Virtual Earth / Live Maps

A few months back I asked VE blog readers for some advice on my next mobile. After investigating a bunch of phones I finally settled on the AT&T Tilt and have been using it for a month or so and totally loving it. Overall its a fantastic smartphone, and for a geohacker its the ultimate all in one dream gadget.

Before I get to what it was that sold me on the Tilt I should answer the question of why no iPhone for me. There are a bunch of rabid iPhone users right here in my workgroup at Microsoft and we have 2 Macs at home so certainly no shortage of evangelists in my life selling me on the iPhone. I was willing to live with the slower network access on the iPhone due to lack of 3G (even though it seemed unthinkable on a 500 dollar phone!) And I was OK with relying on a bluetooth connected GPS for my mapping needs (more on that in a moment - I couldn't have been more wrong on this one). But in the end it came down to the fact that i couldn't stomach buying such a closed, locked down computing device. A world where a single entity controls what apps you can and can't run isn't one our industry should be working towards. If I build an application I should be able to give it to you and you should be able to use it. I have no interest in developing on any platform, desktop, mobile or otherwise, that offers anything less than that. I'm trying to imagine the reaction if another software vendor had tried to float this 1998 thinking as a developer platform strategy ;-) In the end, lots of sizzle and flash (no, not that flash)in the UI and an excellent web browsing experience shielded by a velvet rope designed to control what applications the consumer has access to just wasn't for me. If you read on you'll see that I run a bunch of apps on my phone and it'll become clear why the iPhone just wouldn't do it for me.

Why the Tilt?
If you look back at my wishlist you see that on the surface the Tilt is a pretty good fit; superfast internet access (plus WiFi. the the AT&T 3G net is so fast I hardly use it though**), runs Slingplayer, keyboard, unlocked GPS, easy to develop for, etc... But as with any piece  of consumer electronics, its how you feel after living with it for a week that really matters. The Tilt hasn't disappointed; the build is amazingly good (slide the keyboard open to understand what i mean), its plenty fast and has lots of memory (256 megs, up to 32 gigs expansion via microSD)... My only gripe is that the installed browser is severely lacking in features which I took care of with Opera. Battery life is acceptable, but if you are running WiFi, GPS, etc... a lot, you'll need to get it on the charger each night.

** while I hardly use WiFi to surf the net, I HAVE been using this app to turn my phone into a wifi Access Point. Totally sick! It uses the phones 3G connection to send/receive to the internet, and becomes a low power wifi router so anyone nearby can connect to the net using standard wifi via their Laptop.

What about Maps and GPS?
Killer! I had no idea how much having a built in GPS would change my life, until i lived with it. With my last phone i used an external GPS via bluetooth and found that when i needed it, i had often not brought it along. one more thing to remember to carry. as a result, over time I found I hardly ever used it. I've used the GPS on the Tilt more in 4 weeks than I have in the previous 2 years. when its always there, you start using it in ways you never would otherwise. one very nerdy example - i was at a music festival 2 weeks ago where parking was basically a giant open field, without lights or section marks. I snapped a waypoint each day when going in, then used the Tilt's GPS to guide me back to our car each night.

I mentioned above that the Tilt with its unlocked GPS is a perfect for building your own applications. If you're so inclined, I suggest getting started with the open source GPSTracker on Codeplex; very well written C# code that is easy to modify. I added KML export and a couple of minor features in 30 minutes! It will work with any WinMo device that has a GPS be it built in or Bluetooth.

And finally, if you have a WinMo or Blackberry and you haven't installed Live Search Mobile, do it now, thank me later. Voice command, directions, GPS navigation, maps, aerial imagery, movie times, gas prices, Business Search... and the forthcoming release packs my favorite feature which I'm not allowed to tell you about just yet.

Marie Thirlwall, Product Manager for Microsoft in the UK, sent me some information about MultiMap and how starting today (hopefully by the time you are reading this) UK visitors to MSN.com who are looking for maps and directions will be served by MultiMap. Folks who visit maps.live.com will continue to get the same mapping experience they enjoy today. Choice is good! By the way, check out this review comparing 7 mapping/trip planners in the UK in which MultiMap received top marks-

The hugely customizable routes were the only ones to match our sat-nav and offered lots of information, including weather conditions and public transport options. The satellite and standard map facilities impressed, and route calculation was super-fast.

Back to the announcement at hand, here are all the details from Marie:

We recently announced the integration of Multimap into Live Search in the UK and will start to route users directly to the Multimap service from MSN UK and Live.com from 9^th May.

This release is part of our longer term consumer strategy to have one mapping and local search site in the UK, integrating the best of both Multimap and Virtual Earth (Live Search Maps) technologies. The management and development teams of Microsoft and Multimap are working collaboratively, with a common vision bringing localized products to market faster.  Given that Multimap resonates successfully with UK consumers serving over 45% of the UK mapping audience, building on this brand is the right strategic direction.

We recognize, however, that we must continue to offer users a choice of services while we complete the integration of all Virtual Earth features into the Multimap site.  We are therefore maintaining the Live Search Maps UK site and users can still access this at http://maps.live.com  to use favourite features such as Windows Live Collections and 3D maps. Powerful VE Aerial and Bird’s Eye imagery has been integrated into the Multimap site to give consumers the broadest array of map styles on the market today.

Additionally, we are going to provide prominent signposting to Live Search Maps UK from the Multimap site for those who are redirected there. All Live Search and MSN UK mapping traffic through ‘Maps’ links will be redirected to www.multimap.com but any shared Collections links will not.

Developers and businesses that have invested in the Virtual Earth technology are unaffected by the redirection of our Live Search Maps and MSN mapping traffic to Multimap. We will continue to support both technology platforms and expect to offer an expanded set of opportunities and features over time.

We thank our users for the feedback and passion they have shared so far as we continue to evolve our local and mapping sites in the UK. We encourage you to try out these sites for yourselves.

For a recent project I was working on, I needed to overlay lines of latitude and longitude on the map. I had a hard time finding some so I created 10 degree and 30 degree grids. Below you can view each of them as a Collection which you can export to KML, GeoRSS or GPX and you can also grab the exported KML for each. I figured someone else must have use for this as well. If you grab the KML files you can easily edit the styles (1 for latitude, 1 for longitude) or make whatever tweaks you need.

10 Degree Lines: Collection or KML

30 Degree Lines: Collection or KML

This weeks episode of CSI featured Photosynth being used to recreate a high school gym in 3d from a set of photos taken by dozens of phone cameras. It was cool that they used Photosynth 'as is' with very little post production lipstick; its high-techy enough on its own without the need for the usual ridiculous embellishments TV and movies usually rely on to portray cutting edge tech. Here's a clip that shows the Photosynth segments-

You may have noticed that many articles in Wikipedia are location specific and the coordinate that ties the article to a place on earth appears in the upper right corner. For instance, have a look at the Wikipedia article for Temple of Concord and take note of the coordinates link at the upper right corner of the page. If you click it you are taken to a page where you can view a map of the location of the Temple to provide geographic context to the article you are reading. This is an easy way to see the geography for an individual article, but what if you want to go the other way? what if you are interested in a particular geography and want to see all of the Wikipedia articles in the region?

We've been indexing all of them in our Spatial Search and Explore indexes making it easy to now surf Wikipedia on a map in your browser. to try it out, just turn on Live Map's 'Explore feature and then select the Wikipedia Tag. Try it out! This link will take you to Rome with the Wikipedia layer turned on. As you drag the map, the layer will continuously refresh. You can turn on Explore at ay time by going to the Collections --> Explore  menu in Live Maps. 

Turn on Birds Eye view for an amazing visual exploration experience. Each pin on the map represents a Wikipedia article. Hover over each for details and a link to open the full article at Wikipedia.

You can also turn on Explore after doing a Place search. For example, after a search for Mumbai you can click the Explore link in the result panel to dive right in.

At that point you are presented with information from all across the Geoweb. Be sure to select the Wikipedia tag in the tag list if all you want to see is Wikipedia articles.

Have fun. and be careful - its addicting Exploring Wikipedia this way and will eat up many hours.

Oh! one more thing. in addition to Explore, you can search for these Wikipedia articles as well. Enter your search phrase and make sure you are on the Collections Scope, then hit search.

This months Virtual Earth Imagery update brings Birds Eye imagery to two new Countries - Australia and Greece. Actually, Greece had a bit of coverage already but since it is so greatly expanded this month it is worth calling out here. Chris has a great run down on all of the geographies that received new imagery this month.

Turning on Collections Explore is a great way to interactively learn about an area and discover landmarks and other high profile Points of Interest in an area. you can turn on Explore at any time by using the 'Collections --> Explore' menu item to turn on a layer of points of interest created entirely by individuals across the web. Once Explore is on, take advantage of the sort and filter options to tailor your results. You can choose to see only items with a photo attached for instance.

Some Examples

• All items in Volos, Greece
• Entries in Hobart, Tazmania Tagged 'wikipedia'
• Photos around Sydney

Coachella and the New Orleans Jazz Fest kick off the summer frenzy of music festivals this weekend. I'm heading to Coachella to get summer started a little early - we need it here in Seattle where the gray of winter has extended unusually long this year. Spin's May issue runs down nearly a hundred festivals around the world featuring a dozen major events and hundreds of performers and inspired me to start a Collection to help you find featured Festivals this Summer. I still need to add a bunch so you might want to   to my Collection's RSS reed to stay updated.

Last week I showed you how you can use Live Maps as a friendly means of building itineraries for use on your Personal Navigation Device (PND) from Garmin, TomTom, etc...

Kip from the LiveSide blog followed up a couple of days later with this 3 minute companion video showing you how to do the export from Live Maps to a GPX or KML file for use on your PND (or any other application or website that can read one of these formats)

These posts lead a number of people to ask me "Is it possible to do the opposite - I want to get a trail from my GPS or Navigation system into Live Maps". No problem - we have had import capability in Live Maps for GeoRSS, KML and GPX files since last year. As an example, here is a 36 mile trail captured on a Garmin Edge Cycling GPS.

Assuming your device can save a KML or GPX file, the import process is easy.

1. Go to Live Maps and sign in with your Live ID.
2. Select the 'Collections -> Open Your Collections' menu
3. Click the 'Import' Button
4. Select your KML or GPX file to import. Give your new Collection a name or choose to have this trail appended to one of your existing Collections.
5. Press Import and wait a moment while your trail is loaded.

Once loaded you can email it to a friend with the 'Share' link in the upper right. It will also be discoverable by other users who search and explore at Live Maps. THis is an easy way to build and share catalogues of your trips, runs, hikes, etc...

If you are building applications with the Virtual Earth Map control, here are a bunch of recent newsy items.

Verison 6.1 API released - last week the API was rev'd to 6.1. new features include Walking Directions and reverse geocoding and a bunch more. Full details in the VE Dev Center. read more Here, Here, and Here.

VE Intellisense Helper - If you use Visual Studio to build your Virtual Earth apps, be sure to grab the latest Intellisense Helper to synch up with all the new 6.1 stuff. It makes writing javascript almost fun.

Dave Bouwman's Blog - I learn something new every time I visit - there are precious few map/gis blogs, dev or otherwise, that I can say this about so be sure to add this to your feed list. Dave is my Coding Horror in the mapping world!

3D Developer Blog - Members of the Virtual Earth 3D Dev team have started a blog... about  programming with VE3D :-)  The scoop doesn't get any more inside than this. learn how to use the VE3D map control in a WinForm app among many other great tips.

I saw this story on WebWare tonight about how Sungevity is using Virtual Earth's Birds Eye View to assist in determining how much you could benefit from installing solar panels on your roof. From WebWare -

The company's secret sauce is a trigonometry-heavy application that can take satellite imagery and create a 3D model of a house. From the model, Sungevity calculates the pitch of the roof, the azimuth (for instance, where the house faces in relation to compass points) and the available area. Sungevity uses data from Microsoft Virtual Earth rather than Google Earth for its satellite imagery. Google Earth only provides a top-down view of a roof. Virtual Earth gives data from different angles, which lets Sungevity calculate pitch.

I'm always surprised at how often I see this innocent error. Maybe it only matters to map nerds, but reality is that the best aerial imagery you see online doesn't come from Satellites. That goes for 'straight down' ortho imagery as well as the 45 degree view of Birds Eye Imagery. The cameras used in aircraft based photography capture at higher resolutions, but it's color range and accuracy where they really excel. But back to Finding a Solar panel for your roof - Sungevity only services the state of California right now. According to one estimate from the Webware story the upfront cost is a lot less than it was a couple of years ago. The mapping interface built by Sungevity is visually nice, providing a 'lens' with which to manually pinpoint your house.