Mark Brown's Web Platform Blog : Web Services

Virtual Earth 6.2 Technical Webcast On Demand

mjbrown — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:37:42 GMT

I uploaded my webcast into our SkyDrive service and have posted it here for your viewing pleasure. Check out my blog post from last week for the download details for the samples from this webcast.

Also I should point out that we have updated the WCF contracts for our staging service so if you are using the samples you should delete and recreate the service references for all of the services in these samples so that they won't throw exceptions.

Enjoy.

Samples from VE 6.2 Technical Webcast

mjbrown — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:19:06 GMT

Hey everybody, Mark Brown here. I hope you enjoyed our technical webcast today. I wanted to provide you with the demos I showed during our presentation. These should give you a leg up in exploring the features from both the Virtual Earth 6.2 Map Control and our Virtual Earth Web Services 1.0.

Download from SkyDrive

I would also encourage you all to stay tuned to http://dev.live.com/virtualearth for all new goodies that come from me or the Virtual Earth community as well.

Enjoy.

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

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.

Tech Ed is Awesome

mjbrown — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:45:39 GMT

I'm having a great time at Tech Ed this year. There are TONS of developers here and they are really enjoying themselves. I had my session yesterday on Virtual Earth. The room was packed, standing room only with probably close to 200 people in there. Among some of the things I announced yesterday includes:

A CTP release of our Virtual Earth ASP.NET control in July. Stay tuned here for an announcement on downloading.
A Virtual Earth Web Services Framework in our next release this fall. Currently you have two options for Virtual Earth. An AJAX control and our Map Point Web Services. We're getting ready to release a completely new SOAP-based web service that includes the best features from both offerings. This will also give developers more choice if they are currently creating map applications using Flash.
A Staging environment for our customers. Customers today create their applications using our production environment. This is a bit of a pain because this is metered against their production usage of Virtual Earth. Coming soon customers can develop and test their applications using our staging environment and also develop applications with our advanced new features there first.

So stay tuned here. I'm working on putting up some of the demos I showed at Tech Ed including an ASP.NET website that demonstrates Walking/Driving Directions, Reverse Geocoding and some other cool uses for Virtual Earth built in Visual Studio using the Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper that was released on Code Plex by the Virtual Earth community a couple of months ago.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,TechEd