Virtual Earth - Larry Kuhn

6/6/2009

As part of recent search product rebranding and relaunch that changed Live Search over to Bing, so too has Live Maps changed over to Bing Maps. But it seems that, as with the rest of the search capabilities, much more has happened with Maps than just a name change. Loads and loads of new aerial imagery has been loaded up. And there is a guided tour application that will zoom you around the planet to show it off to you. Check out the Bing Maps World Tour right here: http://bingmapsupdates.cloudapp.net/ This tour application is especially helpful in getting you out into vast Pacific ocean area to visit atolls and islands - very cool. Be sure to roll your mouse up to the top of the window so that the menu drops down to allow you to jump to points of interest.

Note that the tour app requires Silverlight - a quick painless automatic install if you don't have it already...

Enjoy.

Posted at 12:12 PM by lkuhn | Category: Virtual Earth | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/15/2009

Synth the Moment

This ties in with Photosynth, which I've blogged about before here and here...

CNN.com is working together with Microsoft to leverage what looks to be one of the worlds largest convergences of cameras at a single event.

Check it out and get in on it: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/44.president/inauguration/themoment/

Posted at 2:37 PM by lkuhn | Category: Events; Virtual Earth | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/19/2007

Check out the October 2007 release of Virtual Earth on Live Search Maps

On October 15, 2007, somewhat quietly, the latest and thus far greatest version of Live Search Maps was rolled out. It has so many cool new things that it's hard to pick what I like the best, but I think the improvements that have been made to the navigation controls are wonderful. In the screenshot below you'll notice there's a blue navigation bar in the upper left of the display window. BTW, the address featured in the screenshot there is that of the building where my father's plumbing business used to be – those are 4 of the trucks in the driveway to the right of the building. Since these aerial photos were taken the building has been sold, and subsequently replaced with a new condo building.

Ah, the march of progress. But I digress; we're here to talk about new features. Here are my top 5 favorites:

Only one search box!!! You don't know how many times I had to help out friends and family who would get tripped up by the old arrangement where there were two boxes – one for the business or category, and the second for the address. It may not seem like much to remove a text box, but there's a world of software engineering that went into the text parsing that happens when you click the 'Search' button now. And in my experience with it so far this week, it works very well.
Photo-synth inspired integration of the Bird's Eye photos with the 2D and 3D map views. The process of keeping yourself oriented when transitioning between maps and Bird's eye imagry was once very clunky and difficult, but is now instantly intuitive.
1-click directions – this is so cool – it's the way I always need to give out directions when I have a big group of people coming to one location – they're coming from all different locations, they know where they are, they just need to get here… nice.
Route Around Traffic – real time traffic was cool, but what if you're from out of town and aren't sure what the best alternate route would be?
Lat/Long mouse tracking – watch the lower right corner of the image as you move the pointer. Didn't you always want to know where you were pointing?

You can read about all of the new features over on the Virtual Earth team blog.

Finally, I want to put in a plug for the latest version of the Mobile version of Live Search Maps which now feature Gas Prices! Take your phone (Blackberry's now too!) and browse on over to http://mobile.live.com and download it.

Posted at 2:07 PM by Larry Kuhn | Category: Virtual Earth | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/29/2007

Alien Invaders at Soldier Field

There are many local Chicagoans who say that the new Soldier Field was designed by aliens. If you follow this link you can play a cool Silverlight/Virtual Earth mashup that'll let shoot and destroy them:

http://www.andybeaulieu.com/silverlight/DestroyAll/Default.html?latitude=41.8626563098313&longitude=-87.6163825973596

Posted at 10:39 AM by Larry Kuhn | Category: Virtual Earth | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/11/2007

Check out Photosynth and prepare to be amazed

You've got to try this out: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

A picture is worth a thousand words so I'll save myself the typing. And in the case of photosynth - there are thousands of picture too - arranged in 3D space. The team working on Photosynth has done amazing things. I'm categorizing this post as Virtual Earth related, btw, because there are links from the left pane of the Photosynth viewer that you jump you right to the VE map of the locations depicted in the collections. I smell some cool mashup opportunities here - specifically - bindings of time and place. Just imagine how cool it would be for a collaborative collection of pictures of some event - contributed by many people who witenessed it. you could go the location on the VE map - set your time machine dial to the date and time - and then view the event through the camera lenses of those who lived it...

Now, btw, it's still a tech preview, mind you, so there are a few bumps... here are the one's I encountered:

1. The first time you visit, it will need to install an add-in into your browser. It will then try to immediately begin loading, and this may not work. If you run into troubles (as in you get a message saying that the collection could not be opened) - just close all browser windows and go there again. Second time is the charm.

2. I've seen things get flakey if you try to go to the site in from a tab window in the browser other than the first. Again, starting with a fresh browser is the key.

'nuf said - go check it out.

P.S. besure to try out all of the "leaves" in the upper right of the display window - especially "Similarity view" and "Fly Around"

Posted at 7:32 PM by Larry Kuhn | Category: Virtual Earth | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/14/2007

Interactive Weather Maps powered by Virtual Earth

You've got to check this one out – especially if you live in Chicago, where they say "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes."

Head on over to http://www.weather.com, enter your local zip code, and click on the "New Radar Map" link.

At first you'll see a traditional radar map display. And, so you're thinking – big deal – weather map – seen it before. Well, click to interact, and now you can overlay road info and zoom into street level if you want – and what I like the most, intuitively click and drag to move around the map.

Posted at 12:40 PM by Larry Kuhn | Category: Virtual Earth | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/6/2007

A big week for Live Search Maps

There were two important releases this week related to Live Search Maps that I'm really excited about.

First and foremost, a new version of the Live Search Maps web site launched on 4/3/07. Full details on the VE blog at: http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!2BBC66E99FDCDB98!8495.entry Lot's of new stuff here: 3D support in Firefox, Ratings and Reviews for Businesses (including the ability to add your own) and RSS feeds for Collections are among the new features.

I really enjoy flying around the 3D landscape. Here's a virtual rendition of the views I took in at the Grand Canyon on my recent vacation:

One thing that is kind of interesting in this particular screenshot is that because the highest resolution imagery in the foreground is grayscale and the lower resolution imagery used to render the more distant areas further to the horizon are color, you can see the transition point between the those two image sets. And you can see what a good job is done mapping the image onto the 3D surface. Overall I think this gives you a good idea of the complexity of the rendering process that has been packed into the managed code browser plug-in.

On the more useful in every day pursuits are the new Ratings and Reviews features. It's a simple 2 step process to view and create reviews:

Search for the business of your choice, here, I've clicked on the push pin that is zeroing in on where a bunch of my tax dollars go:
Click on the "Details" link in the push pin pop up, and you get all dirt:

Well, you would get the dirt – if there was a review there. Just like any other user-built information tool it takes lots of contributions to make it valuable, so get in there and post a plug for your local favorite businesses.

Moving on now to the second big release to mention, for all you Outlook junkies out there, now you can get your maps and directions built right into your Outlook 2007 meeting items using the Live Search Maps Add-In for Microsoft Office Outlook. (Previous versions of the Add-in supported earlier version of Outlook only).

Here's a brief overview:

As you can see above, the Live Search Maps Add-in has added two groups to the ribbon in this appointment, it picked up the location info I put in, and allowed me to specify a start location. The Add-in maps my route, calculates the travel time (and optionally allows me to pad the front of the appointment so I'll depart and arrive on time) and shows me real-time traffic info on the map (those are the green and yellow lines) complete with alterts – Oh look – O'Hare is back to normal arrival delays – how cool is all that? J.

Posted at 7:56 PM by Larry Kuhn | Category: Virtual Earth | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/16/2007

A little something for all you SSP Admins out there

I've been driving past this billboard on I-294 in Northlake IL for several weeks, and every time I see it I think of all my SharePoint SSP Administrator friends. Today I was finally able to snap a picture as I went by.

Posted at 2:59 PM by Larry Kuhn | Category: Virtual Earth | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/13/2007

Traffic is fun again!

I've had a Windows Mobile based phone for a while now, and one of the coolest things I've found for it is Windows Live Search - download it right from your device by browsing on over to http://wls.live.com

Once you've got it - the world is at your fingertips. By far, the feature I enjoy and use the most is the live traffic map feature. Traffic in Chicago is only fun when you're not sitting in it.

And if you've got Vista, you've got traffic on the Sidebar - the same great traffic mapping feature is packaged up as the Traffic by Live Search Maps gadget that you can get over here: http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=d5ad423c-05bd-4de4-8803-b05ecc339397&l=1

Posted at 7:55 PM by Larry Kuhn | Category: Virtual Earth | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

Larry Kuhn