My contacts with the Microsoft Map Team inform me that another update of imagery has just hit the map service, now known as Bing Maps (was Virtual Earth) http://www.bing.com/maps – this latest update includes over 12 TB of data spanning over 45 countries and some 248,000 square kilometers. Of interest to my colleagues in BC, Canada, about 10,000 sq. Km of .5m imagery for BC has also been added.
An interesting mapping application is now available from LA County at http://lacounty.solarmap.org/ – powered by Virtual Earth, the app reveals solar energy installations and also provides information about potential energy savings… impressive! There’s also a handy tool where users can get an estimate of their potential savings fom solar energy. The map enables the county to accurately estimate the solar potential of government facility rooftops and for all residents to view existing solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in the city, including those on residential, commercial and government buildings. It also shows the amount of solar that has been installed per zip code. See more info here
I ran into details of this interestng event titled “Rapidly Building Enterprise Mashups for Greater Situational Awareness with SharePoint, Virtual Earth, & Visual Fusion” – scheduled to take place Wednesday, April 22, 2009 2:00 PM EST and run 60 mins. Overview — In this webcast learn how to rapidly build mashups of enterprise data and cloud content inside SharePoint with Visual Fusion. Visual Fusion is an enterprise mashup platform for creating interactive, map-based applications utilizing the power of SharePoint. Our software empowers everyone in an organization to create interactive, geospatial mashups from unlimited sources of data. It unites with SharePoint to form a platform for building Enterprise 2.0 apps that drive agility, collaboration, and insight. See details HERE
This week AT&T launched a child locator service with Microsoft Virtual Earth called FamilyMap. The new service enables parents to keep an eye out on their children at any time via AT&T’s location framework and the Microsoft Virtual Earth map. Parents can customize their mapping experience by labeling locations, creating schedules and viewing the whereabouts of their children from multiple angles, including with Bird’s Eye imagery. Check out more on this via: the VE blog
Interesting app, particularly as the Bird’s Eye photography illustrates an area of interest by providing an angled view of a location for additional context – parents will really dig this! FYI, The application was built by WaveMarket. _2.png)
An update from the VE team about iSynth… In early March, Apple Inc. released iSynth, the unofficial Photosynth iPhone application. Developed by an independent developer, Greg Pascale, iSynth enables iPhone customers to search, browse and explore synths directly on their phones. People can view the synths by tapping arrows on the screen to move to a different photo in normal mode or drag their fingers in the direction they want to rotate in orbit mode. See more HERE and take note, The application is available to download at the iTunes Store at http://www.itunes.com/app/isynth
From the VE Blog… Another huge addition to the digitization of our planet just hit the web last night – 21TB – all ortho imagery launched into Microsoft Virtual Earth, powering Live Search Maps (and other Live Search properties). This latest update includes some 21 terabytes of new straight aerial imagery in Brazil, Canada, China, France, India, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, the United States and many more. See details here
Interesting news from the Virtual Earth Blog… IDV Solutions is about to release an iPhone application dubbed “Visual Fusion Contribute.” Visual Fusion Contribute is an enterprise iPhone application that uses Virtual Earth to allow a user to contribute geo-tagged photos and notes back to SharePoint. The notes and photos can then be shared out into a Visual Fusion Server application – Visual Fusion is IDV’s product for creating geospatial mashups within SharePoint. Now this is a great idea!
Man, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth mapping service just gets better all the time… for imagery this service simply can’t be beat! Details of today’s announcement with DigitalGlobe include a multi-year contract under which DigitalGlobe will provide Microsoft’s Virtual Earth with its premium, high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will have access to DigitalGlobe’s vast ImageLibrary, which contains over 460 million square kilometers of premium earth imagery, as well as new images being collected every day by its growing constellation of satellites. Recall DigitalGlobe has highest-resolution satellites QuickBird and WorldView-1 hard at work and WorldView II will be coming in the near future. See more
Imagery over Old Town fort Collins, Co as seen via Virtual EarthGood news from the VE Blog about release 6.2… it’s here along with version 1.0 of the Virtual Earth Web Services. The following features come in this release:
– Maps for Mobile Devices… (WOOHOO) 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.
– Extended International Parsing Capabilities.
– Expanded Number of Rooftop Views.
– Near-Matching Capabilities. using alternate and similar spellings, resulting in a more relevant search experience.
– Imagery Metadata.
– New Virtual Earth Web Services.
– One-Click Directions.
– Shapes and Shape Layers.
– Pushpin Clustering.
– Landmark-Based Routing.
– Driving Directions with Traffic-Based Routing.
– Walking Directions.
– Multipoint Routing.
– Traffic Reports.
– GeoRSS Feeds.
– Weather Integration.
Bookmark this Webcast about the release
Brian over at the Timoney group has share details of some work his team did over the labor-day week-end to help convey the impacts of hurricane Gustav on oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. the mashup shows natural gas, pipelines, platforms in the gulf along with data for each oil provider – See GulfImpact – the application is powered by Microsoft’s virtual Earth platform
