This might be old news to some but hey I am on the road and I can barely get sleep rather then keep up at h some of this stuff.  I just wanted to let everyone know to download the new intellesense helper so that it will work with the new 6.2 version of VE.

Well the VE team is still very busy at work I and have realease yet another awsome sub version of VE.Check out all the new specks from mark brown

• Maps for Mobile Devices. Develop mobile applications with rich imagery optimized specifically for mobile devices, including the iPhone. The new mobile-optimized features are supported in the new Virtual Earth Web Services.
• Bird’s Eye Views and Bird’s Eye Hybrid. Exclusive to Microsoft, these unique views of real-world locations provide insight into “what it’s like there.” Bird’s eye hybrid adds street names to the bird’s eye maps to provide end users better visual context and orientation.
• Aerial Imagery. Leverage the impact of high-resolution aerial images from leading imagery providers.
• 3D Imagery. Create more realistic 3D views of buildings and landscapes, featuring denser city models.
• Geocoding and Reverse Geocoding. Get the most accurate locations around the world through integration of multiple geocoders and datasets with MapView, Reverse IP, and Culture to provide the most relevant and accurate results. And find the closest street address based only on latitude and longitude coordinates from a GPS or other geospatial device.
• International Geocoding. Your customers can now find international addresses with reverse geocoding, available anywhere Virtual Earth has routing.
• Localized Directions. Get localized driving or walking directions in 15 languages.
• Localized Maps. Create better connections with your global customers. Provide localized maps in U.S. English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian in Western Europe.
• Extended International Parsing Capabilities. Users will experience better match rates for addresses in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
• Expanded Number of Rooftop Views. Provide more detailed maps to help users find locations with rooftop accuracy. Virtual Earth now offers 85 million unique addresses—more than 70 percent of all rooftops in the U.S.
• Near-Matching Capabilities. using alternate and similar spellings, resulting in a more relevant search experience.
• Imagery Metadata. Users can now find out the relative age of a given aerial image. This level of detail will help them assess if the imagery is relevant to their needs.
• New Virtual Earth Web Services. Developers can now take advantage of the new Virtual Earth Web Services API, which offers static map images (.gif, .jpeg, and .png), direct map tile access, one-box search functionality, geocoding, reverse geocoding, and routing.
• One-Click Directions. From your Virtual Earth Web application, allow your customers to get directions in one click, choosing from route options by shortest time, shortest distance, or traffic flow. With one-click directions, users instantly get directions without having to enter a starting address.
• Shapes and Shape Layers. Customize and modify pushpins, polylines and polygons, line colors and widths, and transparencies of shapes, as well as add custom icons.
• Pushpin Clustering. Provide customers the ability to zoom in on a map to better visualize a cluster of points. When many locations exist in a dense area, the pushpins can be clustered or hidden from view at smaller zoom levels.
• Landmark-Based Routing. Provide customers in the U.S. and Canada with turn-by-turn maps that feature such familiar landmarks as gas stations and fast-food restaurants by name.
• Driving Directions with Traffic-Based Routing. Provide optimized driving directions with step-by-step instructions.
• Walking Directions. When traveling on foot, users can now find the most direct route to walk to their destination, ignoring one-way streets, medians, and other detours that pertain to motor vehicles.
• Multipoint Routing. Optimize travel schedules and improve driver efficiency by implementing the Virtual Earth trip planner and multipoint routing.
• Traffic Reports. Avoid time-consuming traffic jams by using traffic reports that overlay the Virtual Earth map with color-coded traffic flow visuals above the roads that they correspond to. NOTE: These traffic overlays are available to licensed customers that implement the client token authentication infrastructure.
• GeoRSS Feeds. Import shapes, pushpins, and polylines, with GeoRSS feeds, the de facto standard for geographically encoded objects.
• Weather Integration. With 3D view, get near real-time weather and cloud formation data.

Get more information:

We have two webcasts coming up next week for you to learn more and get started.

• See Chris Pendleton’s Blog Post on his Launch Webcast on October 2nd at 9AM.
• Mark Brown’s Blog Post for his Technical Webcast the next day on October 3rd at 10am.

Finally, if you haven’t already get out to http://dev.live.com/virtualearth and check out our updated Interactive SDK and Virtual Earth Web Services SDK. Plus we’re also going to be publishing a bunch more content out on this portal including a whole new round of white papers and other community created content. There’s tons of more options now for building your applications with Virtual Earth so this site should be your one-stop shop for everything Virtual Earth relate

Since I have been traveling I have been looking to use virtual earth offline. I really want to be able to send request locally so I can continue to play around while I am on the road. Yeah Yeah I am in the middle of a beautiful beach in the middle of Colombia and yeah I am thinking of virtual earth. There is obviously something really wrong here, but I digress. So when I was doing my searching I found a really interesting solution by Toucan you can download it here. You can also read a great review of it from the Microsoft Public Dev Team Here.

"The Professional Edition, which is not a free download, includes additional functionality for data sharing. You can collaborate on map files through SQL Server and Groove. The Groove compatibility allows members of a team to access shared map files even when disconnected from the network. Files that are modified while you are offline are automatically uploaded to the common Groove team space once you are reconnected to the network and notification is sent to other team members. "

So you can collaborate and GEO docs and have them sync with a online source even when you off-line. This could make for some cool hand held mapping app's. To tell you the truth of the matter i am still a bit confused between the differences of Microsoft groove and sharepoint and of course live mesh oh and dont forget about astoria I mean sql server in the cloud in mean SSAS. I could use some real guidance of where they intend to take the offline online syncing and where devolopers should spend most of their time for the different types of applications they are using.

Spatial it taking root.. Well more like people are starting to realize that spatial rocks and that all data takes on new meaning once you take in its spatial aspect. Representing your data is like seeing your 3D after viewing the world in the 2D for your entire life. Some may say that this is exaggerating but wait until your data tells a 3D story.

So Lets start to dig into spatial.

3D vs 2D

The world is three dimensional object yet most of things we use to view are in 2d. For instance a paper map or a computer screen. Luckily for us we have Virtual Earth and SQL Spatial which takes in both 3D(geography) and 2D(geometry) shapes and types and displays in them in ways that we can visualize them both.

A great visualization from Hanes that shoes the 2D vs 3D visualization

Coordinate System

The next thing that never keep in mind is the coordinate system. I never am always amazed at the amounts of different coordinate systems that are out there. I have worked with at least 5 different coordinate systems and there are some that are so complex and so ridiculous that i never seem to start laughing.

For these articles we are going to be using the "WGS84 coordinate system have to consider an ellipsoidal shape of the earth and they can be described as either Cartesian coordinates or through latitude and longitude. Latitudes can have values between +90 and -90 degrees where 0 is at the equator and longitudes can have values between +180 and -180 degrees where 0 has been defined as a place in the Royal Observatory in Greenwich / United Kingdom. As mentioned earlier Virtual Earth in 2D-mode can only work between +85 and -85 degrees because of the Mercator projection."

So now that we have our basic understanding of 2d vs 3d maps we have or coordinate system lets dig into the SQL spatial

Need Shapes? Check out this wiki that enables the user to to add and consume shapes in js/json/geoRss. Its a great way to add layers to your VE maps.

 < Previous Tutorial Adding a basic Map 

LIVE DEMO | SOURCE

We are going to start off with the same code base of the last the Tutorial but this time we want to add a specific map to the page instead of the random map. There are actually several ways to do this but for his situation we are going to do it using a lat and longitude. The first thing we need to do is  get the latitude and longitude for the place that we want to have the map centered on. There are several way to do this but for now i just typed in "lat long for los angeles" and it returned this to me.

34.0° N - 118.2° W

So we are going to be taking this Lat long and use it to modify  the existing LoadMap() function. As you can see below we are going to new up a VELatLong object and pass in the lattitude and longitude to its constructor.

map.LoadMap(new VELatLong(34.0, -118.2)); 

Add in this to the sample from tutorial 1 and you get this map.

As you can see the map is centered on Los Angeles.This is really cool but it gets even better. This is where we do the deep dive into what the rest of the variables that  you can pass do. Below you will see a example of the function with all the possible variables that you can pass in.

LoadMap(VELatLong, zoom, style, fixed, mode, showSwitch, tileBuffer, mapOptions)

Lets talk about what each one of these variables does

Now that we have that out of the way we can go ahead and play with all the values.Check out this demo i have set up for you. Of course the all source included. It works best in firefox right now due to a bug in ie. I  am working on a fix.

LIVE DEMO | SOURCE

1. Consolidated all scripts into a single VEJavaScriptIntellisenseHelper.js file for better portability
2. Updated Default.aspx to point to the 6.1 Map Control
3. Updated Default.aspx.js to explain how to get intellisense everywhere for a page level map variable
4. Added a readme.txt with history

Webcast Coming Check Back Soon1

Download it here

Live Demo | Download

This is a quick app to help you get started with adding map to web page.

1) The first thing we need to do is make a standard html file with a empty div called myMapdiv

   1: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

   2: <head >

   3:    <title>Adding A Map To A Web Page</title>

   4:    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />

   5: </head>

   6: <body >

   7:     <!-- the div element for the map to inject into -->

   8:     <div id="myMapdiv" ></div>

   9: </body>

  10: </html>

2)_ First thing you need to do is import the virtual earth JavaScript file

   1: <script type="text/javascript" 

   2:      src="http://dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=6.1"></script>

The first thing that you will notice is that you are not calling a javascript file at all but some file that ashx end to it?

An ASP.NET HTTP Handler is a simple class that allows you to process a request and return a response to the browser. In this case we are returning the most recent version of the JavaScript file we are requesting.

3) Declare a JavaScript variable called map and set it equal to null. We are going to use this variable to store the virtual map object into.

We are then going to to write a function that news up VEMap object and then passes in the myMapDiv as the name of the div that we want to virtual earth to inject the map into. We then going to load the map with pass no variables therefor calling all the default.

   1: <script type="text/javascript">

   2:        var map = null;

   3:        function GetMap()

   4:        {

   5:            //the virtual earth map constructor takes in the div 

   6:            //elemetnt the map goes into.

   7:            map = new VEMap('myMapdiv');

   8:            // the default load map. Centers on the US many different 

   9:            //overloads can be placed here.

  10:            map.LoadMap();

  11:        }

  12:    </script>

4) Call our JavaScript function from onload attribute of the body tag, and we have map. Its important to not that we have to wait for the dom to fully load before we call the mapping function otherwise we risk the page not knowing about the myMapDiv div.

   1: <!-- Call the GetMap() function on page Load..

   2: .The Dom Needs to load before the map is created-->

   3: <body onload="GetMap()">

   4:     <!-- the div element for the map to inject into -->

   5:     <div id="myMapdiv" ></div>

   6: </body>

There you have it your first mapping WebSite.

The virtual earth team has been busy at work and today announced a new version of virtual earth.

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtualearth/archive/2008/04/11/new-virtual-earth-api-release-virtual-earth-6-1.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

One of the greatest things about working on Microsoft api's is that you no longer have to weight to get updates. One night you may be writing a blog entry and bam new version. Out of the blue. ALthough i have started to notice that VE Dev blog becomes very quite when they are about to get a new release out. Hmm

Anyway's great work guys keep it up ... Or else.

New Features include

New Walking Directions. When traveling on foot, users in North America and the European Union can now find the most direct route to walk to their destination, ignoring one-way streets, medians, and other detours that pertain to motor vehicles.

· New Traffic-based Routing. Want to take the frontage road and avoid the highway at rush hour? Users can now choose alternate routes based on current traffic flows to get where they’re going faster.

· New Reverse Geocoding. Users in the U.S. can now find the closest street address based only on latitude and longitude coordinates from a GPS or other geospatial device.

· Improved Localized Directions. Organizations can now provide users with localized driving or walking directions in 15 languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Italian, among others.

· New Locales. The Virtual Earth dashboard, or navcontrol, is localized to support languages including English for U.S.-based speakers, Japanese, Italian, Spanish for U.S.-based speakers, as well as French for both France and Canada-based speakers.

· Safari Support. The new map control includes improved support for Apple Safari 2 and new support for Safari 3, enabling Mac users to enjoy many of the features of Virtual Earth that are available on Internet Explorer®.

· Improved Printing Support. Printing support for maps is enhanced to print the driving route in relation to the map. Printing support is also expanded for cross-browser support of Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox 2 for PC, and Safari 2 and 3 for Mac only.

· Updated Interactive SDK. Customers can now access the new Virtual Earth Interactive SDK for online viewing or via download, to demonstrate the new functionality of the Virtual Earth map control.

Tailored 3D Tours. Media producers can customize video output of 3D fly though tours in six resolutions, in 15 or 30 frames per second, and can add photos and hide or display pushpin icons.

· Bird’s Eye View in 3D. Users can easily toggle bird’s eye view on and off for a seamless end-user experience.

· Bird’s Eye Hybrid View. Customers can now select a new map style called Bird’s Eye Hybrid that adds street names to the bird’s eye maps to provide end users better visual context and orientation.

Immersive Imagery

Virtual Earth is an industry leader in providing precise views of the world through bird’s eye¹ view and panning, and improved 3D model accuracy and resolution, among other features. Precise imagery creates immersive end-user experiences that bring location-based information to life.

· More Detailed 3D Experiences: With this latest release, the map detail for Las Vegas, NV; Phoenix, AZ; Dallas, TX; and Denver, CO features improvements in 3D model accuracy and resolution detail to reveal more buildings, small terrain features, building textures, and trees that enhance overall realism. This enhanced 3D map detail will soon roll out to the more than 250 cities where 3D models are currently available.

Does any one notice something funny about my comment time and the blog post time?

I love being before the news.