Tag: bing maps

Bing Maps Gets Traffic Cameras

Microsoft announced the launch of traffic cameras in Bing Maps. Yep, you read that correctly.

“Seeing is believing,” the company says in a blog post. “Here at Bing Maps we know the value of traffic information, however, there is something to be said about being able to see the current road conditions. We are proud to announce that you can now view more than 35,000 traffic cameras across 11 countries in Bing Maps.”

Users can access these views by turning on the traffic layer (by clicking “traffic”) on a map. From there, you’ll get traffic info overlaid on roads on the map, and you can zoom in to bring up traffic cameras where available.

“Want to compare a few cameras? No worries, we’ve got you covered. Simply return to summary and we will show your Recently viewed cameras. Now the cameras you check for your daily commute are ready and waiting,” Bing says. “As you can tell, we are very excited. Integrating the Clearflow traffic prediction algorithm was just the tip of the iceberg. Now we are showing traffic cameras. Can you believe this all started as a data-driven experiment? Neither can we, however, this is just part of the innovative culture we embrace at Bing Maps.”

It’s unclear where all exactly the feature is available, but it definitely is in Seattle.

Image via Bing

November 24, 2015
Bing Maps Preview Is Now Available On Windows 8.1

Bing Maps continues its journey of constant self improvement today with the release of the latest version preview for Windows 8.1. As this is a preview of the next big release, you can expect to see a ton of new features coming to Bing Maps in the future.

First and foremost, Bing says that it’s working with multiple parties, including the video game industry, to better improve its bird’s eye imagery. This will allow Bing to shorten the time it takes from collecting imagery taken by airplanes to converting said imagery into 3D environments for you to explore.

To better take advantage of Bing Maps’ 3D vantage points, you can now change your viewing perspective. For example, here’s what Mt. St. Helens looks like in 3D when viewed from the side. You can now see just how high the mountain is compared to the surrounding area.

Streetside view has also received a healthy update with a new feature that Bing calls “bubble view.” When you’re looking at bird’s eye imagery in Bing Maps, you can now click on a street to see a small preview of that street’s Streetside view in a bubble. When you click on said bubble, you’ll be taken directly to the Streetside imagery.

With this being Bing Maps, you can expect to see Bing search show up on the side. This allows you to search for restaurants, venues and other locations while receiving a route overlay to your desired destination.

Speaking of traveling, you can save routes in Bing Maps. Upon being saved, Bing Maps will notify you in Windows 8 if there’s an expected travel delay on that route and let you know how long the travel time will be.

Bing Maps is also integrating with Local Scout, Satori, Skype and Open Table to provide you with an easy way to call and book restaurant reservations, call hotels and more without ever leaving the app.

If you want to see more of what the new Bing Maps has to offer, check out Microsoft’s video tour:

Bing Maps Preview App from Bing on Vimeo.

To check out the new Bing Maps preview for Windows 8.1, you can just simply download it from the Windows Store.

[Image: Bing Blog]

December 5, 2013
Bing Maps Gets Tons Of New Bird’s Eye Imagery

Bing announced today that it has made some updates to Bing Maps, including the addition of its biggest batch of bird’s eye imagery to date. They’ve added about 270 terabytes of data, which they note is the equivalent of 100,000 DVDs worth.

Bing has now published a total of 1,452,958 sq km, or half a petabyte worth of bird’s eye imagery.

Most of of the new imagery is in the U.S., with a bit in Europe, Australia, and Asia.

Bing has also expanded venue maps and added a new “Report a Problem” feature.

“Ever need to find your seats at a football game? Lost in the Mall of America? With more than 4,700 Venue Maps in more than 59 countries on Bing Maps, you can navigate your way around malls, airports, amusement parks and more using your Windows phone, tablet, or PC!” Bing writes in a blog post.

“While on Bing Maps and within a zoom level of 1000 feet, purple and green polygons will appear to outline particular points of interest for a given venue. Green shading indicates restaurants, while stores appear purple,” Bing explains. “When you click on any outlined polygon, a directory will appear with a full list of points of interest and offer options to visually explore additional floors of the venue.”

To access the “Report a Problem” feature, just click on the point in question and click “Report a problem” in the box that appears.

June 11, 2013
Bing And Windows 8 Maps Get Tons Of New Imagery

Microsoft announced today that it has added over 121 TB of satellite and Global Ortho imagery to Bing Maps and the Windows 8 Maps app. The maps offerings now include over 15 million square kilometers of new data mostly covering South America, Africa, Asia and Europe, though there is some additional imagery in North America and Australia.

Following are some areas Microsoft is highlighting.

Laguna Chacaico, Argentina

Republic of the Congo

Ambohipaky, Madagascar

Coco, Costa Rica

“Our latest release of Global Ortho imagery includes 69 blocks and covers over 800,000 sq km,” Bing says. “In total, we have published 10,777,300 square kilometers covering 100% of the United States and 83% of Western Europe! The Global Ortho project is nearing completion with only 4% remaining to be published.”

Microsoft has also refreshed its Europe and U.S. desktop themes. There are now over 200 images for the U.S. and 175 for Europe, compatible with both Windows 7 and Windows 8.

The company also recently released a Hurricane Sandy Maps app.

November 28, 2012
Bing Maps SDK Now Available For Windows Store Apps

Let’s say your building a Windows Store app. You want to be on Windows 8 as soon as it launches later this month. Your app features a lot of map interactivity, or it just pulls info from one of the various map programs out there. What are you going to use? The simple answer is Google Maps, but Microsoft thinks you’ll want to use Bing Maps now that they have released an SDK.

Microsoft announced today that the Bing Maps SDK is now available for Windows Store apps. Those building Windows Store apps will now be able to leverage the power of Bing Maps for their own applications. The possibilities are endless unless you’re wanting to create an app about Area 51. It unfortunately doesn’t show up in Bing Maps.

It should be noted that Microsoft has released two versions of the Bing Maps SDK. The first is Bing Maps for JavaScript. Those who already have a Web-based Bing Maps app should be able to easily port to the Windows Store. Microsoft says the process should be familiar to those who use their AJAX Web control.

For those who want to build native apps, Microsoft has also released the Bing Maps SDK for C#, C++ and Visual Basic. The first release will only provide basic functionality to get Bing Maps inside your app. That basic functionality includes pushpins, polylines, polygons, landmarks, venue maps, traffic, and Synth view map style. The SDK has been designed to take advantage of x86, x64 and ARM platforms.

Those interested in building a Bing Maps app will need a new key called “Windows Store app.” You’ll be able to grab one over at the Bing Maps Account Center. Those who already created a Bing Maps app using a Metro style app trial key will have their key expire on January 15. Those who created a non-trial Metro style app will have their key automatically converted.

If you’re interesting in creating a Windows Store app, check out these useful links for JavaScript and Native development.

October 3, 2012
If You Miss Google Maps On iOS, Bing Thinks You Should Use Bing Maps

Google Maps and its disappearance from iOS have been in the news a lot over the past week or so, and lots of other companies are stepping up pointing to their own maps offerings. Microsoft is the latest, and is now going around reminding people that they can use Bing Maps from the Bing app on iOS 6.

“With all the recent chatter about mobile apps, particularly mapping in iOS 6, a lot of people are wondering which apps given them both the essential tools they need and a great experience,” a spokesperson for Bing tells WebProNews. “Well, Bing has them covered and now is a great time to download the Bing App for iPhone.”

“The Bing App, which is free and iOS 6 compatible, helps people easily find what they need – whether it’s using voice activated search to find maps and driving directions or Bing Vision to scan and find that great bottle of wine that was shared with friends,” he adds. “Just wanted to offer a reminder that a great mapping and search option exists for iPhone users, and they don’t have to wait for it.”

The company also put out a blog post to the same effect, though they didn’t talk about maps too much in it, other than to mention that you can “get walking, transit, and driving directions with current traffic conditions and maps,” and to show a picture of Bing Maps on an iPhone.

It’s worth noting that iOS users can still access Google Maps from the web via their mobile devices. There’s just not an app currently available (though it sounds like that will change within the next couple months or so).

In other Google Maps news, the company introduced some pretty breathtaking under water “Street View” imagery today.

September 26, 2012
Bing Maps Can Pinpoint Your House In High Resolution, But Still Can’t Show You Area 51

Bing Maps are by far the best thing to come out of Microsoft’s insistence to take on Google in search. The maps and aerial imagery is on par with a lot of the work that Google does in the field. Microsoft just finished up their latest Bing Maps project and the results are pretty awesome.

Microsoft recently wrapped up the Global Ortho program here in the U.S. The project sees Microsoft capturing aerial imagery of every nook and cranny in the continental United States. To prove their point, Microsoft provided a map that shows how much land they were able to cover:

As you can see, they were able to get the entire U.S. except for two small areas in the Southwest. Microsoft says that they got clearance to photograph everywhere in the U.S. except for Area 51 and the Vandenberg Air Force Base. The larger of the two yellow areas is Area 51. I didn’t realize the U.S. government needed that much land to hide the existence of alien spacecraft.

All joking aside, Microsoft got some great aerial imagery. They were able to capture the entire U.S. at a 30cm resolution. They concede that other people have captured aerial imagery at higher resolutions, but nobody has captured the entire landmass of the continental U.S. at 30cm resolution until now.

Let’s do a little comparison test for now. Here’s Google’s aerial imagery for the University of Kentucky with a close up on William T. Young Library.

And here’s Bing’s GO shot of the same building and surrounding area.

In all honesty, it’s hard to tell which is better at this distance. The Bing maps provide a much better view of really close up shots, but Google trumps that advantage with their impressive Street View.

Comparisons aside, the Bing Maps team has been able to get some great imagery of our country. It’s even more surprising that they were able to get such great shots of lesser known areas. It’s still unfortunate, however, that the Bing Maps team were not able to get shots of Area 51.

September 18, 2012
Bing Now Has Pretty High-Res Aerial Imagery For The Entire U.S.

Today, Bing announced the completion of the U.S. portion of what it says is its largest aerial imagery endeavor, and its most ambitious mapping effort to date – the Global Ortho Project.

“In two years, the Bing Maps Imagery team has collected every square inch of the continental US and Western Europe at 30cm resolution (1ft = 1 pixel),” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “This endeavor sets a new standard in aerial map imagery.”

“To give you an idea of the amount of imagery the team has taken, at 30cm per pixel, you could line up all the Global Ortho pixels end-to-end to reach around the earth 994 times, to the moon 104 times and to Venus with an extra seven trillion pixels to spare,” he adds.

Here are a couple of examples:

Pueblo Bonito ruins at Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Cape Canaveral, FL

“There is higher resolution imagery of some certain areas available, but there is no continent-wide mosaic at this high of a resolution,” Bing’s Charlie Peterson said in a blog post. “What GO brings you is an amazing view into familiar places (like your own home) and remote corners of the United States.”

To commemorate the completion of the project in the U.S., Bing sent its team on another mission to capture imagery of a giant Bing logo it had painted on the roof of a nearby parking garage. Once it’s ready, the image will be visible among the imagery.

August 30, 2012
Bing Maps Spent a Lot of Miles Mall Walking for These New Venue Maps

Malls are terrifying places. Malls are either so crowded that you can barely wade through the legions of shoppers feverish with the bloodlust of commerce or they are so devoid of both stores and shoppers that they represent a chilling example of commercial ghost towns.

Regardless of which experience you can call your own the next time you visit a mall, it’s always helpful to know exactly where you’re going so you can get what you need and then find the nearest point of egress as quickly as possible. While Bing Maps might not be able to help you fend off the feral hordes of shoppers you encounter or make you forget about how depressing it is that a mall has become a boneyard of American dreams, it can at least help you get in and out of there efficiently as if you had memorized the floor plan of the facility itself. Only, thanks to Bing’s Venue Maps, you don’t need to memorize any mall’s schematics because you can see the layout of the entire structure and location of every store right from Bing Maps.

For a while now Bing Maps has been providing floor maps for shopping malls, museums, airports, amusement parks, and many other sprawling structures that might promote the unenviable condition of getting lost. Today, Bing announced that it has added thousands of Venue Maps for shopping malls located around the world, bringing the total tally of Venue Maps to over 2,750. This update, according to Bing Maps Blog, is especially focused on shopping malls in North America, Europe, and Asia. More, if you’re in the U.S. or the U.K., all of the new Venue Maps are available on Windows Phone Maps (7.5), the Bing app for iPhone, and the service’s mobile site, m.bing.com/maps.

While users can peruse the expansive list of Venue Maps by country or alphabetical arrangement, here’s a few examples of what Bing Maps is serving up to give you a heads up of what you cana look forward to:

Europe Mall, Russia

Factory Getafe, Spain

Centrale Shopping Centre, England

Centre Commercial Charmilles, Switzerland

Now, sally forth through the great lands of shopping and find your way deftly.

June 28, 2012
Bing Maps Massive Update Confirms That Dubai’s Still Building Crazy Islands

If you’re living in the Northern Hemisphere, you have likely noticed that summer is in full effect. ‘Tis the season for ice cream trucks, watermelons, Slip ‘n Slides, roller coasters, baseball, sweat-stenched outdoor music festivals, and, of course, trips to the beach. Speaking of beaches, Bing Maps announced today that its ready to hit the shores of the world to show off its hot new body of maps.

And what an expansive collection of updated map imagery it is, tipping the scales of total map data to 165 terabytes. Bing points out in the accompanying blog post, that today’s release of new Satellite imagery and Global Ortho photography is larger than all of the past updates combined. This update was so massive, in fact, that Bing Maps has put together a couple of slide shows depicting both types of updates, which you can find at the Bing Maps World Tour App. Once you’re at the app, look at the left-hand column and click on the “Select Releases” tab. From there, you can choose either the “Aerial – Satellite Jun.2012” update or the “Aerial – GlobalOrtho Jun.2012” update.

Bing provided a map depicting all of the locations included in today’s Satellite image release, which you can as the highlighted sections below.

Likewise, you can see the areas included with the release of Global Ortho imagery.

I recommend clicking the pause button at each stop of the slide show tours because you’ll likely want to zoom in and check out the obscene level of detail in the images (also, if you’re going to click the pause button, you’ll also want to uncheck the “Show Current Release Coverage” and/or “Show Total Coverage” box because otherwise you’re going to still see the colored overlay of the region that identifies the updated regions).

Here’s a couple of examples that are included in today’s release. The first is of a place that never ceases to build completely wacky buildings and islands (yes, islands), Dubai. Gaze upon this island that Dubai appears to have constructed that resembles the trilobite fossil-like island you see anytime some publication wants to show you what a picture of Dubai looks like.

Another stop on the slide show of new releases that caught my eye is the Space Park Promenade in Bremen, Germany.

Here’s one more stop in Germany that takes you to the spectacularly baroque castle of Schloss Moritzburg. Good luck storming this castle.

I’m just going to leave you with that one because that castle is too much fun to look at.

June 25, 2012
Windows Phone Map App Gets Expanded Traffic Coverage

Last month, Bing Maps announced that it would be providing better traffic coverage for users thanks to some backend support from Nokia. Senior Product Manager of the Windows Phone Map App Scott Burton recently offered an update on the traffic data integration with Windows Phone 7, explaining that the traffic coverage has been expanded beyond just the main highways and now includes many of the side and secondary streets.

Burton provided a before-and-after comparison of the updated traffic data, as seen below. The former map is on the left, the updated map is on the right.

If you’re a user of the Windows Phone 7 and live in the U.S., you should be seeing a “show traffic” feature in the menu of your Maps app. If you happen to live outside of the U.S., which most people in the world do, the Windows Phone team is still cooking up the traffic data feature for Windows Phone users outside of the United States and will hopefully be launching it over the next two or three weeks. The countries that should be seeing the updates on Windows Phones are: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

[Via Bing Maps Blog.]

June 19, 2012
Bing Maps V7 API Adds Two More Data Modules, Updates Others

Bing Maps announced today that it’s added two new modules for the Bing Maps V7 API as well as some updates to a couple of existing modules. Till now, there were 15 different modules available for the Bing Maps V7 API, all of which were developed by the Bing Maps community and shared as a way to hasten the process of cooking up some maps.

The first module, the GeoJSON Module, was developed by Brian Norman of Earthware, Ltd, a UK-based company that specializes in developing interactive web-based maps. As entailed from the name, the module will allow developers to import GeoJSON files into Bing Maps. GeoJSON is an encoding format used for depicting geographical structures in JavaScript Object notion (see where the JSON comes from now?). JSON is generally more compact than XML when it comes to storing human-readable geographic data, so this will allow some developers to conserve their memory resources.

The second module introduced today is the Well Known Text Reader/Writer Module. This module was created by Ricky Brundritt, a EMEA Bing Maps Technology Solution Professional. According to Brundritt’s post on Bing Maps blog, he made this module because there wasn’t an any available module that allowed for quick visualization of Well Known Text on Bing Maps. “When reading Well Known Text data it is parsed into Bing Maps shapes; MultiPoint, MultiLinstring, MultiPolygon and GeometryCollection are turned into an EntityCollection of shapes,” he wrote. “To write Well Known Text simply pass in a Bing Maps shape and the Well Known Text equivalent will be returned.”

Two of the existing Bing Maps modules that were updated are the GeoRSS Module, which enables sharing of spatial data as a syndication feed, and GPX Module, which makes it easier to view GPX files (typically used by GPS devices) to be viewed on Bing Maps.

The two new modules can be download from today’s Bing Maps blog post; the previous 15 modules are available over at the Bing Maps V7 Modules website.

May 31, 2012
Bing Maps, Nokia Team to Provide Traffic Info, Geocoding

Bing Maps and Nokia have been developing their maptastic relationship since the partnership was announced last year. In February, the two companies collaborated to give Bing Maps a fabulous new aesthetic upgrade. Now, the pair have added a couple of new features to Bing Maps using Nokia’s backend services: traffic information and geocoding.

Foremost, Bing Maps is now offering information about traffic conditions for a total of 24 countries. The feature, which has been available in a limited number of areas around the world, is now expanded to locations around the planet. The full list of the countries now supported with Bing Maps traffic information: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States.

The traffic conditions overlay presents real-time conditions of how congested (or not) roads are. The traffic is coded in four different colors – a gradient with red, the worst, meaning a road rage-inspiring amount of traffic to green, the best, meaning pleasantly light traffic – so as to easily determine whether or not you should consider a different route. In the U.S., users will also be able to see information about side streets.

Additionally, you may notice yellow hazard triangles on the maps; these signify events that may contribute to some heavy traffic, such as an accident or scheduled construction. By moving the mouse cursor over the triangle, you can see what type of problem is going on there. Click on the triangle and you’ll get a more detailed explanation of what’s happening at this spot.

Bing Maps also announced that it’s started using Nokia’s geocoding services so as to improve the directions that users search for. Given that this is Memorial Day weekend, this newly improved traffic information might have some incredible import for several travelers these next few days.

May 25, 2012
Bing Gives Some Lessons On Bing Maps

Google and Bing do things differently. I think we all understand that by now. Their differences apparently extend to how they teach. Google teaches people through their weekly Office Hours Hangouts which gives developers to talk to the people behind the product they use to get real answers. Bing just, well, they put slides on the Internet. Are you feeling up to revisiting the feeling of college lectures? Bing sure is.

The Bing Maps team has released two separate slide shows, unfortunately powered by Silverlight, that detail how a developer can leverage Bing maps to their advantage. The first is just more or less a normal introductory course in Bing Maps development. The second gets a little more advanced by showing developers how to use SQL server spatial data in their Bing Maps applications.

The introductory course explains the benefits of using Bing Maps while showing you how to get started on development. The rest of the slides are dedicated to the AJAX7 Control method in Bing Maps alongside the REST interfaces that you will be using. It even has a test at the end to make sure you were paying attention.

Bing Maps Learning Snack
by
Snack Owner

The second explains how SQL server spacial data works together with Bing Maps to create advanced data applications. It then spends some time on explaining the finer points of working with data in SQL Server 2012. Finally, it will show you how to combine the two to create great Bing Maps applications.

Bing Maps and SQL Server Spatial Data
by
Snack Owner

May 23, 2012
Bing Maps Preps for London Summer Olympics with Streetside, Bird’s Eye Updates

Bing Maps has announced a host of image updates to both the Bird’s Eye feature and Streetside imagery that offer up some stunning resolution to the included locations.

Bird’s Eye offers a fully rotating view of select places giving not only a 45-degree view of an area but also in a remarkably high quality image. As of today’s update, there’s now 60TB of native Bird’s Eye imagery. To get an idea of what regions have been included in this most recent update, Bing Maps provided a map detailing what areas in the United States and Western Europe that have updates.

One of the areas in Europe that’s gotten an image update is London, which will be hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics later this year. Bing Maps updated the imagery to show the newly constructed Olympic Park in Bird’s Eye, which it provided a before and after comparison for.

After playing around with the Bird’s Eye feature, the quality of the images offered with this view is really something else. I keep looking at this angle of the Financial District in New York City trying to convince myself that this image was actually captured with a camera and not a very convincing and detailed digital model.

As mentioned, Bing Maps also unrolled an expanded group of places that got new and updated Streetside imagery. Several places both in the United States and Europe were included, such as Phoenix, AZ; New York, NY; as well as Paris and Marseille in France. An easy way to check out what parts of the world are now equipped with Streetside navigation, simply zoom out above the area you are curious about and click on the Streetside figure at the top of the map. For instance, here are all the regions in the United States that currently have Streetside support.

Actually, since the Streetside’s only available in the U.S. and the Europe, I’ll go ahead and throw in the map for Europe, as well.

May 9, 2012
Bing Maps Moves To WPF Control Integration

Bing maps used to be integrated with AJAX and Silverlight. Those are in all the past now though since Bing Maps now has native WPF control.

Some of you may be thinking that AJAX and Silverlight were just fine. Well, WPF control has some advantages that you would do well to take advantage of. The main advantage being that developers can now “build interactive tools for visualizing geographical data on the desktop.”

James McCaffrey, writing for Visual Studio Magazine, lays out a good argument as to why he thinks WPF control is the best way to develop for Bing Maps.

“The two main alternatives to Bing Maps with WPF are Bing Maps AJAX in a Web application and Bing Maps Silverlight. I’ve used — and like — all three approaches, but I really like Bing Maps with WPF. It gives you the combined power of Bing Maps and the WPF programming model, with the convenience of the C# language.

I’ve found Bing Maps with WPF especially useful when I have to deal with very large data sets. In those scenarios, Bing Maps with WPF was much faster than Web-based alternatives, and it allowed me to effectively handle SQL databases with millions of records, and to display thousands of data points in real time.”

McCaffrey then goes on to detail some of the ways people can use WPF control for Bing Maps. He details how developers can change map properties, place marker data, draw straight lines and curved lines, handle double-click events, display multiple data points, and work with large data sets.

All of the examples contain huge amounts of code for you to sift through. It should give you an idea of how to start developing for Bing Maps with the new WPF control system.

It should be noted that you’re going to need a version of Visual Studio that contains Microsoft’s .NET Framework 4 and the Windows SDK. You can get this by downloading the free edition of Visual Studio 2010 Express. You will also obviously need the WPF SDK as well which is available here.

April 26, 2012
Bing Maps Gets Easier Shape Rendering

Chris Pendleton of the Bing Maps team deals with a lot of complaints that Bing Maps doesn’t make it easy to render “GIS stuff” via the Bing Maps API. Your calls have not gone unheeded as the team has made it much easier to render holes in polygons.

Pendleton says that there were community solutions to this particular problem, he felt that it was up to them to officially fix this issue for developers using the tool. It’s with that particular mindset that the team has created the Bing Maps Advanced Shapes Module. This tool allows developers to add a small module to the Bing Maps AJAX v7 Control implementation that allows for complex shape renders.

When the team says easy, boy, do they mean easy. With this release, you can easily add holes into the polygons by “simply passing in an arrays of latitude and longitude. The potential uses are numerous including putting polygons around areas of importance and holes around places where there is no access.

It’s not just about the polygons either. The modle adds in a few aesthetic changes to the mix including fill color, fill opacity, border color, border style (dash), border thickness, visibility and infoboxes for annotation. With these new tools, you’ll be able to create polygonal indicators of safehouses and other essential resources for a zombie invasion. I’m sure it will gain a few legitimate uses as well, but it’s always good to be prepared for potential invasions by zombies, vampires or nazi gerbils.

While the shapes rendering might be the hot ticket item for the release, the new AJAX Map Control release also features some other interesting developer tools. Here’s all the details:

Render complex shapes Create polygons with holes using the new Microsoft.Maps.AdvancedShapes module.

Use the latest Bing Maps design Load the Microsoft.Maps.Themes.BingTheme to provide your customers with the latest Bing Maps site look.

Search Geocode an address, reverse geocode to match a location to an address, and search nearby points of interest using the new Microsoft.Maps.Search module.

Calculate driving directions Use the new Microsoft.Maps.Directions module to easily calculate directions and display a route on your map.

Display a venue map Discover and display maps for nearby venues such as malls and shopping centers using the Microsoft.Maps.VenueMaps module.

Show current traffic Show or hide current traffic on the map using the Microsoft.Maps.Traffic module.

Use the new Bing Maps navigation control Load the Microsoft.Maps.Overlay.Styles module and then set the customizeOverlaysmap option to use the new Bing Maps navigation control on your map.

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of the new module, check out the documentation here. It has everything you need to get started on making shapes in Bing Maps.

April 23, 2012
Bing Maps Adds Venue Maps, Neighborhood Maps, & More [UPDATED]

The Bing Maps Blog has announced a series of new updates, most notably the great feature that now offers maps of almost 900 indoor venues. Covering all sorts of facilities from malls to museums, casinos to football stadiums, the maps offer up what you’d expect: a floor plan designed to let you see around corners and help you find your way inside one of the world’s mammoth edifices.

To access one of the venue maps (if it is offered for your building of interest), you’ll be presented with an option to open up the venue map of the building once you’ve zoomed in far enough. Of course, if it’s an outdoor venue, you’ll just see the venue map as you get closer to it, as you can see below with the map of the Magic Kingdom near Orlando, Florida.

In addition to what you may consider as some of the more tourist-heavy attractions in cities, Bing also announced that the maps will now suggest some of the more prominent local businesses as you zoom into neighborhoods. If you’re familiar to a city but not quite a local yet, this could be a great feature for discovering some new favorite haunts around a city.

One feature I noticed that may be helpful for tourists and the like is kind of hidden in the section of Shopping Districts that are included in the venue maps. Essentially, there are store-by-store maps of neighborhoods that looks to lead ambitious shoppers around the area in order to find the boutique of their desire. Even if you’re not really a gold medal shop-till-you-drop consumer, you may find this may helpful if you’re looking for a place to grab a quick bite to eat.

You’ll see a pretty good example of this below in the sample from the Fashion District in New York City.

Finally, Bing Maps announced that its added transparent 3D imagery to many of the maps so users will get more of an angular view to the city, which should help you recognize and identify destinations a little bit easier. Below is an example of New York City’s downtown areas, as provided from the Bing Maps Blog post.

As of right now, all of these updates are only available for limited markets. As of right now, all of these updates are only available for limited markets. Additionally, the venue maps are currently available on the Bing for Mobile iPhone App, Windows Phone Map App, and m.bing.com on HTML5-enabled smartphones, including iPhone, RIM, and Android devices.

Bing’s been offering up maps of venues since 2010, which was ahead of Google’s launch of a similar service at the end of last year. With these two sites often competing for search traffic by offering up similar services, it’s something hard to really improve on the map; it’s not quite like making a rounder wheel, but geography generally stays undisturbed and doesn’t need to be updated all that often. Still, Bing has managed to find a way to either keep up or stay ahead of Google in certain aspects, the venue maps example being one of them.

At any rate, the addition of the venue floor plans to Bing Maps is a necessary if not clever update. There are untold amounts of large venues (malls, airports, museums, arenas, etc.) in the world and Google Maps can’t possibly get to all of them first, so Bing’s right to pursue this feature.

This article has been updated from the original version. Google was incorrectly credited with offering the venue maps services first when it was actually Bing that offered it first in 2010.

April 17, 2012
Microsoft Banking On OpenStreetMap To Undermine Google Maps

For years, Google Maps has been synonymous with “online maps.” Although Microsoft launched its own mapping service, Bing Maps, in 2010, it was nearly five years after Google Maps launched its first stable release and well after Google’s service had established itself as the foremost source for online geography and directions. Any service and app incorporating any type of geotagging or mapping feature utilized Google Maps’ services.

In earnest, it would be hard to imagine Microsoft being capable of edging out even a corner of the online maps market at this point. Short of creating a living, breathing four-dimensional microcosmic digi-globe projection that includes real-time weather systems, volcano activity, transportation data, and virtual birthday parties everyday, Microsoft would seem to be relegated to simply arriving too late after Google established its dominance among map services.

Yet, incredibly, Microsoft appears to be making significant gains in the online map market but not by re-inventing the map. It’s banking on the user- and developer-friendly open source map service, OpenStreetMap, to undermine Google Maps’ dominance. So far, it appears that strategy might be working.

OpenStreetMap has attracted some high-profile company lately. Many companies have been defecting from Google’s service in favor of OpenStreetMap due to the high cost of using Google Maps. Earlier this month, foursquare, a company that relies pretty heavily on geotagging in order to check in at locations, abandoned Google Maps in favor of the OpenStreetMap-powered MapBox and, later, Apple quietly made the switch to OpenStreetMap with the debut of iPhoto for iOS.

So what’s all this have to do with Microsoft? It so happens that the company not only hired OpenStreetMap founder Steve Coast to lead the development of Bing Maps but, according to the New York Times, Microsoft’s also been opening up its archive of map data for use by OpenStreetMap.

As more partnered companies leave Google Maps in favor of alternatives like OpenStreetMap, that’s charted territory in the online map market that’s relinquished by Google Maps and Microsoft undoubtedly stands to gain from the market shift. While Bing Maps may not be able to claim dominance the way Google Maps has enjoyed these past several years, Microsoft could absolutely break apart Google’s monopoly in a way that repartitions the market much more evenly.

(Via Business Insider.)

March 28, 2012
Bing Maps Touches Up Pushpins & Popups, Transit Info

If you’re a Bing Maps user, you might notice some changes to the service’s aesthetic as well as some updated transit information. At first, I have to imagine that these design changes are to further distinguish Bing Maps from Google Maps, which the last redesign they announced did pretty noticeably but those changes were purely to the maps themselves. Changing the way information is overlaid on the maps takes Bing Maps another step out from Google’s shadow and with Facebook using Bing Maps primarily these days, it’s probably a good chance for Bing to start making people take notice.

Immediately, when you search for a place on Bing Maps you’ll notice that the pushpins look a little different. No longer do they look like bulging word bubbles tethered to the map but rather simple spheres hovering above the location. Bing Maps provided the before-and-after comparison below, with the older version on the left and the updated version on the right.

Down to the details, the search results are now designated with a blue pushpin, whereas user-generated and saved content, such as bookmarks in your “My places” tab, will appear as orange pushpins. The new colors for the pushpins stand out a little better on the maps but the new design also has the effect of increasing the contrast of the pushpins with the numbers inside the pushpins. If you’re signed into your account, your bookmarked locations from “My places” will be intermingled with your search results when you click on that tab in the left column.

Another major difference you’ll notice is how you see names and pertaining information of a location when you click on a pushpin. When you click on a pushpin to see the information, the pushpin itself diminished so you can see more of what’s underneath it while a black box opens up to show you the name and other info related to that pin.

The black info box is a change from Bing Maps previous design, which was a white box with a smaller blue box laid within it that contained more information. The new layout has used space a little more conservatively while also making the information stand out and easier to read.

(Additionally, that new font used in the update is sharp.)

If you switch from map to satellite view, the color scheme of the information box will invert the colors so that the information remains easy to read.

As if that wasn’t enough of an update, Bing Maps also included some subtle changes to how directions appear when you’re traveling via public transit. Namely, they’ve added colors to the routes you’ll be using so that they reflect the colors of the actual signage of the station or line you need. As you’ll see in the example below, it’s a little clearer that a traveler going from East Williamsburg in New York City should take the L line (aka, 14th Street – Canarsie Local) because, well, the actual logo associated with the L line shows up in the map.

Well, world, go out there and find something and have all the trouble in the world getting lost with these new updates at your disposal.

March 15, 2012
Bing Maps Announces SDK For Metro Style Apps

The Bing Team announced today that they’re releasing beta version of a new tool for developers that will allow them to improve the quality of apps written in Microsoft’s design language, Metro. Bing Maps SDK for Metro style apps will enable developers to add the latest road maps, bird’s-eye views, and low-angle high-res images to their apps.

The announcement comes on the heels of last week’s debut of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 8. As Senior Program Manager of Bing Maps, Dan Polivy, explains,

With the new SDK, we’re now providing a JavaScript control specifically intended for use within your JavaScript apps. This new control is based on our AJAX v7 control, and thus shares a very similar API, but it’s also been enhanced to work within the local app context. For this beta release, you’ll find support for all of the same map types, pushpins, polylines/polygons, infoboxes, and tile layers as AJAX v7, plus the addition of the Venue Maps module. (Directions, traffic, overlays, and other modules are not yet available, but you can still render data provided by our REST APIs.)

Additional features include flexibility among programming languages so that developers more familiar or who simply prefer C#, C++, or Visual Basic as well as an updated licensing term. The new licensing model aims to give developers much more fluidity in constructing and testing Metro style apps on the current Consumer Preview of Windows 8.

The folks at Bing provided assorted samples in C# and Javascript to help demonstrate how developers can integrate Bing Maps into Metro style apps, which can be found on the MSDN Code Gallery.

March 6, 2012