Hugo Estrada's House of Wonder

I give you Tina (14), covering Van Halen’s “Eruption” on a Vigier Excalibur Custom.

The post Fourteen-year-old guitar goddess appeared first on Oblivious A.T..

During the last weeks several posts about the gvSIG Desktop novelties have been published at the gvSIG Blog. With them we try to make known all these novelties with more details. Until now, the posts that have been publisher are:

• Scripting, exploit your gvSIG (III): Generate a polygon from a course
• Symbols library “OSM”
• “Google” symbols library
• Scripting, exploit your gvSIG (II). Creating a buffer
• Mirrors for downloads
• Add-ons manager
• How to create symbol libraries (II)
• Raster data tile cache and WMTS
• gvSIG 2.0 on 64 bits or Java 1.7 systems
• Additional feature for managing CRS
• gvSIG 2.0: Scripting, exploit your gvSIG
• How to create symbol libraries (I)

In the last weeks new posts will be published, as well as the translation of the last ones in Spanish. Some of them will be related to the new add-ons that will be available for this version. They will be able to be installed from the Add-ons Manager.

Google Plus One

The recent geonews in batch mode, covering a larger timespan than usual.

On the open source front:

• The OSGeo presented an Open Letter to OGC on the GeoServices REST API standard, and it's pretty well documented and informative
• Here's an interesting entry on comparing OpenLayers and Leaflet
• The schedule for FOSS4G-CEE 2013 is now known
• Sean pointed me to  Tom MacWright's online GeoJSON editor
• In releases, there was GeoServer 2.3.2 released and GeoTools 9.2 Released
• Getting closer to QGIS 2.0, here's nice examples of the alpha channel in QGIS color ramps
• If you did not see the press release, OpenGeo is not non-profit anymore

On the Google front:

• The influx of Google Glass stories continues, now Facial Recognition Comes to Google Glass
• Here's Kurt's list of maps-related videos from the Google I/O 2013 conference

On the Esri front:

• ABP reminds us of Esri's Severe Weather Map, including tornadoes...
• An entry on why Esri is excited about the Android Location APIs
• Data updates, World Topographic Map updated with content for the Middle East, North Africa, and the United States
• along with other updates, including Additional DigitalGlobe and community imagery added to the World Imagery map
• Also updated, ArcGIS for Windows Phone and ArcGIS API for JavaScript v3.5 Released

In the everything-else category:

• MapBox tells us they got a huge satellite update, now cloudless and with aerial imagery, but also interesting are the OpenStreetMap updates making they way to MapBox maps in only 5 minutes
• Here's a Make article on mapping buildings with a Kinect
• Some of you might be interested by the GiT4NMD conference, Geo-information Technologies for Natural Disaster Management
• Space Daily share an article named World's major development banks look closer at Earth observation
• Here's links regarding the history of apostrophes in place names
• Via SL, an article named China's Drone Program Appears To Be Moving Into Overdrive
• Those interested in the exciting MapBox work may also want to read about vector tiles of MapBox Streets
• While CAD and GIS have come closer, they remain distinct, here's an entry named Integrating geospatial into construction: the challenge
• Geoff also shares two other interesting entries, one named Economic value of big geospatial data could reach $700 billion/yr by 2020 and the other Estimating the economic and financial impact of poor data quality

Slashdot discussed a few minor geo-related stories:

• One involving GPS named Researchers Are Developing Ad Hoc Networks For Car-To-Car Data Exchange
• Privacy stories goes on, UK's 4G Network Selling Subscriber Tracking Data To Police, Private Parties and this one Congress Demands Answers From Google Over Google Glass Privacy Concerns
• Along with new challenges to locating North itself, Global Warming Shifts the Earth's Poles

In the maps category:

• Here's The Best Geographic Visualization I’ve Seen In Ages according to VerySpatial, basically a circle centered in Asia where over half of the world's population resides
• In Paris? Apple Maps for iOS Adds 3D Flyover Coverage in Paris
• MapBox shares a Q&A of the City Guides by National Geographic mobile app

Google Plus One

Bloggage update: Vector online GIS appears to be gaining traction. These emerging technologies contrast with Esri who offers a slew of tools on the desktop and in arcgis.com like mature web mapping services and model building. But these newcomers offer a service to process GIS functions online and allow to load data direct from web source further augmenting their web performance. Here I compare how I used a 180K vector dataset from NOAA NGDC described previously on these alternate methods. 

Google Plus One

This photo got 17,088 Flickr views in eight hours. There’s a strong message in this. I wonder whether the US is listening.

Billboard says:

H-1B Problems?

PIVOT to CANADA

New Start-Up Visa

Low Taxes

immigration.gc.ca/startup

The post Canada targeting San Francisco Bay’s Intelligent Immigrants? appeared first on Oblivious A.T..

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

In our continuing commitment to education through programs such as REDU, today marks the launch of “Our School Needs”, a competition open to all public and private schools, grades K thru 12, in the United States.  Starting today schools will have the tools needed to create their entry with an essay, pictures and optional video telling us what their school needs the most.  Check out the Bing blog for more details. To mark the day, we’re releasing a new map app which helps you make a difference to students in your area.

The ‘Bing Education’ map app shows local school information and donation, mentor, and volunteer opportunities in the area. The app integrates opportunities from Mentor Pro, Great Schools, and DonorsChoose.org. The app includes a feature to embed the map externally so you can wear your support proudly on your website and help spread the word.

Join us to help give kids and the teachers who help them learn, the opportunity for a better education through supporting Our School Needs.  You can read more about Our School Needs and other efforts to improve education in the new Bing Education blog.

Matthew Quinlan - Bing Maps

Follow me @BingMaps, ^MQ

More years ago than I care to remember, Geoffrey Parsons changed my life.  Up until age 11, geography was the most tedious thing I’d ever experienced (these were pre-reality TV days.)  All I recall is struggling to recall the major crops of Canada or the annual tin exports of Bolivia.  Mr. Parsons was our new geography teacher and he had a mission to bring the world to life.  I learned how glaciers shape our landscape and field trips started opening the world up like a book.  I studied geography at college, work in maps, and have well-used hiking boots. 

On a visit to NYC last spring, we met with Charles, Oliver and the DonorsChoose.org team and we started talking about maps.  I see in DonorsChoose.org a way of helping the Geoffrey Parsons of the world to make a difference, giving them the resources, support and encouragement they need to bring the world to life for young minds.

Hot on the heels of last week’s announcement of "REDU" and this week’s announcement of the “Our School Needs” contest where schools can win $100,000, we’re sharing the fruit of those discussions, with a new map app designed to help people make a difference in their community by supporting educators.

DonorsChoose.org, founded in 2000, aims to improve public education by empowering every teacher to be a change-maker and enabling any citizen to be a philanthropist. The organization focuses on connecting donors at any level of donation with classrooms across the US to fund teacher-led projects.

This map app helps you find DonorsChoose.org donation opportunities in Bing Maps, in your local community or across the U.S., and support subject areas and types of schools that you care about.  You can donate a little or a lot, and find projects where your donation is the final contribution that makes the project happen.  More than that, schools, school districts and donors can now put a DonorsChoose.org Bing Map in their own website and help spread the word.

Once you open up the DonorsChoose.org map app, you’ll see donation opportunities in the current map area as well as more information about these classrooms in need on the left-rail. Clicking a push pin on the map, or a result on the left-rail, will bring up a description of the classroom in need, the remaining funding needed, and a link to donate. Clicking on either the “more” or “give any amount” links will take you to the project page on DonorsChoose.org; an example is below. Finally, the built-in search filters help you hone in on the project that you really want to support.

The DonorsChoose.org map app helps spread the word about DonorsChoose.org and helps people fund education needs and make an impact with as little as $1. And, if you have a website where the DonorsChoose.org map could live, embed it and spread the word.  This one’s for you, Mr. Parsons.

Matthew Quinlan - Bing Maps

Follow me @BingMaps

The Internet Explorer 9 beta has just been released and if you are as nosy as I am, you probably already downloaded it. Since IE9 has just been released, it can hardly be officially supported but it will work with the latest versions of the Bing Maps SDK’s. There is however an issue with the older version 6.2 of the AJAX SDK that will result in rendering problems of VEShape-objects (points, lines and polygons). This issue also affects some samples of the Interactive SDK. The workaround is to either switch IE9 to compatibility mode or better upgrade the Bing Maps AJAX control to version 6.3.

In order to do so just change the script reference from

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=6.2"></script>

to

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=6.3"></script>

Please keep in mind that this still doesn’t mean it is officially supported. To find out about supported browsers for the AJAX control have a look at the SDK here.

^JK

Technorati Tags: Bing Maps,AJAX,IE9,Internet Explorer 9,Support

Today MSN launched the Interactive Guide to the Battle of Britain. The application was build by Microsoft-partner Shoothill and has 3 major components:

1. The TimeMap is based on Bing Maps Silverlight Control. It shows original maps, reconnaissance imagery and target documents of the German Luftwaffe. You can navigate to various locations through quick links in a target list for London and Coventry. The TimeScope can be dragged around to explore the location; the TimeSlider lets you switch between various historic maps and satellite imagery and the Docs-button allows you to explore DeepZoom-Compositions of the original target documents within the TimeScope.

2. The Archive is a DeepZoom Composition with historic documents and photos. As usual Shoothill has created this composition as a huge mosaic.


Zoom closer to explore the secrets not only of the mosaic itself but also of once top secret documents.

3. The Photosynth "Hangar" contains Photosynth-Collections of the Heinkel He 111, the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane in the RAF Museum in London.

 

There is a lot to explore check it out for yourself here.

^JK

Technorati Tags: Bing Maps,Shoothill,TimeMap,DeepZoom,Photosynth,Virtual Earth