Blog List

Spent the last 2 days in an office where i'm not allowed to blog, use facebook, twitter, msn or check my various email accounts.  I've definatly been suffering withdrawal and feeling completely cut-off from the world.

Trying to decide if i should up the dataplan on my phone or get a wireless broadband thumb for the lappy..so then i can at least have contact at lunch, to/from office.

I am very proud of the growing community around Virtual Earth. In only six weeks since it was released the community site that I run, http://www.viawindowslive.com/ has had ten articles submitted using the latest version 6 of the API.

The articles range from getting started / whats new to using Traffic or Weather data, extending the infobox or using other technologies like SQL 2008. I have enjoyed reading all of them:

Invoking server side code using AJAX and .ashx handlers What's new in Version 6 Routing Virtual Earth and SQL 2008 Spatial, a first impression Getting started with Virtual Earth Mashups: showing current weather conditions on a map Adding Verbs to the Virtual Earth InfoBox Printing in Virtual Earth Yahoo Traffic on Virtual Earth Clustering Virtual Earth 6. Performance, throttling and PNG icons Whats new in Version 6 Getting Started with Version 6...

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Derek Chan has published a great introduction to communicating with Virtual Earth from server side code. The article is a good read to understand the basics of ajax before proceeding onto more complex examples or using asp.net ajax extensions. Read the article here:

http://www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/InvokingserversidecodeusingAJAX.aspx

Thats makes 10 articles for Virtual Earth 6, well done!

Here's an update on ViaWindowsLive for November.  Top Content

www.viawindowslive.com/VirtualEarth.aspx http://www.viawindowslive.com/ www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/Messenger/MessengerIMControlPresence.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/GettingStartedwithVersion6.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Blog.aspx Top Articles

Messenger IM Control & Presence Getting Started with Version 6 Clustering Pins in Virtual Earth 6 Whats new in Virtual Earth 6 Adding Verbs to the Virtual Earth InfoBox Top Resources

Virtual Earth Location Finder The Virtual Earth Quick Guide LiveSearch Resources Virtual Earth Resouces Silverlight Streaming Resources Top Traffic Sources

http://www.google.com/ http://www.viavirtualearth.com forums.microsoft.com blogs.msdn.com http://www.live.com/ Top Keyword searches

virtual earth live spaces live search live id messenger im control Visitor Countires

United States United Kingdom Australia Canada India...

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We went to the first Brisbane Barcamp yesterday.  We rocked up pretty late..about 2:30 as we were both flat out working in the morning, and then had to battle the queues to cast our vote.

It was a good afternoon, chatting about "stuff" and playing some lawn bowls, drinking some alcohol.  All very relaxing really...just what i needed.

It was at the East Brisbane Bowls Club which i've probably driven past 100's of times in my life without even realising it's there.  I'm in love with the grass on the bowling green...i want some at home...but i don't want to mow it :)

Spent a bit of time watching the Croquet next door...didn't even realise people still played it.  Quite an intruiging game to watch...maybe should have a go at that next time.

Derek Chan is back from holidays and shares with us the new routing methods in Virtual Earth 6. Another great read:

http://www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/WhatsnewinVersion6Routing.aspx

That makes nine articles on Virtual Earth 6 from the community and counting...

The first Brisbane BarCamp is on tomorrow.  We'll be heading over for awhile to check out the action..think I could do with a drink by then ;)

Details can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=5584407845 

Let us know if you're going and when so we know when the cool kids are turning up

Every so often you come across a little tool that is super useful. This is one of them.

http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

If you ever need to scale a logo and don't have it in a vector format this tool is simple amazing. Fully web based you simple upload you low resolution jpeg logo and follow some simple steps. The output is a vector based file you can scale to any size.

My first test was the good old SoulSolutions logo:



Its hard to see but the results are a clean logo we can scale to any size:



Let look at something a little more complex like geekgirls:





What we see is some loss of the dropshadow and texture in the image but lets see it at 400%

 





Now you see what I'm talking about. Lastly I looked at a complex photo of a monkey to see how it would something that isn't line art, again I'll blow it up:





Pretty amazing effect! It highlights that some images, like logos will work well in a vector format compared to something with massive detail like a photo.

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I just finished my first SQL 2008 Spatial Article for Virtual Earth.

http://www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/SQL2008Spatialafirstimpression.aspx

It is very introductory taking you though creating a table, importing some basic data and a VE application based on a well structured ASP.NET AJAX Web service model. I do a simple query for points within the current map view. I also add a spatial index. I hope you enjoy it, the full source code and data to import is available.

Have been using Visual Studio 2008 for awhile now so I thought I'd share some great features.

1. Split View - gives us the ability to see both Design/XAML or Design/HTML view on the same screen with real time update ..very cool

2. Document Outline - to turn this guy on goto View -> Other Windows -> Document Outline.  This gives you a tree of all the objects on your page.  You can use it to navigate to a specific item and it gives you a visual queue of what it looks like + with split view selects the item in desgn and code view.

Using both of these features together is really useful to get to "hard to find elements".

I've attached a screen shot to show both these features in action at once.  Here I've selected a button in the Document Outline..it shows a popup of the button, selects it in the design view aswell as the xaml view.