By Soul Solutions on
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
 If you’re in London this Thursday you can’t miss Johannes and Simon presenting on Virtual Earth and SQL Server 2008 Spatial. It sounds like an awesome event, I wish was I was there.
Come along to the SQL Usergroup hosted by Microsoft on the 16th April for a great evening focusing on spatial data and how you can integrate virtual earth and SQL Server to do some amazing things. Virtual Earth provides great features for visualising, performing routing and locating places, SQL Server allows for data to be stored, searched together they provide a great solution. To register go to http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/155/Using-Spatial-Data-in-SQL-Server-and-Virtual-Earth-Evening-Event.aspx (If you can’t make the evening we are doing the same thing in the afternoon http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/154/Using-Spatial-Data-in-SQL-Server-and-Virtual-Earth-Afternoon.aspx )
This evening will be hosted by Johannes Kebeck and Simon Sabin
Agenda 18:00 - 18:30 Meet & Greet 18:30 - 18:40 Intro, what’s in the news, Q&A. 18:40 - 19:40 End to End Spatial Data with Johannes Kebeck
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By Soul Solutions on
Monday, 13 April 2009
This is a simple list of the various resources available for your development needs.
Sign up for you developer account here:
https://mappoint-css.live.com/mwssignup
Official Microsoft:
Virtual Earth API on MSDN Virtual Earth Interactive SDK Virtual Earth Forum on MSDN Microsoft MapPoint Web Service API on MSDN Silverlight Control CTP VIRTUAL EARTH SERVICE API TERMS OF USE Geographic Coverage Details Streetside Technology Preview Windows Live Maps for Mobile SQL Server 2008 Spatial Forum Community sites:
Follow me on twitter for latest VE news as it happens: http://twitter.com/virtualearth
Liveside.net - great news and articles about windows live Geoweb Guru - news and in depth Geo Articles MP2K - the magazine for MapPoint Community Projects:
WinForms Control - A must for anyone looking at using VE in a windows forms app. Silverlight Control...
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By Soul Solutions on
Friday, 10 April 2009
Today the Virtual Earth team announced the new version of the 3D control. To install simple goto to http://maps.live.com/?mkt=en-us and click on the 3D button. Checkout New York rendering very quickly with trees and weather! I noticed a new 3D option also “Use ansiotropic filtering”.
The full list of new features for the 3D control from NikolaF (you should subscribe to the VirtualEarth3D blog for everything VE3D):
Initialized event A new event on RenderEngine that simplifies the startup scenario. Check out SimpleForm to see it. Remember that use of this event or FirstFrameRendered is now required!
Anisotropic Filtering Greatly improves the appearance of terrain when at an angle. It's off by default, since there are some graphics cards that don't play nice with it (usually old and rare, but still). You can turn this on through the website in the options box, or you can set it programmatically. See SimpleForm.
Dem Data The ability to supply custom DEM data, and have it automatically stitched into existing data. Previously DEM datasources did not work very well, mostly because we did not automatically stitch. ...
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By Soul Solutions on
Friday, 10 April 2009
Keith posted this awesome Silverlight3 demo showing that although the new Virtual Earth control is Silverlight2 you can happily put this in the newer framework. With this in mind I put together this little sample showing how you can use the new Pixel Shaders to drastically modify the map control. The sample makes use of the http://wpffx.codeplex.com/ project as described by Morten Nielson.
 View Full Album
View the live demo here if you have Silverlight3 running on your test machine:
http://www.soulsolutions.com.au/silverlight/VEPixelShader/
My favourite is the Zoom Blur, it would be interesting to enable this during zoom animation.
Technorati Tags: Virtual Earth,Silverlight,Pixel Shader
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By Soul Solutions on
Monday, 6 April 2009
Shown at Mix last month in Chris Pendleton’s introduction to the new CTP Silverlight control this demo adds a set of simple polygons representing most of the countries of the world to the map, colouring them based on their Carbon emissions in 2004, green is comparatively good while red is bad.
View the live demo here.
The data itself comes from a SQL 2008 spatial database, you can setup the data yourself if you like by following the steps outlined in this previous article or simple download the database backup below.
For something a little special and in the spirit of the rich media support of Silverlight if you roll over the USA or Australia the Brush will use a video.
The code is pretty straight forward but their are some tricks in regards to simplifying the geography out of SQL for performance, ripping all the individual polygons out of each country and encoding them into something fast and small to send over the WCF service. The issue is we don’t have any support...
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By Soul Solutions on
Sunday, 5 April 2009
March was a big month for Virtual Earth, if you missed something here is the VE Wrap Up:
Silverlight CTP Released The big news was the release of the Silverlight Virtual Earth control CTP. This is the next generation of mapping for the web and something you simply must consider today for your future applications.
Chris Pendleton’s announcement and photos from Mix Chris Pendleton’s session from Mix (high res WMV is the best). Earthware in the UK have their twitter map and their Mini-Map. Keith Kinnan (who worked on the control) Hello World post. Subscribe to his blog for some awesome samples added daily. Johannes Kebeck (Microsoft): Database Connections with the Virtual Earth Silverlight MapControl CTP Download the control, SDK documentation and view the interactive SDK online (you need to complete the survey and click register) Data Binding with the Virtual Earth Control...
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By Soul Solutions on
Thursday, 2 April 2009
  We’ve been invited back to this year’s Technology Takes You Anywhere event, held on the 6th April. Last year we wore ourselves out showing 100’s of girls how to use an XBox controller to fly around Virtual Earth and find famous landmarks. They seemed to have fun so we thought we’d do something similar this year, inspired by Brian Peak’s demo, and also get them to use the Wii Fit Board and controllers to add some extra fun in the day.
About the Event Technology Takes You Anywhere is a special event aimed at increasing girls interest in technology and their confidence with using it. Through this event girls will be exposed to a range of different technologies. Older girls will also discover the diverse range of challenging and rewarding pathways that exist within the ICT industry.
Girls attending this event will have the opportunity to listen to speakers from a range of fields and on topics from biotechnology to creating programs for mobile phones. They will also experience hands-on workshops and visit MyMultiMedia. MyMultiMedia will include and animated film festival and activities such as robotics, forensic science, interactive whiteboards, music-making and videography as well as web, e-commerce and graphic design.
Technology...
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By Soul Solutions on
Monday, 23 February 2009
 I noticed on Tim Warr’s Blog that there’s a Virtual Earth Developer Event happening in Reading on the 19th March. We were fortunate to have one of these events in Brisbane last year and it was certainly a worthwhile event. So if you’re in the UK the details are:
Registration here with invitation code of 3C27C2
When: 19 March 2009 9:30-16:30
Where: Thames Valley Park, Chicago 1, Microsoft Campus, Building 3 Thames Valley Park, Reading Berkshire RG6 1WG, United Kingdom
Overview: If you are a developer and want to take working with Virtual Earth to the next level then this event is for you. The first session will comprise of a platform update to bring you up to speed on the latest version of Virtual Earth. Later, Johannes Kebeck, Tim Warr and Alexis Harakis will show how Virtual Earth interacts with other Microsoft technologies to create a powerful tool that can be used for much more than placing pins on maps. Whether you need to analyse or display data, or create an immersive end user experience, this event will make you eager to get back to your PC to put the code you have learnt into...
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By Soul Solutions on
Saturday, 21 February 2009
This week we’ve been fortunate to have been invited to present at the Politics & Technology Forum: Campaigning Online Event on Thursday 26th February in Canberra.
Event details:
Join government, business leaders and political bloggers at the second annual Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum.
On this informative morning, Keynote Speaker Joe Trippi details the impact of new technologies on modern politics. Heralded by the US press as the man who “reinvented campaigning”, Joe has run Presidential, Senate, Gubernatorial and Mayoral campaigns. His innovations have brought fundamental change to the electoral system and have become the model for online campaigning.
There will also be a Q&A panel discussion, new technologies will be demonstrated, and some revealing insights and statistics around Australian digital behaviour will be shared.
We are delighted to welcome Lindsay Tanner MP, Minister for Finance and Deregulation, The Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP, Leader of the Opposition to this exciting event.
Event Location:
Parliament House - Parliament Theatrette Capital Hill, Canberra, Australia
When:
26 Feb 2009, 8:30 AM to...
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By Soul Solutions on
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
 There’s a couple of Virtual Earth Webcasts coming up how a quality mapping system can help boost profitability delivered by Technical Evangelist, Chris Pendleton:
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) or February 19, 2009 4:00 AM for Brisbane
Show Your Retail Customers the Big Picture with Virtual Earth (Level 100)
In the retail industry, quality mapping solutions delivered by Virtual Earth help increase profitability in a challenging economy. Tighter budgets mean that retailers need strong customer connections to build loyalty, boost their businesses, and grow profits. Companies need to visualize areas of growth and opportunity and identify branches or divisions that may need special attention. Virtual Earth is a platform of integrated services providing quality geospatial and mapping data, rich imagery, and cutting-edge technology that can integrate with your existing business systems to provide unique views of data. Attend this webcast to learn how you can deliver immersive end-user experiences on the desktop or on mobile devices that connect customers with your locations, products, and services.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) or February 26, 2009 4:00 AM for Brisbane
Virtual Earth Empowers Developers to See and Show the Big Picture (Level 200)
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