Entries tagged with virtual earth - Channel 10

WWT Comes To Virtual Earth

sarahintampa — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:45:00 GMT

The amazing WorldWide Telescope got a lot of hype pre-launch but you haven’t heard much about in recent days. Although now the WWT is being used by a number of astronomers, scientists, students, and space enthusiasts across the globe, the Microsoft Virtual Earth team decided to give it a little more exposure to the general public. To do so, they’re going to include a little WWT in Virtual Earth. According to Chris Pendleton, the Virtual Earth data centers host all of the data for WWT and the Earth in WWT is actually made of Virtual Earth tiles. So, in latest release of the Virtual Earth 3D control, the Virtual Earth team has now included the accurate placement of stars in space. Cool - now we have Earth and Sky in VE!

New Release of Live Maps

sarahintampa — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:37:00 GMT

The Virtual Earth team has just made a big round of updates to their platform, some of which affect the consumer-facing side of VE: Live Search Maps. One of the updates that I think will be immediately useful has to do with communities. Community-submitted collections are now going to be immediately indexed after uploading so they can be searched instantly. Live Maps will also be using this collections data to further augment business search results when there aren't any business listings that exist for the term you entered. That will definitely be helpful.

I’m also glad to see that they've added the ability to get multi-point directions which is handy when you’re planning a route that has several different stops along the way. However, I'm personally the most excited about the new "landmark hints" feature. I believe that this must have been added in just for me. When I’m going somewhere new, I hate having to look for street signs. Now, thanks to this excellent feature I see "landmarks hints" to help me find my way. Here in the U.S. only, the landmark hints will include things like gas stations, hotels, restaurants, convenience stores, grocery stores, and car dealerships. So now I'll know to turn RIGHT at the McDonalds, not at some street. Awesome! I'm going to use this new feature today to map my trip to Blogorlando.

The Live Search Maps update also includes several other improvements like better geocoding precision, more aerial updates and bird's eye views (my favorite), updated vector data (roads and places), localized tiles for Western Europe which show place names in the local language, and a lot of other great new features. For the full run-down, check out Chris's blog. In the meantime, I'm off to pack for my trip...and I can finally be happy that this time I won't get lost!

Reuters AlertNet Makes Featured Mashup List

sarahintampa — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:36:00 GMT

Reuters AlertNet is a web-based humanitarian news network launched by Reuters in ‘97 to keep relief professionals, journalists, and the public current on humanitarian crises worldwide. The site was recently selected as a featured mashup by the Windows Live Dev team, who picked out 10 of the most innovative mashups that feature the use of Windows Live technology. AlertNet was my personal favorite as it incorporates Virtual Earth in a really unique way. On the site, you can visually “mine” for headlines from a particular part of the world on their interactive map just by zooming into a country or region. You can select what kind of crises you want the map to display from conflicts to food shortages to natural disasters and more, or you can choose all the categories to see everything. This is really an ingenious use of the Virtual Earth mapping technology and one that serves such a good purpose, too. Before the Windows Dev article, I was not even aware of the map existence, but I’m glad to have found it as this could prove to be an invaluable resource for learning about what’s happening in different parts of the world.

New Version of Virtual Earth-3DVIA Arrives

sarahintampa — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:48:00 GMT

Make Your Own 3D Models…Or Just Reuse Those Already Made By Others

Recently the latest version of Microsoft Virtual Earth-3DVIA was announced. This software combines Microsoft’s mapping platform (Virtual Earth) with the 3D modeling and visualization platform provided by 3DVIA. The end result is a tool that lets you easily design and create 3D scenes of your own or make mashups using the content already posted online at 3DVIA.com, an online content creation community where users make and share their 3D models. For making these mashups, the latest release of Microsoft Virtual Earth-3DVIA introduces a new “remix” feature. Now, instead of having to learn how to make 3D models yourself, you can just search 3DVIA.com for the models you need and then import those directly into your Virtual Earth projects. With these online models, you can build houses, buildings, or even your own neighborhood, if you so desire, among many other things.

To get you started with the new 3D remix functionality, there are interactive tutorials and videos that teach you how you can build a house in 5 minutes or less. The new version also includes an updated UI and navigation, both of which make the software easier to use. If you want to start building your own 3D models for Virtual Earth, just download the application from http://maps.live.com/Help/en-us/VE3DVIADownload.htm.

Looking at V2 Cities in Virtual Earth

sarahintampa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:35:00 GMT

At this year's Virtual Earth and Location Summit, hosted by Microsoft Research in May, Steve Stanzel of the 3D Imagery Group gave a presentation about the new Virtual Earth released earlier this year. Virtual Earth version 2, in case you don't know, is a pretty impressive step forward in this mapping product. There are currently over 300 cities in 3D and many of them are already "V2" cities. In a V2 city, the texture qualities are greatly improved, making the buildings look more real. V2 cities all use what's called "oblique" imagery, aka "Bird's Eye View," that presents the imagery at a 45 degree angle, letting you clearly see the sides of the buildings. In V2 cities, you can also toggle street and building labels.

Another difference between V1 and V2 cities is the increase in the number of buildings displayed. In the earlier version of VE, only the taller buildings were rendered, but one and two-story structures were largely ignored. Now with V2, the number of buildings in a city has increased from about 6,000 to over 150,000, according to this Radar post blogged from the Summit. In addition to the buildings, trees have been rendered and placed in specific spots based on the height and diameter of the real trees. The trees are a nice touch, but its the sheer number of buildings that make a V2 city stand out - they have far more buildings that any competitive mapping product.

At the time of launch, four cities received the V2 face lift: Vegas, Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix, and today there are a total of seven (Vienna, Seattle, and Miami have now been added). However, by the end of this year, there will be hundreds of these cities online, says the team. Sounds like they are going to be busy!

Vídeo - Veja como fica a integração de Photosynth no Virtual Earth

Galileu — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:23:00 GMT

O Photosynth mal saiu do forno e o gerente de produto do Virtual Earth já criou um mashup do Photosynth, embutindo uma janela do Photosynth dentro de um ponto do Virtual Earth, a plataforma de mapas da Microsoft. Confira o vídeo e aprenda como fazer isso você mesmo no blog oficial do Virtual Earth.

trueSpace: Realistic, High-Res 3D Modeling for VE and Live Maps

sarahintampa — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:53:00 GMT

Back in February, Microsoft acquired a company called Caligari mainly for their 3D modeling and animation software, trueSpace. As of now, trueSpace is available for download – for free. With trueSpace, you can create high-resolution models, landscapes, buildings, and more for Virtual Earth and Live Maps. After creating these models, they can then be uploaded from trueSpace directly into Live Maps as a collections item. Why is trueSpace important? Well, for one, this is not sketching software – these aren’t drawings, but detailed, rich and realistic models. For example, take this Starbucks model (image to the left - see the full video on Chris Pendleton’s blog). This could either be a 3D model of the actual store or a mockup of one they’re thinking of building. That mockup could then be aaded to Live Maps in order to get feedback from the community. Even better, trueSpace supports importing of models drawn within other 3D software environments, including AutoCAD, Illustrator, and more. (The full list is here). For more details on how to use trueSpace, Chris has a great walkthough on his site. To register and download trueSpace, click here.

New Video Series Shows the Tech in Virtual Earth

sarahintampa — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:21:00 GMT

There’s a new video series available on our sister site, Channel 9, that delves into the tech behind Virtual Earth. The series is called “Behind the Maps,” and it will show you how the data and imagery in Virtual Earth goes through the whole process from camera to web and beyond. You’ll learn about the high-resolution cameras used – like the incredible UltraCam, how imagery is captured from a plane, how imagery is processed, and more. Of course, you’ll get to learn more about the Virtual Earth platform itself and its 3D control that delivers the imagery to your browser window. The first video is up now and will feature an up-close look at the UltraCam – check it out!

Ask Maps Are Now Virtual Earth

sarahintampa — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:21:00 GMT

Big news! Chris Pendleton is reporting that Ask.com has decided to forgo their mapping service in favor of the Virtual Earth platform. If you go to maps.ask.com now, you’ll see a Virtual Earth map. Chris notes that this choice is common among portal sites who realize that the upkeep involved in running a mapping service requires a lot of infrastructure, frequent imagery and photography acquisitions, data updates, etc. So, instead they’ll often turn to another service like Virtual Earth, for example.

But now, with Ask’s maps gone, Jordan from Marketing Pilgrim mentions that he’s going to miss the walking directions feature which the maps provided. Well, as it turns out, Chris had already shared some sample code for walking directions in VE – it looks like it’s just a matter of someone building an app to support this. (img via Chris Pendleton)

Virtual Earth Team Launches "GoVE"

sarahintampa — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:13:00 GMT

The Virtual Earth team has just launched a new program called GoVE which lets state and local governments, municipalities, and aerial photographers share their own imagery with Microsoft and get it published on Virtual Earth. After checking out maps.live.com to verify that the imagery they have it news and has a higher resolution of what's currently being offered online, the organizations can then contact the team by sending an email to Steve Clayton blogged about DeepEarth, and I would be neglectful if I didn’t pass this link on to you. DeepEarth is, in one word, incredible. And it really shows off what Deep Zoom is capable of. The DeepEarth project was an open source community effort that was meant to be a learning experience for the participants as well as a way to show off Silverlight 2’s Deep Zoom capabilities in something both cool and useful. The result is a deep zoomable world map featuring imagery from Microsoft Virtual Earth. You can watch a video on YouTube about DeepEarth or you can just watch the video I made.

[Update: Also check out http://silverlight.idvsolutions.com/, Thanks Scott]

Loopt’s Mobile Network Now Runs Virtual Earth

sarahintampa — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:57:00 GMT

At the recent AWDC event on the 10th, Loopt CEO Sam Altman demonstrated the upcoming Loopt mobile social network for iPhone (Loopt currently runs on numerous phones already, including Blackberry). The mobile social network they provide helps you connect with friends in the real world by dropping pins on a map to show your friends’ locations. What’s interesting about all this is that they chose Microsoft Virtual Earth to be the mapping service for Loopt on iPhone. This was spotted by VE evangelist Chris Pendleton, who caught a screenshot of the demo (pictured to the left - thanks Chris!). That’s especially interesting because this seems to be a departure from the mapping service they used before. Hmmm, wonder if they’ll let us switch to Bird’s Eye view? Anyway, congrats VE team! Hey, I heard you were just on CNN, too.

The Microsoft 216 Megapixel Camera

Larry — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:41:00 GMT

Did you know that Microsoft makes a 216 Megapixel camera? I didn't know either until I read it on Mark Brown's Virtual Earth blog, but it turns out that this is the photobeastie behind the orthogonal imagery on Virtual Earth. The UltraCams are also used to create the 3D models you see on Virtual Earth through photogrammetric processing.

The UltraCam snaps an impressive 14,430 x 9,420 pixel image using 13 CCD's, sending them through 14 CPU's. The camera captures data at 3Gbits/sec, which led them to use two Infiniband cables rather than 14 firewire cables. Look for more info in a future episode of ShutterSpeed.

Get Addresses Using Aerial Photos in Live Maps

sarahintampa — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:19:00 GMT

Chris Pendleton recently wrote a mashup for Virtual Earth (Live Maps) that provides and address and a latitude/longitude whenever you click on any location on the map. After you install the app, click anywhere on the map and you'll get a pushpin. Hover over the pushpin and you'll get a pop-up that shows the nearest address to that point on the map as well as the lat/long of that location. He has now also added a link to the pop-up that will show you a Bird's Eye Photo of the location as sort of a picture-in-picture option. (see the picture to the left for an example). The app is available for download from his SkyDrive from here. If you want to help him improve the code, he has posted it to his site here.

CSI: NY Fights Crime with Virtual Earth

Larry — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:20:00 GMT

Mark Brown's Virtual Earth Blog points out that MS has completed the trifecta of crime fighting with an appearance on CSI:NY. The detectives start by zooming in from space, where crime is relatively low, right into a custom 3D model, where evidently crime is somewhat higher. To see it for yourself (as well as some UI elements I hope never make it into Virtual Earth), jump on over to CBS and slide it up to 36:40.

Wikipedia / Virtual Earth Mashup

sarahintampa — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:48:00 GMT

Now this is a cool mashup and its built right into Virtual Earth! In Wikipedia, you may have noticed that some articles have coordinates in the upper-right hand side of the page that locate that place on a map. (See this example). Clicking on the coordinates from the Wikipedia entry will take you to you a map. But if you want to go the other way - from a map to Wikipedia - then you've got to check out what the Virtual Earth team has done. They've been indexing all these links in their Spatial Search and Explore indexes so you can surf the maps with Wikipedia displaying in the sidebar. If you want to try it out for yourself, turn on Live Map's Explore feature and then select the Wikipedia Tag, or just click this link to see it in action now.

April's Virtual Earth Updates

sarahintampa — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:21:00 GMT

The Virtual Earth team had a busy April, adding 22 TB of data throughout the month to bring us even more Bird's Eye and aerial imagery to Virtual Earth/Live Search Maps. The update included new images in both formats for certain areas worldwide, and Bird's Eye images added for major cities in Canada (Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Victoria, Edmonton, Vancouver), Australia (Gold Coast, Sydney, Hobart, Wollongong), and parts of Europe (UK, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Greece). However, my favorite new images from this update are the Bird's Eye images of the Sydney Opera House. By using the rotate buttons in VE, I could see the Opera House from angles that you usually never see in photos of the iconic landmark.

I'm constantly impressed by VE's imagery - even my house (which is outside of Tampa in Pasco County, Florida - an area that doesn't often get updated), shows up in both aerial and Bird's Eye view with recent images (I can tell because of our brand-new landscaping in the yard), while other mapping services still show outdated images of my neighborhood. Check to see if your house has a Bird's Eye view of it yet - you'll be impressed! (via LiveSide)

Twitter+Email+Flickr+Virtual Earth = Twisney.com!

sarahintampa — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:35:00 GMT

What do you get when you combine Disney World, Twitter, Flickr, and Microsoft's Virtual Earth? You get the awesome site Twisney.com! The site lets you send in email, IMs, text messages, or tweets in order to update the Virtual Earth map with your photos and news. When you send in your status update to Twisney.com, they match it to a location on the map by looking at the first few words of your message. You can use an abbreviation, a paraphrased name, or the location's full name as found on your map of Disney.

Examples:

btmr, on the front car of the train, let 'er rip!
thunder mountain, on the front car of the train, let 'er rip!
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, on the front car of the train, let 'er rip!
thunder mountain rr, on the front car of the train, let 'er rip!

If you're emailing in your update from a mobile phone, just attach the picture to the email, and send it to these instructions. That way, all your photos will be available from one page: www.twisney.com/username, which you can then share with your family and friends.

You can keep tabs on other Twisney users from your mobile phone from the mobile version of the site: http://www.twisney.com/mobile/overview

All the photos sent in to Twisney are uploaded to the Twisney group on flickr. You can also see them on a map here.

MapCruncher: A Virtual Earth Mashup Tool

sarahintampa — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:12:00 GMT

MapCruncher is a Microsoft Research project which uses the Virtual Earth API to import entire supplemental maps into Virtual Earth. By supplemental maps, they mean any drawn-to-scale maps you can find, be they bicycle maps, transit maps, national park maps, university maps, or antique city maps, just to show a few examples. But not only that, you can use MapCruncher to add your very own, Do-It-Yourself Aerial Photography to Virtual Earth, too. Their Gallery has even more examples of this.

The process of importing your own maps they call "crunching," hence the name "MapCruncher." To use MapCruncher, you just import your map then find 5-10 corresponding landmarks on your map and VE. MapCruncher will then register your map to global coordinate system and generate a set of image tiles based on your map and mash them up with VE's road and aerial imagery.

MapCruncher support both vector formats (PDF, WMF, EMF) and raster formats (JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, BMP). To view a mashup, you'll need IE6, IE7, or Firefox version 1.5 or higher.

To download MapCruncher click here unless you need it for a commercial application, in which case you will need to visit this page instead.

Windows Mobile GPS -paikkatietosovellusten toteutus on kaikkien käsillä.

jukkaw — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:28:00 GMT

Useimmat varmaankin jo tietävät, miten helppoa puhelinsovellusten tekeminen on nykyään, kun käytössä on Windows Mobile puhelimet. Enää ei tarvitse olla monimutkaisia kehitysympäristöjä ja monen vuoden ammattikokemusta sovelluskehitykseen. Pelkkä kiinnostus ja läjä esimerkkejä jo riittää ja heti alkaa valmista syntymään.
Nyt kun yhä useammissa Windows puhelimissa on sisäänrakennetut GPS paikantimet ja puhelimiin tehtävät sovellukset ovat helppoja tehdä Visual Studiolla ja .NET:llä, on aika alkaa toteuttamaan niitä visioita, joita kukin on aiemmin mielessään vain kuvitellut.

Käytännön tarve sai Kari Ruuskasen tarttumaan Visual Studioon ja tutustumaan, miten paikkatietoa hyödyntävän mobiiliohjelman voisi helpoiten tehdä. Ohjelmointi kun ei työkuvaan kuulunut ollenkaan, mutta tarve ja visio sovelluksen toiminnoista oli selkeänä, piti vain ryhtyä tuumasta toimeen.
Tässä esimerkissä mennään läpi Kari Ruuskasen toteutus, jossa hyödynnetään niin tekstiviestejä, GPS paikkatietoa kuin Live karttasivun generointia - puhelimessa!!
Puhelin seuraa missä omistaja kulkee ja laatii siitä mm. Live Maps html-sivun, jota voi katsella selaimella.
Sovellus on säädettävissä myös siten, että kun puhelin siirtyy aiemmin määritetystä alueesta toiseen, lähtee siitä SMS viesti toiseen puhelimeen ja näin ollen tiedetään kokoajan, millä alueella puhelin on.

Lataa projektin koodit itsellesi, tutustu niihin ja hyödynnä niinkuin haluat.

Live Maps and Virtual Earth 3D Keep Getting Better

Larry — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:18:00 GMT

The Live Maps / Virtual Earth team must have gotten the last shipment of Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel and are putting it to good use pumping out tons of great new features. Jump over to the Virtual Earth Blog for a full recap, or over to ars technica for a hands on look, or just go to http://maps.live.com to use it.

Some of the cool new features include improved 3D views with higher resolution textures, the ability to export to your GPS, the ability to make your own 3D models with 3DVIA (just right click where you want a building), street/other labels in birds eye view, and 1-click directions.

One of my favorite new features is the mash-up features, check out this view of Giants Stadium with a seating data overlay. Also check out this view of the Seattle Transit System.

Those alone make for a significant update, but there's much more. You can now share your custom map content with other people, you can browse to a location and subscribe to a geo-location via RSS, there are tour enhancements, high-def movie output, and direction/traffic enhancements. Great stuff!

Update: Max on Channel 8 has a video, check it out.

Virtual Birds Eye

sarahintampa — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:32:00 GMT

Virtual Bird's Eye is a new site that provides links to current events, news, and places alongside images from Virtual Earth, a service which features a "Bird's Eye" technology that gives you a unique aerial view of the earth. Each week the site will focus on a specific theme - this week it's MLB, so you can see images and info on stadiums from around the U.S. You can also click on the "Bird's Eye Sight by Category" link to see posts on other interesting attractions and landmarks like dams, presidential homes, or tourist attractions. Thanks to the "eagle-eyed" guys at LiveSide for this find!

Wordpress + Virtual Earth = Awesome Maps for Your Blog

sarahintampa — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:09:00 GMT

A new Wordpress plugin lets bloggers easily insert Virtual Earth maps onto any Wordpress blog. Using the plugin is easy - you just install it to your plugins folder as you would any other, but the best part is that the plugin is compatible with Windows Live Writer! When you use Live Writer to post to your blog, the "Insert" --> "Map" option becomes a Virtual Earth map instead of a static one. To see an example, check out the plugin authors' blog or to get started, you can download the plugin here. For users of the latest version of Wordpress (2.5), the download is here instead.

40+ Terabytes of New Imagery for Virtual Earth

sarahintampa — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:35:00 GMT

Those Virtual Earth guys just never stop. The March release of VE has them pumping out 42.85 terabytes of imagery data! The release includes several new regions, but it's Ireland and the state of Mississippi that benefit the most, with the addition of Bird's Eye imagery for Cork and Limerick in Ireland and over 40 counties for Mississippi.You can see the full list here. But what I what to know about is the hint the VE guys make on their blog entry that there are "hidden surprises" for Virtual Earth that will be turned on in a few weeks.

Virtual Earth

lorigros — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:32:00 GMT

Ich habe mit Johannes Kebeck, Virtual Earth Technologie Spezialist, gesprochen und er hat mir viel über Virtual Earth erklärt und gezeigt. Virtual Earth ist Microsofts Plattform für Mapping-Applikationen und Local-Search. Mit Virtual Earth kann man digitale interaktive Karten mit verschiedenen Ansichten im Internet oder Intranet Applikationen einbauen, Geschäftsprozesse mit Geodaten umsetzen oder verwalten oder ganz einfach Daten auf einer Karte visuell abbilden.

Am coolsten mit der interaktiven Karte ist die Bird’s Eye View, wo man die Erde aus der Perspektive eines Vogels sehen kann. Deutschland aus der Bird’s Eye View Perspektive, könnt Ihr auch sehen unter…
http://maps.live.com

Da kann man auch die Welt in 3D erleben.

Johannes hat mir auch den einfachsten Weg gezeigt, Virtual Earth zu benutzen. Mit Popfly kann man Mashups mit Virtual Earth bauen und einfach in Blogs, Live Spaces, Webseiten, etc. integrieren.

Wenn Ihr tiefer mit Virtual Earth arbeiten wollt, dann lohnt es sich auf der Virtual Earth Interactive SDK Webseite anzuschauen. Da kann man lernen und herausfinden was alles mit Virtual Earth möglich ist. Die Webseite findet Ihr hier…
http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/