I was just emailed this great birds eye shot of the Garden of the gods  in Colorado Springs. [info on GoG]

The elevation data stands up pretty well in 3D, but the Birds Eye shots are far more vibrant. Here's a Collection of touristy stuff nearby that I found while exploring the area, including some Pikes Peak tram info. I bet its really beautiful there this time of year! It's been a really ugly 10 or so days in Seattle, so these shots are giving me the itch to travel.

David Barkol shows you how to reference the Virtual Earth v6 Map Control via HTTPS for authenticated/encrypted communication. For many of you this new feature in VE v6 isn't needed and carries a few milliseconds of latency, but if you're building enterprise applications that require secure communications there hasn't been an easy way to integrate mapping in your work yet. As Dave Notes:

This seems like a subtle change, but both Google and Virtual Earth have lacked this type of support for years.

For our client map control, this is quite true. Many of our government and enterprise customers have been using HTTPS with MapPoint Web Service for years. Now you can use either or both together as many developers needing server-side location capabilities in their apps do.

Hacking the Wii remote for VE
John at SoulSolutions just pointed me to this neat article on Via Windows Live showing how to use your wiimote to navigate in Virtual Earth. So now you have a choice - Space Navigator, XBOX controller or wiimote for surfing in Virtual Earth. Here's the video showing creator Brian Peek in action -

The Google Earth blog posted a nice video of the new textured cityscape of Raleigh, NC featuring the Birds Eye overlay. The video looks good, but its so tiny that its difficult to make out the details. You can tell that Frank Taylor, the video's creator, has logged a lot of hours with the SpaceNavigator; his in-city nav skillz look pretty good!

Frank raises an issue with 3D navigation in Virtual Earth:

Using a 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator 3D mouse makes using Virtual Earth much better. I rarely used Virtual Earth until they started supporting it. Microsoft needs to improve the user interface for non-SpaceNavigator owners - or they need to give everyone a SpaceNavigator for Christmas!

Maybe not a Navigator, but i know a lot of Wireless XBOX controllers are going into circulation this yuear :-) Seriously though, I don't work on the 3D team but I know they would appreciate more specific feedback on this issue Frank raised. What about the non-SpaceNavigator navigation controls and experience would you change? email feedback to me at stevelom a t microsoft d com or post in the comments below.

North Carolina Museum of Natural Science in VE3D

Along with Yesterday's mega release of imagery, the 3D team has pushed out nearly 60 new textured cities into the virtual world. I love the look of older cities like Liverpool when modeled in 3D. Turn on a layer of geodata contributed by other users across the web (Collections -> Explore menu) and have fun.

Kansas City

Just in time for Holiday surfing, the Image Processing pipeline team delivered 36 Terabytes of new and updated Oblique and Ortho imagery to Virtual Earth. Jason Willison, our Imagery PM, sent me the update list below. Nice job getting this done early this month - Ops and data center guys like to enjoy time off too :-)

Here are the highlights…

• 44 new hi-res orthos (aka aerials) from 3Di using the UltraCam
• 36 new US areas of Pictometry Bird’s Eye oblique scenes
• 26 new EU areas of BLOM Bird’s Eye scenes
• 5 areas of US orthos from GlobeXplorer
• 17 areas of orthos around the world from GeoEye
• Updated orthos in England/Wales/Scotland from Getmapping.
• Holland orthos from DKLN.

And here's the details...

Birds Eye (Obliques)

USA (Pictometry):

• Kern, CA
• Shasta, CA
• El Paso, CO
• Danbury, CT
• City of East Haven, CT
• Prince George, MD
• Kalamazoo, MI
• Kent, MI
• St Louis, MO
• Mississippi Metro
• Mecklenberg Metro, NC
• Raleigh, NC
• Hunterdon Metro, NJ
• Columbia, NY
• Erie, NY
• Nassau, NY
• Niagara, NY
• Orange, NY
• Rensselaer, NY
• Steuben, NY
• Ulster, NY
• Poughkeepie Metro, NY
• Philadelphia, PA
• Harrisburg Metro, PA
• Greenville, SC
• Spartanburg, SC
• Loudon, TN
• Knoxville, TN (parts 1 & 2)
• McLennan, TX
• Nueces, TX
• PotterRandall, TX
• Beaufort Metro, TX
• Richmond, VA
• Fairfax, VA
• Skagit, WA
• Dane, WI

Europe (BLOM):

• Brussels, Belgium
• Luzern, Switzerland
• Winterthur, Switzerland
• Zurich, Switzerland
• Frankfurt, Germany
• Madrid, Spain 
• Zaragoza, Spain
• Castleford, UK
• Chester, UK
• Crewe, UK
• Darlington, UK
• Dearne Valley Urban Area, UK
• Harrogate/Knaresborough, UK
• Hartlepool, UK
• Leeds, UK
• London, UK
• Macclesfield/Pretsbury, UK
• Middlesborough, UK
• Milton Keynes, UK
• Newcastle, UK
• Reading/Workingham, UK
• Scarborough, UK
• Scunthorpe, UK
• York, UK

Orthos

3Di Hi-res (15cm, unless indicated):

• Allentown PA
• Bridgeport CT
• Cary NC
• San Bernardino CA
• Pasadena CA
• Ogden UT
• Manchester NH
• Fontana CA
• Corona CA
• Chino CA
• Gladstone MO
• Newport News VA
• Riverside CA
• Salt Lake City UT
• Stamford CT
• Waterbury CT
• West Valley City UT
• Aurora CO
• S tLouis MO
• Kansas City KS
• EauClaire WI
• Cleveland OH
• Quebec city (30cm)
• Arvada CO
• Boulder CO
• Davenport IA
• El Monte CA
• Independence MO
• Kansas City MO
• Lakewood CO
• Overland Park KS
• Peoria IL
• Salem OR
• Topeka KS
• Wichita KS
• Calgary 2006 (30cm)
• Eugene OR
• Fargo ND
• Green Bay WI
• Medford OR
• Nampa ID
• Springfield IL
• Tokyo JPN
• Waukegan IL

GlobeXplorer (1ft):

• Birmingham
• Portland
• Maryland, Northern Virgina, DC
• Tampa Ft Myers
• Sacramento Region

GeoEye (1m):

• Valencia, Spain
• Oporto, Spain
• Thessaloniki (Salonica), Greece
• Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
• Goteborg, Sweden
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• Brussels, Belgium
• Oslo, Norway
• Grand Canaria/Las Palmas, Canary Islands
• Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
• Casablanca, Morocco
• Kuwait City, Kuwait
• Dhaka, Bangladesh
• Tahiti, French Polynesia
• Moscow, Russia
• Christchurch, New Zealand
• Wellington, New Zealand

GetMapping UK:

• Wales
• Scotland

Holland DKLN :

• Many Areas :-)

Marc DiGregorio from 3DVIA created some great sample house models using Virtual Earth – 3DVIA (Beta)! You can copy the models into your own Collections and even make further modifications on your own.

Here’s a short video of the house collection in Virtual Earth 3D.

And here’s the collection. You can copy these models to your own collection.  Hover over the model name, and select “Add to collection”. In the Collections editor, you can move the model to a new location, and customize using Virtual Earth – 3DVIA. For more on 3D models have a look at this help topic.

Enjoy!

I've been using the Sprint PPC-6700 for the past couple of years and have been really satisfied with it. Sprint has an excellent high speed data network in the US, and since i run a lot of bandwidth pig applications that has been a great feature. Their network is so good in fact that I find I rarely use/need the built in WiFi on the 6700. for my next phone, I'm hoping to find something a little smaller than the 6700 without sacrificing features, which I think should be possible given the advances over the past couple of years. This is where you come in :-) Have a look at my wishlist below and if you have experience with a phone Positive or negative) that fits the bill tell us about it in Comments.

3G Bandwidth - Like I said, I feel spoiled by the data throughput on the 6700. Video streams from my home net to my phone flawlessly and map navigation with OTA maps is really impressive. My next phone absolutely has to work on a comparable or better network.

SlingPlayer Mobile - I love my Slingbox and having access to it on my phone is killer. I really can't consider a mobile that can't run the Slingplayer. Outside of email and surfing IMDB, this is my most used application. Unfortunately this whittles the field down to mobiles running either Windows Mobile, Symbian or Palm OS.

Open for Applications - If I can't install the applications of my choosing on it, that's a non starter. Closed phones died a welcome death years ago and gadget nerds haven't looked back since. I've got to be able to run my own hacky applications as well as the third party apps of my own choosing.

Decent browser - New phone needs to come with a good web browser built in, or allow me to install one. the Pocket IE browser on the 6700 is adequate, but not as feature rich as the iPhones browser. definitely looking for an upgrade in this area. My bar is IMDB as i turn to it so often when i'm out; if IMDB.com doesn't look good and perform well, I need a different phone :-)

GPS - Preferably built in, but via Bluetooth is OK too. I think just about every smartphone supports bluetooth at this point, so this shouldn't be an issue.

Keyboard - Not a showstopper, but a strong preference. email and IM are just so much easier for me with a physical keyboard compared to T9 and onscreen tapping.

Other stuff - Exchange and webmail access, runs a version of Lines, good music/media player, memory expansion (SD preferred)

A couple of WM devices that seem to meet all of these criteria are the AT&T Tilt or Pantech Duo, and the T-Mobile Shadow. Feedback on these as well as recommendations for others not on my radar are most welcome! Whatever I go with I promise a full review here in the new year with an emphasis on its mapping capabilities.

Njection has a mashup showing Speedtraps around the world - you can add traps you know of to the database and surf those contributed by others. Seems like a good candidate for a mobile app or even better, a data feed into connected nav systems like the Garmin Nuvi. Switch into Birds Eye view and you can voyeuristically spot where the man hides.

The browser-based local search and mapping site for mobile has been updated with a bunch of new features. point the browser on your mobile to http://m.live.com/ to try it out. Enhancements include:

• 1-click directions for all businesses and street addresses in U.S.
• Additional details for U.S. businesses, including neighborhood, business category, cuisine (restaurants) and hours of operation
• Photos and reviews for U.S. businesses
• Improved movie show times Instant Answers (we now show critics rating)
• Added interactivity to all maps (clicking on maps now zooms in/out to predefined levels, or advanced to the next waypoint for routing maps)
• Traffic & map Instant Answers
• Mobile search for the China market. Scopes offered are local (no maps, but coming soon), web, images, news and Spaces.

Here are a few related screenshots of the new and improved areas of the site -

And if you are looking to install the client app for Windows Mobile and Blackerry, find it here as always.

I was in the Microsoft Company store getting some XBOX stuff for holiday gifts yesterday and saw a bunch of people in line ahead of me with Streets and Trips (known as Autoroute in Europe), presumably for the same reason :-) Streets and Trips is the top selling mapping and trip planning software and indeed makes a great gift as it comes in three flavors and prices. The software only version retails for under 40 bucks at places line Amazon, Buy, Circuit City, or Best Buy. The packages with GPS and Connected Services are even better values, typically retailing for 75 and 120 dollars respectively.

The GPS device is super small, but very sensitive as it's based on the SIRF III technology from SiRF. It outputs standard NMEA so it works with any other GPS software you might have and is easy to hack against to build your own apps.

The Streets and Trips Connected Services package contains the same great GPS device but also includes a MSN Direct (Spot) receiver allowing it to have traffic updates and gas price information sent over FM. very slick as it doesn't require a network connection. A number of Navigation systems are beginning to include support for MSN Direct such as the Garmin Nuvi and Garmin Street Pilot.

The Nuvi 680

Streets and Trips 'Night View'

Streets and Trips GPS device

The promise of Live Labs Volta to allow you to build your web apps end-to-end in managed code is easy on the ears for developers. If you've spent any significant time building web apps you've probably developed a deep love-hate relationship with Javascipt. Volta:

The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

The technology preview of Volta is available right now [download then get started] and includes support for building Virtual Earth based applications in 2D and 3D. Read about the Virtual Earth Volta library here at the end of the page. They have even re-written a portion of the interactive SDK in C# which you can try out here.

Here is a snippet of code from Dragos Manolescu of Live Labs showing how to show/hide a shape with Volta using the VE library:

private void ShowHideShape()
{
    var map = new Microsoft.LiveLabs.Volta.VirtualEarth.Map(mapDiv);
    map.LoadMap();
    Shape shape = new Shape(ShapeType.Pushpin, map.GetCenter());
    shape.SetTitle("My pushpin");
    shape.SetDescription("This is a pushpin.");
    map.AddShape(shape);
    doShowShape.Click += delegate { shape.Show(); };
    doHideShape.Click += delegate { shape.Hide(); };
}

I received a couple of questions yesterday from Brady at O'Reilly on the launch of Live Search Maps in China. Really well though out questions in fact! Instead of digging up answers, i sent them on to Vincent Tao who worked closely with the dev team in China that built Ditu (maps in Chinese). A couple of emails later and Brady had completed a great interview with Vincent including questions like -

• Getting access to Chinese geo data is notoriously hard. Who are you getting the data from? Is it handled via a joint-venture? Where are your servers located?
• Was the data allowed to leave China? What other restrictions were placed on the data and its use?
• What are the issues surrounding showing images? Why would they be more concerned about their own population seeing them? Is http://maps.live.com blocked in China?
• Will there be an API?

Vincent's responses to these and a bunch more questions can be read in the full interview on Radar. Who said bloggers can't be reporters :-)

Here's a fun test of your geographic knowledge. Post your high score in Comments below. Speed and accuracy both count, although at this scale its tough to differentiate between the Vatican and the Coliseum :-)

Congratulations to the Virtual Earth team in China for releasing version one of Live Search Maps for China. If you read Chinese you can try it out at http://ditu.live.com. The application was built in China with a focus on getting the features most relevant to our Chinese customers out first. Business search, Collections, and public transit features were emphasized, covering over 100 cities with 7 million business listings. Later today I'll get some more information posted from the team that did the coding.

Many thanks to the contestants for creating some great videos for our video contest. 

The final vote count is:

• Welcome to Planet Earth – Meet our Machines   534 votes
• Derek’s 3D tour  178 votes
• Baseball Stadium tour 136 votes
• Chicago Summer Fun   105 votes
• Climbing Little Tahoma/Mt. Rainier Trip Report 48 votes

Congratulations to John who created the winning entry “Welcome to Planet Earth – Meet our Machines”.  For his winning entry, he has won the new 2^nd generation 8GB Zune media player.

And congratulations to Derek for his second place video “Derek’s 3D Tour”.  For his video, he has won a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate.

Thanks again to all who created videos for the contest and to all the voters as well!

This press release from ESRI has the news that I know many of you have been waiting to hear! Jack Dangermond, ESRI President:

We have worked with Microsoft for many years and have many customers in common. The new integration between SQL Server 2008 Spatial and ArcGIS represents a significant opportunity for companies to work cooperatively around the world. ArcGIS 9.3 and the spatial enhancements in SQL Server 2008 will help meet the needs of our many customers who have been asking for SQL access to spatial features stored in SQL Server.

Discussion over on J-Fee's Blog. Personally, I've been putting off installing the November build of SQL Server as I've been busy with other stuff, but its definitely time to get started. Any of you that are already working with it have any tips or comments to share?