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Good news for all Bing Maps developers with windows update 979202 solving a major performance issue.
CPU usage is high when you use the Deep Zoom feature in Silverlight 3. This problem occurs when the Deep Zoom feature cannot load or decode a tile. The problem persists even if you minimize the Web browser in which the Silverlight 3 application is running.
This would occur if you had either :
- a custom tile layer that would return 404 errors when tiles were requested (typical for a simple file system on edge tiles that don’t exist but are still requested by the control) or
- if you disabled the coverage map of the base layers and zoomed into the non-covered area.
Additionally my tests prove that an additional problem with animations causing the MSI control to redraw have also been solved.
This is great news and allows us to do some clever things with dynamic tile layers and animated icons on the map without major performance hits. I hope to share some of these with you in coming posts.
Think you’re savvy enough to navigate Bing Maps faster than anyone else? Answer 4 questions and you’ll be in the running to win a $100 gift card courtesy of the Bing Maps team. Take the Bing Maps Challenge now.
CP – Follow me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton
National Geographic has been hard at work getting their atlas of maps into your grubby little hands. And as such, they’ve released their newest mobile application for iPhone – World Atlas (iTunes link). The application allows you to view 7 different levels of cartography, 3 maps styles and the ability to find locations around the world with nearly 7 million place listings. And, of course, the Bing Maps Platform has been integrated right into their application as a mapping option.
Here’s a quick run down of the features I snagged from their site:
- High resolution National Geographic cartography, the same used to print our award-winning wall maps and bound atlases!
- Preloaded with 3 different styles of world maps, down to country detail. Additional detailed zoom levels and Microsoft Bing maps r
The Haitian Earthquakes have captured the eyes of the world. As part of the effort, Bing Maps is doing what we can to help the world see the changes over time around Haiti by unveiling the Haiti Earthquake application in the application gallery. The concept of the application allows users to view the aerial imagery before and after the earthquake.
The application allows you to select to view imagery before the earthquake or after the quake (dated January 15, 2010). Also included in the application is a link to our Twitter Maps application focused on Haiti using the Geolocation API from Twitter which allows you to view Tweets coming from people in Haiti.
My heart goes out to those who have been affected by this travesty.
Other Microsoft efforts in Haiti:
We’re ripping the Beta tag off the Bing Maps Silverlight site and going full board with continuing innovation on Bing. Removing the beta tag has so many implications as a Microsoft asset in terms of what you can expect moving forward…reliability, supportability, and continued innovation and investment to name a few. The removal of the beta tag was done in parallel with a couple of new features and Bing Maps Application Gallery mash-ins.
First off, if you go to the Bing Maps AJAX site and have Silverlight installed chances are you will be redirected to the Bing Maps Silverlight site (note this change only affects users in the US). We're rolling this out with a small percentage of users increasing up to 100% of all users in a few weeks. If you don’t have Silverlight installed you can hit the AJAX site and will be prompted to install Silverlight (which you can opt out of, but WHY would you??). Well, to make the AJAX site a bit smoother we’ve introduced some new transitions in the tile loading process for panning and zooming. So you can have your Silverlight and AJAX too. If you don’t want to stay on the Silverlight site, you can opt out and return to the AJAX site (aka Bing Maps Classic) via the link on the Silverlight site.
Also, two new applications have been added to the Bing Maps Application Gallery (Silverlight only) each of which I’ve written specific blogs on to explain each of the applications in detail:
- Destination Maps – Vector based route geometries on new map backgrounds
- Local Events – Find so
Need to give people directions to your house, business or party (yeah, baby!). Use the Destination Maps application just specify a place (such as Club XS in Las Vegas); set the area of interest by dragging the sides of the on-map square to include all the areas people are coming from; then give the map a title. You can select multiple map styles such as Sketchy, European, American or Treasure (a la pirate! – featured). Very reminiscent of the Line Drive maps from my Vicinity days...only way fricking cooler!
CP – Follow me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton
No plans this Friday? Make some. Bing Maps newest application Local Events allows you to search for what’s happening around where you plan to be. Or, even better, where you may not plan to be but will end up! Load the Local Events application and navigate to your favorite destination to see events pinned to the map. If you’re looking for a specific type of application such as music or dancing you can filter the results on the map be changing the category in the navigation pane.
And, next to location what’s the most critical element of events? When! You can further filter your search results by specifying when you’re looking to have some fun. You can specify today, tomorrow, this weekend, this week, next week or specific dates. If you dig arts and crafts on Wednesday nights between January 13 and March 3, we’ve got your search query for you.
Plus, use the cool pin feature to pin the event to the map. Then, you can view just “your pins” at any given time. Also, get directions, share the event information or save the event to Your Places easily with built in features to do so. Go find something to do!
CP – Follow me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton
Need to do a little grocery shopping? Chances are you’ll be shopping at a Kroger and not even know it. The grocery retail chain behind such huge brands as Ralphs, Food 4 Less and Fred Meyer (to name a few) is now officially moved their store locator over to the Bing Maps Platform.
The new locator application from the Kroger.com home page allows you to enter a postal code or city/state combo, then select additional search filters such as Fuel Center, Pharmacy and Marketplace; then, specify the search radius to find the nearest store. The site also features an Advanced Search so you can put in a full address and add additional filters for other services available within the respective stores including Bank, One Hour Photo, 24-hour Pharmacy, Gas Station, Organics and Pharmacy Services. At the end of your s
The Bing Maps imagery release for January 2010 release is SO BIG we had to break it into two parts – not kidding! The January 2010 Part 1 release is 558,000 square kilometers of imagery consisting of:
- Germany’s Ruhrgebeit
- Belgium
- Luxembourg
- Vancouver – Sea to Sky Hwy to Squamish and beyond
- Additional imagery scattered throughout Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Latvia and Turkey.
As always for the best experience, view the imagery using the Bing Maps World Tour.
CP – Follow me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton
For those of you wanting to see the devastation in Haiti resulting from the recent Earthquake, Bing Maps has published the new imagery online. Visit the Bing Maps web site to view the imagery first hand. The imagery Is 50 cm color imagery taken from Digital Globe’s new Worldview 2 satellite. While the imagery is current, there was a cloud over part of Port au Prince which obscures some of the downtown area. Digital Globe will be acquiring more imagery daily and as soon as we have a cloudless image we will publish again.
(Non-Silverlight link).
Other related links from Microsoft:
- Also, check out the MSR HD-View on MSNBC.
- Photosynth of Port au Prince.
- Microsoft’s
As I mentioned previously, Bing Maps Adds Streetside, Enhanced Bird’s Eye, Photosynth and More, we’re going to be rolling out more and more Streetside photography on Bing Maps. Well, we did a special run just in time for the winter Olympics that covers Vancouver and Whistler in Canada. Check it out:
The slopes in Whistler are some of the best in the world:
More to come. Stay tuned.
CP – Follow me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton
A great resource to find out about the latest imagery updates is of course Chris Pendleton’s blog. A fancy tour through the highlights of the latest updates is available in the Bing Maps World Tour. Sometimes people are however interested in the geographic extend of these updates. If you are one of those you might find this little Bing Maps Silverlight application helpful that I have put together.
Another month goes by and another few hundred thousand square kilometers of Bing Maps imagery hits the web – more than 274,000 square kilometers in fact. December was a big month for Bird’s Eye and although we just launched Streetside, we’ll continue to add more cities every month. We added / updated 27 counties across Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina, Illinois, Washington D.C. and Oklahoma with fresh new Bird’s Eye photos (33,520 sq. km.). 151 cities across Russia, Poland and Turkey were updated with new aerial (ortho) imagery (240,739 sq. km.). And, finally, we added 1.1 TB of new Streetside imagery of which I’ll get you the location details in a future post.
As always, you can see the finer details on the Bing Maps World Tour Application.
CP – Follow me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton
Bing Maps is kicking off its UK user group inaugural event at the Microsoft office in London. Get in early as one of the inaugural members. The first meeting will be on January 13, 2010 from 6PM to 9PM. The Microsoft office is located at 100 Victoria Street, London. Here’s a bit about the event I ripped from the web site:
Our first meeting of the new Bing Maps UK User Group. Open to all newbies, experienced and bing maps wizards there should be something for everyone. We will start informally around 6pm with coffee and socialising and start officially at 7pm finishing up around 9pm and off to the pub.
The first event will have two 'formal sessions':
- Adventures in Mapping at the BBC, Jim Lynn
- Integrating SQL Server 2008 and Bing Maps, Alastair Aitchison
If you would like to host a session yourself at this event, or future ones please let us know in the comments below
MSN and The Today Show (.com) have united forces to create this year’s Santa tracker with the Bing Maps Platform. This year’s effort allows you to follow Santa’s current location as well as where he’s been. Check Santa to see his current position. Check the presents to see where he’s been. Click on a gift on the map and you’ll see a popup with information about the location, when he was there and picture of Santa in the respective city…captured from anonymous users’ camera from around the world.
For more Christmas fun check out these Bing Maps related links:
With 2 days before the release of the much anticipated movie, Sherlock Holmes, an online mystery game has been created to find out what exactly is 221B. The game is actually super fun because it pulls in your Facebook friends and chooses who will be your Watson (or Holmes if you choose to be Watson). Once immersed into the game, the two of you unravel the mystery set before you inclusive of videos, puzzles and Photosynth! You were probably wondering what the Bing Maps angle was…Photosynth is technically part of the Bing Maps group. The game is super fun! And, you get to play with a friend, so that makes it that much more interesting. Plus, check out the Synth you have to find clues in once you’re in the game:
Pretty slick, eh? So, if you’ve got some time to kill to get you in the spirit of the Sherlock Holmes movie you should play the What is 221B game! Read more details about the Synth on the Photosynth blog entry, "You know my methods, Watson".
CP – Follow me on
Recently, the Bing Search team released the Bing Bar which places the Bing Search capabilities into your browser tool bar for easy searching of Bing and its different search facets – Web, Images, Videos, Shopping, News, Travel and, of course Maps (see Bing: Connecting People, Places and Things for full details). I wanted to clarify the functionality and where exactly to find Maps since I’ve had a couple people tell me Bing Maps is not included; however, it actually is. Once you install the Bing Bar, you’ll see the personalization features – News, Hotmail, Autofill, Weather, Stocks, Video and Private.
Since these are what appear when you first load the tool bar you may be thinking, “Where are the Search features??” So, you look in the options and get lost daydreaming in the different colors and themes available with the bar. Then maybe you complete the Autofill form to make it easier when you filling out forms online; and, suddenly you realize there’s no options for Maps! The trick is going to make you laugh and this is what I’ve told people how to search for Maps…just do a search. “But, there’s no maps options!” Just do a search. “But, I want to search Bing Maps!” JUST DO A SEARCH!
Upon clicking in the search box in the Bing Ba
One of the most significant additions to the Bing Maps beta web site is the Application Gallery mentioned in my Bing Maps Adds Streetside, Enhanced Bird’s Eye, Photosynth and More post. The Bing Maps Application Gallery is a simplified way to use search and map visualization for dynamic applications exposed through Bing. At launched we introduced the app gallery with 16 applications which I’ll describe in detail below; however, I also wanted to announce that last week we added a new application to the Bing Maps Application Gallery which I’ll describe first. We plan to add applications to the gallery on a regular basis, so stay tuned for future posts about new applications. To get to the Application Gallery, look to the lower left hand side of the Bing Maps Beta site and click the [>] button.
New Application!
Snow Globe – Just in time for Christmas, Frosty’s bringing snow to Miami…or, anywhere else we have Streetside imagery. Adjust the sliders to (1) increase the amount of snow (July to February), (2) change the wind direction (Calm to Hurricane) or (3) change the wind speed (This way to That way). Check out the dude taking a shower...he must be freezing now! Muhhahaha! Now that's a Christmas in Miami wor