earth release which will feature v1 of our Virtual Earth Web Services. Our recent CTP release of the Virtual Earth ASP.NET control, our UltraCam, 3D models as well as a bunch of other Windows Live Platform services including Messenger, Silverlight Streaming, etc.

We also go into excruciating detail into the definition, exploration and proper usage of the word, “Chuffed”.

Enjoy !!!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,Windows Live,TechEd,UltraCam

Press Release: Virtual Earth to be offered with ESRI ArcGIS

mjbrown — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:49:07 GMT

Today we announced that Microsoft Virtual Earth will be offered within ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop product. The ArcGIS Desktop integration gives you another way to leverage the incredible imagery and base maps to visualize your data. To publish using ArcGIS Server you’ll still need a Virtual Earth license. Read below for our Press Release and for more information and also check out our published FAQ as well.

Microsoft Virtual Earth to Be Offered with ESRI’s ArcGIS Online Services

Mapping platform collaboration helps improve business processes, unlock and gain insight into data, and create better citizen and customer connections

Redmond, Wash., and Redlands, Calif. — July 29, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. and ESRI today announced that ESRI ArcGIS users will have access to the robust mapping and imagery content provided by the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform inside ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server. With Virtual Earth seamlessly integrated into ArcGIS 9.3 Desktop, ArcGIS users are now able to easily add base maps, which feature rich aerial and hybrid views, to perform data creation, editing, analysis, authoring, and map publishing with one-click access.

“Microsoft and ESRI have a long-standing history of delivering complete geographic information systems solutions,” said Erik Jorgenson, corporate vice president at Microsoft Corp. “The integration of Virtual Earth and ArcGIS 9.3 at both desktop application and platform levels enables customers to better view, analyze, understand, interpret, and visualize geographic data. This new offering further extends the software-plus-services choices available to our mutual customers.”

“With the new ArcGIS Online Virtual Earth map services, ArcGIS Desktop, and ArcGIS Explorer users will have nearly instant access to some of the world’s finest base map layers,” said S.J. Camarata, Director of Corporate Strategies at ESRI. “Through this collaboration with Microsoft, street maps, vertical imagery, and hybrid maps will be available on an affordable, annual subscription fee basis.”

Together, Virtual Earth and ArcGIS Online services will enable customers to access resources that add comprehensive depth to their projects. The seamless integration of Virtual Earth throughout the entire ArcGIS system makes it easier for ArcGIS customers to offer their end-users better insight into their services, which can inspire deeper involvement and participation with their valuable GIS data.

The ArcGIS Online Virtual Earth map services will include high-resolution street maps, imagery, and hybrid maps. Street map coverage is available for more than 60 countries and regions including North America, Europe, South America, the Asia Pacific region, and Northern Africa. Aerial and satellite imagery includes worldwide coverage, but varies by region. ESRI integrates with other Microsoft products that may be part of a user’s Virtual Earth solution to incorporate internal and third-party data—making information more discoverable, more visual, and better to take action upon.

Land planning, site selection, crime analysis, road network analysis, and delivery network management are just few examples of how ArcGIS desktop users, including ArcGIS Explorer users, can leverage ArcGIS Online Virtual Earth map services. ArcGIS Server users will be able to connect to ArcGIS Online Virtual Earth Map Services at a later date, through a service pack.

Users can preview Virtual Earth street maps, imagery, and hybrid map layers at http://resources.esri.com/arcgisonlineservices . To learn more about ArcGIS Online, visit www.esri.com/arcgisonline.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

About ESRI

Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,ESRI,ArcGIS

Announcing: Virtual Earth ASP.NET Control (CTP Release)

mjbrown — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:14:00 GMT

At long last it is FINALLY HERE. I’ve been talking about this control for a long time. We’ll we finally have the CTP release of the new Virtual Earth ASP.NET control. ASP.NET developers can now integrate Microsoft Virtual Earth Maps simply by dragging and dropping an ASP.NET Server Control in Visual Studio and Visual Web Developer.

Integrating interactive, immersive maps no longer requires JavaScript, it can be done by ASP.NET developers simply. For smooth interactions this control can be combined with ASP.NET AJAX capabilities to provide the power of ASP.NET Serverside processing without the development overhead of coding JavaScript. I’ll provide all the relevant links here at the top but you should check at the bottom to make sure you have all the prerequisites.

Key Links

To download: http://dev.live.com/tools and download the Windows Live Tools July CTP release.
For a Developer Evaluation account (to access Traffic): https://mappoint-css.live.com/mwssignup/ (requires Live ID)
Channel 9 Screencast: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Mark+Brown/Virtual-Earth-ASPNET-Control-CTP-Release/
To give feedback: https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/default.aspx?SiteID=505

Feature Overview

· Visual Studio toolbox - Map control is available right in your toolbox of Visual Studio

· Drag and drop control onto your web page - You can drag and drop the control from toolbox onto your web page and set some properties and you are ready to go.

· Server side events - Server side events for panning/zooming, find/directions are available in addition to client side events for the map control.

· Display and control the map - You can control how map displays on your web page with standard functionality like MapMode (2D/3D), MapStyle(Road/Aerial), displaying dashboard and setting its size, setting the zoom levels, zooming in/out, panning etc.

· Adding shapes to the map - You can add shapes to map from ASP.NET Server Side using provided methods. You can query different shapes/layers in the Map and delete them as well.

· Using directions - You can get the directions between multiple points using methods GetDirections. You can specify different routing options like distance unit, color etc. Once the direction information is received, Map control raises event OnServerDirections where you can process/render the returned information in way that suites your scenario.

· Using local search and mapping results - Map control provides with find method where you can search for local businesses in a specified location.

· Working with bird's eyes - Map control has support for bird's eye view similar to JavaScript control.

· Getting Traffic information - You can get traffic information and display on your web page. For this, you need to have an account with Virtual Earth Platform. You first need to get a client token:

Important: To get a Developer Evaluation account for Virtual Earth go to this link here and request one, https://mappoint-css.live.com/mwssignup/

· You can then use this client token to display the traffic of the location you are interested in:

Development stage

The suite of tools is currently a community technology preview, which means we would love feedback, but strongly discourage any web site from going live using these controls.

Requirements for Using Windows Live Tools

This CTP release only targets English (United States).

Operating System

Microsoft Windows XP SP 2 or
Microsoft Windows Vista

Development Tools

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or
Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 (already installed if you have Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or .NET 3.5 Framework installed)
Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008

Key Links

To download: http://dev.live.com/tools and download the Windows Live Tools July CTP release.
Channel 9 Screencast: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Mark+Brown/Virtual-Earth-ASPNET-Control-CTP-Release/
For a Developer Evaluation account (to access Traffic): https://mappoint-css.live.com/mwssignup/ (Requires Live ID)
To give feedback: https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/default.aspx?SiteID=505

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth

Add your own 3D models to Virtual Earth

mjbrown — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:00:43 GMT

Well we've finally done it! We now have a way for you to create or import your own models and put them into Virtual Earth using truSpace which comes from Caligari who we brought into Microsoft not too long ago. Not only that but you can get truSpace for FREE. You can also import models you have already from many of the popular 3D modeling tools into truSpace and then upload them right into Virtual Earth. So get it for FREE today.

Chris Pendleton has all the details. This is a long post but includes step-by-step instructions on how to load your 3D models into Virtual Earth so it's worth a read and also includes a great video showing how you could use truSpace to create a virtual retail environment. --Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,3D,Caligari,truSpace

Speaking at GeoWeb Tomorrow

mjbrown — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:31:54 GMT

I’m up in Vancouver, BC this week for the GITA GeoWeb conference. I will be presenting with Ed Katibah on all things Virtual Earth and SQL Spatial.

A Complete Guide to Geo-Spatial Technology at Microsoft\(SOLD OUT)

Ed Katibah, Principal Program Manager - SQL Server Spatial, Mark Brown, Senior Product Manager - Virtual Earth,

Microsoft has made significant R&D investments over the past few years in an effort to build the best geospatial platform in the world and there is some incredible technology behind it all. Join us as we’ll go deep on the three main areas of R&D Microsoft has done. In this session we’ll explore the upcoming release of SQL Server Spatial and go into detail on how being the last to market allowed us to create an architecture that represents technology-forward thinking in Spatial database design and the benefits it brings the next generation of Spatial application design. Next we will discuss the investments Microsoft’s has made in aerial camera technology as well as the R&D in our 2D and 3D image and data processing that provides the underlying rich platform within Virtual Earth. And finally we will show you the fruits of our labor and show you the applications that can now be built using the entire Virtual Earth Platform with SQL Spatial together.

Should be fun. I think we are the only workshop session that is SOLD OUT so no pressure. And I should be getting some sleep as my session is at 9am tomorrow and it’s after 11pm here now.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,GeoWeb

New Video Series, Behind the Maps – The Technology of Virtual Earth

mjbrown — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:06:14 GMT

Hey everyone so I’ve finally published the first episode of Behind the Maps out on Channel 9. This video series will take you on a journey where we will follow the path the data and imagery in Virtual Earth takes from the manufacture of the camera, to the capturing of imagery in an airplane, to the processing of that imagery, to the Virtual Earth platform and 3D control that delivers all of this data and imagery straight to your browser.

Our first episode takes us to Graz, Austria home of the UltraCam, our high-resolution aerial image camera. We meet Dr. Michael Gruber, inventor of the UltraCam and Bernhard Reitinger the creator of the UltraMap software that is used with the UltraCam camera.

Michael goes into some details about just how they built a camera that has such a high mega-pixel rate using a technique to combine 9 individual CCD’s to act like one big one and use 4 other CCD’s to handle all the color spectrum channels. Bernhard also goes into details on the UltraMap software and how it is used to manage and correct the imagery that is captured by this incredible camera. Here’s a link to the video below. I also have a nice picture of this camera here below I took at their camera laboratory in Graz. --Enjoy.

Behind The Maps - UltraCam

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,UltraCam,Channel 9

Virtual Earth at PDC

mjbrown — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:40:22 GMT

This year’s PDC will have a session on Virtual Earth. We have a big release coming up this Fall and I plan on giving an in depth look at it for those interested in building location aware applications. This session will be ~90% demos and code to give you all a leg up on getting started with all the new stuff. I am really excited by this new release so if you are coming to PDC check out my session.

Live Platform: Deep Dive on Microsoft Virtual Earth

Learn about the next major release of Virtual Earth. Come see the improvements to our parsing and geo-coding engines, clustering, localization, and routing. Hear how the new Virtual Earth Web Services provide server-side support for building location-based applications on desktops and mobile devices.

See you there.

New Silverlight Wrapper for Virtual Earth

mjbrown — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:11:57 GMT

A couple of guys from Microsoft, Jared Bienz from US-DPE ISV Team and Adam Eversole from Microsoft Research have created a new managed wrapper around the Virtual Earth AJAX control and released it onto Code Plex. From the projects description:

The Virtual Earth Wrapper for Silverlight (VIEWS) is a wrapper around the JavaScript Virtual Earth control that allows a developer to write a complex Virtual Earth Mashup using a managed language for all client-side scripting. This is accomplished by using the CLR (Common Language Runtime) support in Silverlight 2.0 (or later), and allows coding in C#, VB, Python, or other languages. Many developers already are using a managed language in ASP.NET for server-side tasks, now the same managed language can be used on the client-side as well, leveraging existing knowledge, and providing more continuity and consistency to the end-to-end solution.

They’ve also posted a screen cast showing this new control in action out on Channel 9. Check it out.

Virtual Earth Mapping in Silverlight with VIEWS

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,Silverlight

Virtual Earth & Silverlight Together on Windows Mobile

mjbrown — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:49:21 GMT

My friend Sam Chenaur over in the Developer and Platform Evangelism Team (DPE) here at Microsoft posted a blog entry the other day about an interview he did on Channel 10 with the CEO of John L. Scott Realty. If you didn’t know. John L. Scott is an existing user of Virtual Earth and did an amazing job integrating Virtual Earth onto their site. Check out the Neighborhood Wizard using Virtual Earth. It’s not surprising that John L Scott is doing so well given the way they use technology.

With the help of a few folks they’ve now taken that a step further and have created a proof-of-concept application that brings Virtual Earth down to the mobile device using Silverlight technology. This POC allows you to search for homes straight from your phone providing you details on the house, a video that showcases the house, more pictures and even allows you to call the real estate agent directly from the application. You can also use the application in GPS mode so you can drive around various communities and use the application to see what homes are for sale in that area without having to touch the device at all. Totally cool!

Silverlight Mobile with John L Scott Real Estate

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,Silverlight,Windows Mobile

Virtual Earth makes golfing more enjoyable

mjbrown — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:59:49 GMT

My friend Jerry over on the Virtual Earth 3D team turned me on to a company called, Terra Imaging who makes a product called, 3D Golf Course. They just finished doing the Torrey Pines course in La Jolla, CA where Tiger just won his 14th major championship. Here’s an interview they did on the local NBC affiliate. Their software is installed and used on golf carts to help golfers navigate the course. Here’s some screen shots. This thing is really cool.

This is the main screen you see while driving down the fairway trying to find your ball.

This is a player information screen to see your player information. Notice too that while you’re entering in your name you can watch the stock market.

Here on this screen you can see the player scorecard.

I love this screen where you can order food from your cart. Think I’ll order the Bunker Burger with a side of Flop Shot Fries and a Mulligan Milkshake. Mmmmmm….

Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,3D

Midwest Floods with Virtual Earth Maps on MSNBC.COM

mjbrown — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:07:52 GMT

Virtual Earth is a great tool to visualize the news. It provides information in new and very actionable ways. Chris Pendleton on the Virtual Earth team has a perfect example here with the top story this past week about the terrible floods in the American Mid-West. Read Chris’ post with more information and a link to the story here.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,MSNBC.COM,Iowa Floods