Hugo Estrada's House of Wonder

We are very proud to announce the release of the 4th edition of FOSSGIS Brasil Magazine.

In this 2012 1st issue, the cover section addresses Medatada theme, which deserves special attention of any professional who works with geospatial data.

This 4th edition of FOSSGIS Brasil was built with the effort of the GIS community, including international contributions. Consering this, be sure to check the interview with Jeroen Ticheler, founder and CEO at Geonetwork project, and also the text written for three of the most important contributors of the gvSIG association, talking about the new development model for the project of the robust gvSIG GIS suite.

This year, greatest desire for us at FOSSGIS Brasil team is to continue doing what we have been doing in 2011: To georreference knownledgment

Link to download: http://bit.ly/zFKS3b

Sincerely,
The FOSSGIS Brasil team
http://www.fossgisbrasil.com.br

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I failed to find much information about it, but SpatiaLite, the geospatial version of SQLite, reached version 3.0 about a month ago. Anyone knows where to find release notes? I find also funny that on SpatiaLite homepage, it is clearly stated that spatial is not special! :-) Yes, I'll share a followup to my previous entry on the topic (thanks for your feedback!).

On the SpatiaLite topic, here's a blog entry named Spatialite and Excel on talking terms: "The recent stable version of Spatialite, 3.0, supports linking to and importing Excel spreadsheet tables. Read on to see how it’s done. The developers of spatialite have added a driver for *.xls files (thru the FreeXL library ). You can either link to, or import a single sheet from an Excel file [...]"

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Slashdot runs a discussion named French Court Calls Free Google Maps Unfair Competition.

Their summary: "A French court has ruled that Google is unfairly subsidizing its free mapping products, making for unfair competition with paid services. This might seem ridiculous, but keep in mind that Google started charging for use of its mapping API once the free version had come to dominate the market."

We of course mentioned last October that Google decided to enforce usage limits for the Google Maps API.

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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
OGRS2012 :: CALL FOR PAPERS
Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium

October 24 – 26, 2012 in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
Hosted by School of Business and Engineering Vaud (HEIG-VD)

Website: http://www.ogrs2012.org
Contact: cfp@ogrs2012.org

Notice, PDF version of this call is available here : http://cfp.ogrs2012.org.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(our apologies for cross-postings)
Dear colleagues,

The Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium (OGRS) is a meeting dedicated to exchanging ideas on development and use of open source geospatial software in both research and education.

Motivated by the inaugural symposium in Nantes, France, OGRS2012 will be held from October 24 – 26, 2012 in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland. The symposium is hosted and organized by the School of Business and Engineering Vaud (HEIG-VD), in partnership with EPFL Lausanne, University of Lausanne, University of Geneva, which are all academic institutions in Western Switzerland, and the Institute for Research on Urban Sciences and Techniques in France.

The main goals are:
- to build a panel of new scientific research and education practices using and contributing to open source initiatives in the geospatial fields;
- to discuss a framework and highlight a rationale about geospatial open source technology usage in research and education activities;
- to provide an innovation platform to network and develop ideas for future collaborative work between academia – from research to education – and other actors of the field (associations, foundations, local authorities, industry etc.).

For more details, visit the overview page on the website.

Keynote speakers :
- Luc Anselin, Director, Regents' Professor and Walter Isard Chair at School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Director at GeoDa Center for Geospatial Analysis and Computation, Arizona State University;
- Gérard Hégron, Scientific Director in charge of sustainable city at IFSTTAR (French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Planning and Networks);
- Helena Mitasova, Associate Professor at Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University;
- Robert Weibel, Professor of Geographical Information Science at Department of Geography, University of Zürich.

Submission :
The symposium will integrate several opportunities for presenting : oral presentations, workshops, posters and discussion groups. To participate in any of these opportunities, authors are invited to submit an extended abstract (1000 to 1500 words, references and keywords excluded) through the conference website. The official language is English.

The international scientific advisory board will review and select abstracts for inclusion in the symposium and publication in the symposium proceedings. A subset of contributions will be invited to submit full papers for possible publication in a special issue of the Journal of Spatial Information Sciences (JOSIS), pending a peer review of full papers.

For more details on how to submit a contribution, please visit the call for papers page on the website : http://cfp.ogrs2012.org.

Important dates :
- submission deadline for abstracts is May 28, 2012.
- authors will be notified by June 30, 2012 on program inclusion and selection for JOSIS submission
- deadline to submit full papers is September 30, 2012.

Best regards,
OGRS2012 program committee

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Slashdot discusses a story named Sensor Networks In San Francisco Finds Parking Spots.

Their summary: "You've heard of smart cars, and now, rolling out in San Francisco, is a smart parking system that promises to eliminate the arduous process of finding a parking spot. SFpark is a network of magnetic sensors that have been installed under 8,200 street parking spaces, along with additional information from parking garages and parking meters. These sensors are all linked together in a mesh network, and ultimately link back to a central command center. Drivers can access this parking data via the SFpark website or smartphone app, and see in real-time where parking spaces are available. At any one time, a third of cars on the road in urban areas are looking for parking spots, consuming more fuel, creating more pollution, and causing more accidents. With SFpark, you can see at a glance where there's a parking spot — but in the future, you'll be able to hit a button and have your smartphone direct you to the nearest parking spot."

It's not the first time we discuss location technology to find parking lots.

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​This batch mode edition is unusually long. It covers the past month and a bit more. Yes, that's way too much and I won't try to repeat the experience ;-) Here's what I considered pertinent enough to share with you. Exceptionally, in some cases I haven't gave attribution to the source of the news, thank you for your comprehension.

On the geospatial open source front:

• I just recently became aware of PostGISonline, a site for testing and learning spatial SQL
• You can now create and manipulate SLD (the OGC Styled Layer Descriptor standard) in Python with python-sld
• Via the AGISRS list, I learned about OpenQuake.org, for calculating seismic hazard and risk at any scale, which of course ingest geospatial data and outputs maps
• Here's WherePost.ca, which crowdsources the location of mailboxes and post offices for Canada
• Here's the Switch2OSM website promoting OpenStreetMap, OpenStreetMap might go indoor too
• Still on the OSM topic, V1 shares an entry on the use of OpenStreetMap data in agriculture
• Here's an entry on the future of GeoCouch and CouchDB
• GeoServer gets database-level security
• There's now a plugin to run Python scripts in QGIS
• Here's about improvements to the QGIS rule-based rendering
• On a similar topic, here's a guide to beautiful reliefs in QGIS
• Did you know you can add Google Maps, OSM, and Bing Maps directly in QGIS? You can via the OpenLayers plugin - hey, there's even a Profile plugin
• There's an updated book published by Gary Sherman, now named The Geospatial Desktop , subtitled Open source GIS and mapping
• GEOS 3.3.2 has been released

On the Esri front:

• Mandown shares how to convert GPX files to Features using ArcGIS 10
• From the same source, Learn The Basics Of Working With The ArcGIS Runtime SDK For Android
• There were updates to ArcGIS for SharePoint, ArcGIS Mobile and to the ArcGIS API for Windows Phone
• James and SS talks about ArcGIS Online as the Esri Content Management System

On the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft announced a few new Bing Maps features, such as traffic incidents and find near route
• They announced the Bing Maps Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Control v1
• There's new Bing Maps V7 modules too along with a new routing engine
• James Fee shares an interesting entry named Bing Maps gets Nokia Brand and Possibly the Boot

On the remote sensing front:

• This is pretty interesting to many: SS shares an entry named USGS Now Offers OrbView-3 High-Resolution Images for Free, 180,000 scenes at 1m spatial resolution available
• China launched their first high-resolution remote sensing satellite, Ziyuan I-02C
• Slashdot discussed the newly released version of Blue Marble high definition (and beautiful) satellite image of the Earth from the Suomi NPP satellite
• Slashdot is running a story named Who's Flying Those Drones? FAA Won't Say and related, O'Reilly mentions OpenPilot, open source UAV with cameras
• And another named Launch Your Own Nanosatellite Into Space

On the GNSS / GPS front:

• It's coming, car makers are preparing for augmented reality driving
• Not exactly GPS but via radio-tagging, see the nice and short video of whale 3D paths in the ocean
• Slashdot is also discussing a story named New Mexico Is Stretching, GPS Reveals
• MapQuest launched an html5 app-like site for Android and iPhone for using MapQuest

In the miscellaneous category:

• The 7 geo predictions for 2012 of Cédric are interesting 
• Microsoft's Flight Simulator, renamed Flight, will be available for free next Spring, with paid extra content
• We never mentioned it before, but now Indiemapper is free, it "helps you make static, thematic maps from geographic data by bringing the best of traditional cartographic design to internet map-making."
• SS mentions the new alliance between Autodesk and Pitney Bowes, APB also discuss this new relationship
• SS also shares an entry named Safe Software’s Expanded Role as a Conduit Between Sensors and Systems
• The U.S. EPA in their Locations Challenge introduced a crowdsourcing project of georeferenced photos of environmental problems
• Slashdot ran a discussion on assembling your own 3D printer
• The OGC shared a summary of the Eye on Earth Summit held in December
• Another OGC entry was named Status of the OGC's Water Resource Activities
• DM shares an article named GIS Adoption and Use on College Campuses: An End-of-Year Review and Look Ahead to 2012
• The GEB mentions a new 3D San Francisco website
• I found interesting the possibility of a .data TLD
• A new free iPad app: GeoViewer from LizardTech, supports MrSID format and more
• It's been a while since we mentioned them, GISCorps were recently in 7 countries, including Libya

In the maps category:

• APB summarizes this: Comparing Maps of Obesity and Car Travel
• Here's an entry on cleanly using symbols on maps
• Here's U.S. routes as a subway map and the U.S. National Wind Energy Map
• Fox News shared a map with missing or wrongly placed countries
• TMR shares an obligatory animated map of rising global temperatures since 1880

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I work in a large organization. A colleague challenged me this morning regarding whether geospatial is special or not. Here's part of what I wrote. Your comments are of course welcome! Do you agree? Any other arguments or counter-arguments?

Is Geospatial Special?

Does geospatial deserves special considerations or even a special treatment within an organization?

Geospatial is a set of sciences and technologies that are often applied to specific topics, such as a geographic information system for a municipality, remote sensing for the assessment of the impacts of a flood, location-based services for a smartphone, an interactive web map to plan a trip, a virtual globe to visualize weather events, etc. Other than researchers, nobody does geospatial just for the sake of geospatial, practitioners apply geospatial knowledge and technologies to their own needs and objectives.

I'd argue that geospatial *is* special, and here's why;

• Geospatial data, which includes at a minimum a geographic projection and datum, is not processed, analysed and disseminated by the same methods and tools as non-geospatial data
• Geospatial data requires software that specifically supports its particularities. Software that not only must support geographic projections and datum to properly store and load the data, but it also provides the methods and algorithms for the processing and analysis of the geospatial data.
• Geospatial data processing and analysis differs significantly from non-geospatial data. Only with geospatial data you have to consider snapping, overlapping, proximity, line of sights, position accuracy and precision, reprojections, data types like lines, polygons and voxels, specific file formats like the Shapefile and GeoTIFF, mosaicking, spatial generalization and scale change, spatial indexes in spatial RDBMS, and so on...
• Geospatial data dissemination also differs significantly from non-geospatial data. Displaying geospatial data uses techniques specific to cartography, data is generally conveyed via maps and similar means, it requires specific data formats and web services to ensure their spatial component is conveyed along with the data, etc.
• Trained geospatial specialists are in much better position to appropriately apply geospatial knowledge, methods and tools to solve complex challenges related to the storing, processing, analysis and dissemination of geospatial data.

In the past decade, we've seen geospatial going from being the playground of trained experts to being accessible to the general public. The advent of ubiquitous free tools such as web maps (e.g. the Google Maps API) and virtual globes (e.g. Google Earth, which has been downloaded nothing less than over 1 billion times), easy and often free access to satellite imagery, and more recently, smartphones and location-based services, educated and enabled many non-geospatially trained users to acquire and use geospatial data and technologies. This is a Good Thing (tm), but does that mean that geospatial isn't special anymore? No. The reasons for considering geospatial as special stated above are still valid and geospatial is indeed special.

But does the 'geospatial' term have a future as a unifying umbrella, grouping together the domains which deals with geospatial data? Maybe not in the long run. Nowadays, people working in remote sensing, geographic information systems, location-based services and global navigation satellite systems don't necessary overlap that much anymore. Does this mean the term 'geospatial' has become obsolete, diluted into its specific traditional sub-branches? I'd say no. Geospatial is still a term useful as a way to refer to all domains which involve data with spatial references.

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Bloggage update: Last week I reported Google Maps' released of multimodal transportation mapping in the greater London UK area. Not to be outdone, Transport for London released a brilliant road congestion mapper under Roads Live Travel News, also based on Google Maps! So again I couldn't resist reporting this somewhat peripheral topic to what I normally cover, but hey, "it's my bloggage and I'll write if I want to" (apologies to Lesley Gore).

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Yesterday, Google released Google Earth 6.2. 

From the announcement: "With Google Earth 6.2, we’re bringing you the most beautiful Google Earth yet, with more seamless imagery and a new search interface. Additionally, we’ve introduced a feature that enables you to share an image from within Google Earth, so you can now simply and easily share your virtual adventures with family and friends on Google+. [...] We’ve also made some updates to the search feature in Google Earth. Aside from streamlining the visual design of the search panel, we’ve enabled the same Autocomplete feature that's available in Google Maps." 

On the welcomed seamless globe: "While this change will appear on all versions of Google Earth, the 6.2 release provides the best viewing experience for this new data." Sri Lanka, before and after:

A quick reminder, Slashgeo has its Google+ page too (but it's inactive at the moment, that doesn't mean it's not worth adding it to your circles ;-).

Related, the GEB shares an entry named Google Earth 6 now required for Street View.

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The following is a guest post from Steve Milroy of OnTerra Systems, the developer for the Bing Education Map App, on the architecture and design of map app using Azure and Bing Maps. He also recently developed the DonorsChoose.org and Teach Here map apps. - Brian

Recently the Bing Education Map was launched in the Bing Maps app gallery in conjunction with the Waiting for “Superman” movie from Participant Media. This map app integrates data from DonorsChoose.org, Mentor, GreatSchools and All For Good. It allows you to quickly evaluate US schools in your area and donate your money to school projects or time to mentoring and volunteering opportunities. Embed features via the “Embed this map” option in the map app allow integration of a simple map with the same data into other websites via an iFrame etc.

This map app features cutting edge architecture and technologies. Bing automatically detects user location (Reverse IP) and the map app loads locations based on bounding box. After the default load, as you pan or zoom around the data is refreshed in near real time based on the updated bounding box. To provide a scalable architecture we used Windows Azure and an Azure worker roll to query/load datasets on a daily basis, which gets populated into a spatial DB running on SQL Azure. The map app and embedded map then query this spatial data using an easily adjustable number of Azure web roles running an ASP.NET MVC service for data access. The ASP.NET MVC app also contains the embedded map created using the Bing Map AJAX API v6.3. Here is an architecture diagram showing components.

There has been tremendous interest in this Map App due to the recent movie release and media coverage. The embed map is directly linked to waitingforsuperman.com city pages. Also, Oprah.com linked to the embed map directly.

Bing Map Apps represents a new channel for promoting your initiative, community or even an enterprise offering/campaign. Learn more about the Map App SDK and Map App Development Resources. I hope to see your app in the gallery soon.

Steve Milroy
OnTerra Systems
www.onterrasystems.com

A couple of weeks ago we announced Bing Maps is going mobile as the default map control on Windows Phone 7. Today it’s my turn to follow up with news of more goodness from Bing - new routing and geocoding features for Bing Maps REST Services – your choice when developing for mobile or when you’re looking for simplicity and speed on the web.

Bing Maps REST Services include:

*Show a route on a static map: The Get a Static Map API now has the ability to output a route to the static map request. You can use this on its own with only waypoints (using lat/longs, landmarks) or customize with several options including: mode (walking, driving), optimize (time, distance, traffic) or the new avoid/minimize discussed below.

*Avoid tolls and highways: With the new avoid and minimize parameters, you can allow your customers to optimize their route by either avoiding or minimizing tolls and/or highways. These options are available in both the Calculate a Route API and the Get a Static Map API.

* Calculate driving routes from all four directions: The Calculate Routes from Major Routes API satisfies those scenarios where your user either doesn’t know their exact address or doesn’t know where they might be coming from before the trip. With only an endpoint, your customer will receive routes to that location via nearby highways and roads. By default, the service will attempt to generate directions from all four directions (north, east, south, west); if for some reason that is not possible, multiple routes from one direction will be provided.

*New entityTypes parameter: In addition to routing updates above, Bing Maps REST Services also receives an update to the Find a Location by Point API (aka reverse geocoding). This new parameter allows you to  specify what entity types/location information you want returned in the reverse-geocoding response (address, neighborhood, country/region). My favorite is the “neighborhood” entity because of the extra context this small detail can provide. For example, imagine you:

- Built a mobile app: you now know that the device is in “XYZ neighborhood” and can use this to look up some cool 3rd party restaurant or coupon info to provide to your custome
- Run a car concierge service: now you can tell your customers that they are in the “XYZ neighborhood” – sometimes it’s the little things that count!

So there you go – four more reasons to use Bing Maps REST Services for mobile or web application development. Bing Maps keeps it coming. You can learn more about all of the Bing Maps APIs on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd877180.aspx

Brandon Floyd Mendoza
Product Manager
Bing Maps Platform

In August, Portland foodies cheered when we launched the Bing Food Cart Finder map app to provide a better search experience to discover the city’s amazing food carts and help make decisions about which one to eat at super easy and fun. Since the response was very enthusiastic, we figured why not have a little more fun with the Bing Food Cart Finder and continue to celebrate the rich street food scene in Portland.

So here’s the deal: Next week we’re giving away free meals served by some of the most popular food carts in Portland.  All you have to do is go to the Bing Food Cart Finder at 7 a.m., 11 a.m., and 4 p.m. on October 13th and look for the golden sporks.

 

The golden sporks will reveal on the map the exact location where you can get free breakfast, lunch, and happy hour treats. The first 500 people to show up to each location eat for free. Sounds fun right? Mark your calendars, bookmark the map app, bring your appetites, and we’ll see you next week!

Disclaimer: Offer good to the first 500 people to respond to each “meal” location while supplies last. Limit one offer per person, per meal location. This offer cannot be combined with any other offer and is not redeemable for cash. Recipient is solely responsible for purchasing any other beverage or food item not specified in this offer.

Ryan Cameron,
Senior Marketing Manager
Bing

 

Over two years ago, the Bing Maps blog highlighted MapDotNet, which is a suite of geospatial visualization, analysis, and integration products created by ISC. They have a lot of very interesting examples of how their product has been applied – I highly encourage you check out some demos. However, I’d like to highlight HeyGov!, a solution that uses MapDotNet, Bing Maps, and Azure to communicate and manage 311 issues for governments and citizens. Earlier this year, ISC won a Windows Azure contest for the best US Public Sector Application and used the winning application as the foundation for HeyGov!.

Released this past April, HeyGov! is “a Web 2.0 app “for government that is designed to help with citizen communication. It can be used by virtually any government department that deals with direct requests from the public. HeyGov! can integrate with an existing on-premise customer relationship management (CRM) system or provides a cloud-hosted CRM as an alternative.” The goal is to decrease local call center volume and improve customer service by adding a new level of transparency.

Miami and San Francisco are HeyGov!’s current users; also, because of San Francisco’s adoption of Open 311 standard, citizens of San Francisco can add service requests directly from HeyGov!. According to Benton Belcher, Business Developer for HeyGov!, the city of San Francisco “uses Open311 to pull data out of their CRM and put it into Azure. Then, our map app control can send information between the two services.”

In addition to the 311 issues, HeyGov! offers two additional modules for governments: a “Code Enforcement” module and a “Generic Maps” module. The Code Enforcement Module allows citizens to report violations of local code and the Generic Maps Module helps citizens view property parcels, land use zones, school zones, demographic data, and other common spatial data sets. Below is an example of a zoning map from Miami.

HeyGov! a great example of how rich information and smooth functionality can come together through Bing Maps and Silverlight. In the next few weeks, HeyGov! will be available on Windows Phone 7, Android, and the iPhone to allow for mobile viewing and requests.

There is an enormous variety of information that people can benefit from when the information is enhanced with geo-spatial context. And with the recent updates to the Map App SDK, it’s even easier to build new Map Apps for Bing Maps.

Thanks for reading and I hope you check out HeyGov!

Brian Hendricks,
Bing Maps

A while ago Chris Pendleton had blogged about the new map style that has become the default in our consumer facing AJAX and Silverlight sites. With the latest update to our Bing Maps AJAX control you can now also optionally enable this new style in your own applications through VEMapOptions-properties. In fact there are four new options:

• VEMapOptions.UseEnhancedRoadStyle is a Boolean value that allows you to enable the new map style. Default is false.
• VEMapOptions.DashboardColor sets the colour of the Dashboard. Valid values are “blue” and “black”. Default is “blue”.
• VEMapOptions.EnableSearchLogo allows you to activate or deactivate a mouseover-event for the Bing logo. This is a Boolean value with default “false”. If set to “true”, a search-box flies out when you hover over the Bing logo. A search will be re-directed to Bing.
• VEMapOptions.EnableClickableLogo allows you to activate or deactivate a link behind the Bing logo. This is a Boolean value with default “false”. If set to “true”, a click on this logo will open the Bing Maps consumer site with the zoom-level and centre-point that you currently have in the AJAX control.

 

Below you’ll find a complete code sample that enables all of the new options.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
   <title>Bing Maps - New Style</title>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=6.3"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript">
    var map = null;
    function GetMap() {
      map = new VEMap('myMap');
     
      var mapOptions = new VEMapOptions();
      mapOptions.DashboardColor = 'black';
      mapOptions.EnableClickableLogo = true;
      mapOptions.UseEnhancedRoadStyle = true;
      mapOptions.EnableSearchLogo =  true;

      map.LoadMap(new VELatLong(49.03445642441512, 17.479999735951423), 3, null, false, VEMapMode.Mode2D, true, 0, mapOptions);
    }
  </script> 
</head>
<body onload="GetMap();">
  <div id='myMap' style="position:relative; width:600px; height:400px;"></div>
</body>
</html>

^JK

 

Technorati Tags: Bing Maps,AJAX,Map Style,Virtual Earth

 

What did you do on your summer vacation this year?  I got sunburned and helped my son Harry catch his first fish.  Pretty good summer, I thought.

Meet Viswa Mani.  He spent the summer on the Microsoft intern program, joining our search test team. His TweetHeat Map App won the “OSD (ie Online Services Division) Intern Hack Day”.  Ever wonder what people are really saying where on Twitter?  Viswa spent some of his summer figuring out how to show you.  Welcome to the TweetHeat Map App.

Over to Viswa Mani…

“In "Intern Hack Day", interns are encouraged and helped to develop working ideas in a number of areas. A workshop kicked off the first ever Intern Hack Day and introduced a few new technologies that we could use, including the Bing Map App SDK. The product teams provided support for the 10 teams that participated – team sizes varied from 6 to 1 (i.e. me). There were awards for audience favorite and best hack, awarded by the judges.

“Being an intern at Microsoft was a great experience. Thanks to the Intern Coordinators, especially Caroline Bulmer, School Recruiters and social group coordinators who did an awesome job of making sure that work at Microsoft was loads of fun.

How the TweetHeat Bing Map App came about

“The initial working version of the map app for Hack Day took a weekend to put together, even allowing for it being my first time experience with Silverlight applications. However, with support from the Bing Maps team, I managed to get the preview rolling for Hack Day. After motivation and more support from the team, I decided to make a production version to be launched with Bing Maps.

What the Map App does

“The map app helps users visualize the public response/feeling towards a product, event or really any topic. All tweets related to the searched keyword are analyzed using Natural Language Processing, more specifically Sentiment Analysis. The analysis assigns a score from 1-5, from a very negative to very positive emotion in the tweet. The analyzed tweets are mapped on Bing Maps based on where they were tweeted from.

“To help bring the visualization to life, I created two views. The first shows individual tweets on the map colored according to the emotion of the tweet. A red tweet indicates a score of '1', or very negative emotion. A green tweet indicates a score of '5', or very positive emotion. Other shades fall in between according to emotion. The second visualization provides you with the overall emotion by area. This view colors the map area to convey an overall twitter user feeling.”

 

So whether you want to see how a new product is landing or what everyone else thought of last night’s gig, check out TweetHeat.

Congratulations to Viswa Mani, and thanks for a great app. 

For the rest of us, there’s no need to wait until next summer to bring your Map App idea to the world. You can get going today here.  If you’d rather make your impact in good company during an internship at Microsoft, here’s where you need to go.

So go check out your local TweetHeat here - and don’t forget the Twitter Map if you want to dive in to the detail of who’s saying what.

Matthew Quinlan, Bing Maps

I was reading Fox Sports this morning and noticed that the Pittsburgh Steelers are ranked number 1 in the Power Rankings as we enter the 4th week of the NFL season (and my lowly Chargers are off to another slow start ranked 18, ugh). And, with the Steelers clashing with their archrival Ravens this weekend this is as good a time as any to talk about a new app that uses Bing Maps. John Yokim is an ATS in the Microsoft field, loves his Steelers, loves Silverlight and loves Bing Maps, so of course he’s trying to further unite Steeler Nation with his new app – Pittsburgh Steelers Bar Locator.

The application visualizes the location of over 1800 “Steeler Nation Bars” across the U.S. Simply double-click on the map to re-center the map. A circle will be drawn to highlight the radius of a search for bars that support the Steel Curtain. Clicking an icon will highlight the bar and pull down the address information for the respective location. You’ll want to use the native zoom controls to zoom in and out since the double click is being overridden to re-center and search for bars. Note: this site is neither endorsed nor provided by The Pittsburgh Steelers and is simply a mashup to show off Bing Maps Silverlight Control and unite Blitzburgh via a local fan. Now, let’s see if Charlie Batch can hold it together while Roethlisberger is out.

CP – Follow Bing Maps @BingMaps

Yes, you read correctly… Bing Maps will now be available as a mapping option on select HP Photosmart e-All-in-One printer. HP changed the printer game last June when they announced the world’s first web-connected home printer: The HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web; and we along with many others were impressed. Now we’re getting into the fun!  Beginning this fall, Bing Maps will be available on new HP ePrint enabled home printers worldwide, giving you access to Bing Maps’ best in class high resolution imagery for quick and easy one touch map printing… right from a printer! Read more here www.hp.com/go/InnovationSummit

   

Whit Crump, Bing Maps

Since we released the Bing Map App SDK publicly in June, thousands of developers around the world have downloaded it and many have provided us with feedback on their experiences. One of the most frequent comments was that the debugging and testing aspect was, well, cumbersome. As a company that prides itself in its developer tools and its ability to make a developer’s job easier, we felt—no, we knew—we could do better.

I am excited to announce the culmination of work based on your feedback: support for one-click debugging of map apps from Visual Studio (aka “F5 debugging”). But wait, there’s more: we’ve also streamlined the entire developer workflow, improving the user interface for the Map App Test Tool and Bing Maps Account Center so you can take the output of your build and submit it directly to our tools and portal without any intermediate steps. These improvements significantly increase developer productivity; what used to take dozens of clicks to complete can now be done in just one. And they’re now available as part of the updated Bing Map App SDK (registration required with Microsoft Connect).

At the core of this update is a new version of the Bing Map App template, the “starter project” for creating your map app (from the File menu, click New, then Project…, and then look under Visual C# \ Silverlight). Unlike the previous SDK release, the template now packages your map app into a special XAP archive, which can be passed directly to the Map App Test Tool via a permalink or the user interface. This archive contains your map app binaries, along with the metadata and icon necessary to create your card in the map app gallery.

 This new template also creates a companion web project, which is automatically added to your solution. Don’t fear—you don’t need to write any more code to make it work—it’s configured out-of-the-box for the project you just created. When you press F5 to start debugging, the web project launches the Visual Studio Development Web server to host your XAP locally. It then launches your default browser under a debugger with a permalink that tells the Map App Test Tool to load your map app from your local machine, and voilà, your map app is now running on Bing Maps under a debugger! (Note: this feature only loads map apps from your local machine.)

Once you’ve tested your app and are ready to share it with the world, head over to the Bing Maps Account Center to submit it for review. On the Submit a map app page, simply select the Custom map app XAP option, select your XAP from your build output directory (make sure to submit only Release builds!), accept the submission addendum, and click Submit.

  

You’ll be prompted to confirm the metadata associated with your map app; this is read directly from the metadata.xml file included in your project (see prior screenshot for a sample). If you wish to make any changes, simply edit the file in Visual Studio and rebuild your XAP. You can also preview what your card will look like by opening the gallery after pressing F5. When you need to update your map app (including any of its metadata), just follow the same process and upload your new XAP.

  

We’ve also incorporated the Coin Search sample into the SDK, and updated both samples to support the new one-click debugging functionality. We hope you find these changes provide a significant efficiency gain in your workflow, and let you focus more on building great map experiences. If you have any questions on this new feature, such as how to migrate your existing map app projects to use it, head on over to the Map App Development forum for help. More importantly, please keep the feedback coming!

Dan Polivy - Senior Program Manager, Bing Maps

 

More and more developers are choosing Bing Maps, and today there's great news for all of you - the new Windows Phone 7 SDK features Bing Maps as its default map control. But it's not just about Windows Phone - we've made Bing Maps free for you to create consumer-facing mobile applications on any platform. (For details, see the Bing Maps Mobile Terms of Use.)

If you're new to Windows Phone development, it's super-easy - we've seen reports of 3-hour-dev cycles vs. two weeks or more for similar-functioning Android builds.

 

Of course you can download the Windows Phone 7 SDK, or check out MSDN's resources to learn more about the new Bing Maps Control for Windows Phone 7. (Click here to see the full Windows Phone 7 SDK news.)

REST Easy. More free options are available for other popular mobile platforms through Bing Maps REST Services.

Go Mobile Now. It's easy to get started today. Check out our developer resources <http://microsoft.com/maps> to see all the free ways you can create innovative mapping applications, fast.

Matthew Quinlan - Group Product Manager, Local and Mapping

Commuters rejoice! Today Bing Maps added transit routing to its directions options. So, for those of you who like to take the bus, subway, or local rail you now can turn to Bing Maps. This is a very important feature for us as public transit grows in popularity and coverage. There are more than 10.7 billion public transit passenger trips per year in the US alone. 

In this initial release (i.e. more to come) of Bing Maps transit directions, Bing Maps will cover 11 cities: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Jersey, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC, and Vancouver.

You’ll notice in the screenshot that the transit information is featured alongside each route option. This helps users easily compare route options based on their existing knowledge of the transit and their preferences. Transit options are available for bus, subway, light rail, and local rail. For those of you interested, in the comments section I’ll post the public transit providers we’re servicing for each city. So you know where to find transit routing, you’ll need to head to our AJAX site on the desktop.

Transit is today’s big news, but we’ve also improved our business details and information about landmarks. Open up movie house detail pages and you’ll see movie listings added to the “nearby” panel. You’ll also see more details on hours of operation on these listings. Search for landmarks like the Space Needle and you’ll see the landmark’s contact information, related businesses, and details right there in the results.

Go to Bing Maps to try out our new transit routing, improved business details and landmark information and let us know what you think. Enjoy!

Brian Hendricks - Associate Product Manager, Bing Maps

Follow me @BingMaps, ^BH