Entries tagged with virtual earth - Channel 10

Bing Videomap Directions

Larry Larsen — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:45:00 GMT

As you look at things like Bing's Streetside, you might be thinking it would be great for something like real time driving directions. Billy Chen, a research in MSN's Advanced Engineering team, has been thinking about this from the ground up. The result is this interesting way of connecting the visual memory humans have from having driven to a location before with a movie created from the slides from point A to B in Bing maps. Billy joined us to tell us more about this project.

OnStar Integrates with Virtual Earth

Sarah Perez — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:31:00 GMT

On Wednesday, OnStar announced a new application that integrates Microsoft’s Virtual Earth into their emergency response system. Using Virtual Earth’s 3D aerial imagery, emergency responders will be able to more accurately locate hard-to-find or rural locations. The technology will enhance the GPS data OnStar currently uses. In the event of an emergency, this extra information about the terrain and the surroundings will help save lives – especially in cases when a vehicle has gone off the road or the weather conditions are poor.

(via Chris Pendleton)

Find your Kids with Virtual Earth and AT&T

Sarah Perez — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:49:00 GMT

AT&T recently launched a new child locator service called FamilyMap which lets parents track down their children’s location by using their cell phones. Unlike some of the GPS-enabled mobile social networking/tracking applications, FamilyMap doesn’t require the user (the child) to input their location manually – the tracking is automatic and uses the phone’s built-in GPS.

Once activated, parents can then log into the FamilyMap web site from either their mobile device or PC and track their kids’ whereabouts on a Microsoft Virtual Earth map which even supports Bird’s Eye view. (Bird’s Eye view is that angled view of an area that gives you more detail and context than aerial photos). They can also choose to receive alerts at specified times via text or email. For example, parents could request a schedule check every weekday at 4 p.m. to check on their child’s location.

The service costs $9.99 per month to locate up to two family members or $14.99 per month thereafter to locate up to five family members. This is more affordable than Verizon’s Chaperone service ($9.99 per child) but is more than Sprint’s Family Locator (4 phones for $5/mo).

If you’re thinking its creepy to track your kids like this, rest assured – the service isn’t enabled on the sly without the kids knowledge. Phones being tracked with receive a text message from the AT&T FamilyMap service when they become locatable and will continue to receive periodic notifications via text that they can be located. So really, the service is intended more to be used for safety reasons or just the convenience of knowing where everyone in the family is located, not for stalking or spying.

If you’re an AT&T customer, you can ho to www.att.com/familymap and click the Get First 30 Days Free button to try the service now.

(via Chris Pendleton)

Photosynth Integrated into Virtual Earth

Sarah Perez — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:02:00 GMT

Microsoft’s Photosynth technology, which transforms 2D photographs into 3D scenes, is now being integrated into Virtual Earth so you can create 3D views of anything, anywhere in the world and then add them to a map. This new integration will allow web site owners to place Photosynths within the embedded maps on their own sites using either their own imagery or existing photos from the Photosynth library.

The update also includes new controls that let you decide whether your synths are public or private (unlisted), the latter setting there in case you don’t want them being used by others.

According to the press release, there are a number of industries that can benefit from this new technology including real estate, tourism and hospitality, media and entertainment, the public sector, and the synths could be used for internal business purposes, too. Already, you can see some synths in action on NASA’s homepage and on the travel web site VisitBrighton, to give you an idea.

Check the Weather in Virtual Earth?

Sarah Perez — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:20:00 GMT

A recent blog post on Chris Pendleton’s site alerted me to a Virtual Earth feature that I wasn’t aware of – a 3D weather setting. According to the post, you can turn on 3D weather by clicking the 3D button on your favorite Virtual Earth website…like Live Search Maps, for example. Once you get down to a particular zoom level, you’ll see the clouds appear – well, assuming there are any that day. So maybe this isn’t not exactly something you’d do to check the forecast on a daily basis, but it is a pretty nifty feature.

CeBIT '09 - Gesten bewegen die Welt

Lori Grosland — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:47:00 GMT

In dem Innovation Bereich auf dem Microsoft-Stand haben CanControls, hubermedia und Visio ein cooles Projekt präsentiert. Sie hatten eine interaktive Karte, die man mit Gesten steuert. Auf eine halbrunde Leinwand wird mit 2 Projektoren, die an der Decke angebracht sind, ein Bild projiziert. Kameras und Infrarotstrahler filmen den Anwender, der vor der Leinwand steht und mit Hilfe von Gesten eine Virtual Earth Anwendung steuern kann.

In diesem Video stellt Dr.-Ing. Ulrich Canzler von CanControls das Projekt vor und dann Stefan Huber von hubermedia zeigt wie es funktioniert. Ich war nur ein Tag auf der CeBIT dieses Jahr und ich habe den Innovationsstand erst spät am Tag besucht. Leider zu dem Zeitpunkt gab es Internet-Probleme und sie könnten mir nicht alle Funktionalität von der Interaktive Karte zeigen. Aber trotzdem kann man sehr gut sehen, wie es funktioniert.

The Microsoft Guide to Valentine's Day

Laura Foy — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:48:00 GMT

Are you a bit of mess when it comes to Valentine's Day? Are you nervous and lost when put under the pressure of being extra romantic on February 14th? Well, not any longer! Some people may not know this but Microsoft is a super romantic love machine of a company! Microsoft has services and products that will make SURE your sweetie feels nothing but love from you this Valentine's Day. (pssst- it's SATURDAY so get going!) Get ready to take some notes from the "Microsoft Guide to Valentine's Day."

Vídeo – Microsoft Surface está sendo utilizado para coordenar segurança no Super Bowl

Galileu Vieira — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:54:00 GMT

A cada dia surge uma nova funcionalidade para o Microsoft Surface, mostrando que a plataforma é mais que brincadeiras com zoom em fotos. Dessa vez o município de Tampa Bay na Flórida, que está sediando o Super Bowl desse ano, está usando uma solução da empresa E•SPONDER para coordenar todas as questões de segurança no maior evento esportivo dos Estados Unidos. O Virtual Earth está sendo usado como plataforma base para identificar eventos, incidentes, recursos necessários e tarefas sendo realizadas, tudo em tempo real. A plataforma Microsoft Office Communications Server está sendo utilizada para toda comunicação entre as equipes com direito a bate-papo, VOIP, vídeo conferência, e chamadas de PC para os rádios/celulares.

Confira o vídeo do Microsoft Surface no Super Bowl.

8-way multithreading in Windows 7

Ben Waggoner — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:26:00 GMT

Windows 7 Beta is out today. It’s free to participate in, so if you’re interested, please check it out and give us feedback.

To whet the appetites of my compressionist friends, one much-requested new feature in the Format SDK .dll in Windows 7: It now can go up to 8-way threading, compared to the 4-way threading introduced with WMP 11 and Vista! This should nearly double encoding speed on 8-core machines doing HD encoding.

The number of threads the encode gets is determined by the height of the video frame.

1-119 lines 1 thread
120-239 lines: 2 threads
240-479 lines: 4 threads
480+ lines: 8 threads

This is because each thread gets a slice of the video frame, so more threads mean that vertical motion gets a little less efficient to encode. And as always, the number of threads used can be overrridden with Alex Zambelli’s WMV9 PowerToy. Its looks like we’ll get one last update out of him after all to add “8” to the drop-down list.

This new mode will work with any program that uses the Format SDK .dll, including Windows Media Encoder, the new Windows Live Movie Maker beta, and Virtual Earth. It won’t apply to VC-1 Encoder SDK based apps like Expression Encoder 2, but obviously we’ll want to add this to the VC-1 Encoder SDK as well.

So, if you’ve got an 8-core processor, or a 4-core with hyperthreading, give the Win 7 beta shot. I’d love to hear from anyone who gets some comparisons for encoding time between XP/Vista and Win 7.

Track Santa on Virtual Earth

Larry Larsen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 10:29:00 GMT

The Virtual Earth group has partnered with the North Pole to let kids track Santa and watch the prep. Peep Santa, Rudolph and the rest of his magic reindeer gearing up for the long haul and then head over to Listas to make your list while you still can.

And remember kids, you can use your Xbox 360 controller with Virtual Earth for fluid navigation and reindeer chasing.

For more on Live's Santa tracker and how it was made, check out Chris Pendleton's Virtual Earth blog.

ReportStorms: A Virtual Earth-Powered Weather Site

Sarah Perez — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Chris Pendleton reports that the web site Weather Central has just launched a new beta community site called ReportStorms.com. This crowd-sourced weather watching community lets you report on the storms in your area by right-clicking on the map provided and entering in the storm info. On the “Report Event” pop-up, you can fill out the date, time, and what kind of event you’re reporting (wind, hail, tornado, flooding, etc.). You also have the option to upload photos or videos that you recorded of the storm. If you want to just see the best stuff people have uploaded, the box at the top right of the screen features quick links to storm reports, videos, and images.

Elsewhere on the ReportStorms site, registered users can share info and discuss weather-related news in the site’s forums. It’s citizen journalism for weather reporting and a social community all in one. Weather enthusiasts everywhere will love this one.

WWT Comes To Virtual Earth

Sarah Perez — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:45:00 GMT

The amazing WorldWide Telescope got a lot of hype pre-launch but you haven’t heard much about in recent days. Although now the WWT is being used by a number of astronomers, scientists, students, and space enthusiasts across the globe, the Microsoft Virtual Earth team decided to give it a little more exposure to the general public. To do so, they’re going to include a little WWT in Virtual Earth. According to Chris Pendleton, the Virtual Earth data centers host all of the data for WWT and the Earth in WWT is actually made of Virtual Earth tiles. So, in latest release of the Virtual Earth 3D control, the Virtual Earth team has now included the accurate placement of stars in space. Cool - now we have Earth and Sky in VE!

New Release of Live Maps

Sarah Perez — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:37:00 GMT

The Virtual Earth team has just made a big round of updates to their platform, some of which affect the consumer-facing side of VE: Live Search Maps. One of the updates that I think will be immediately useful has to do with communities. Community-submitted collections are now going to be immediately indexed after uploading so they can be searched instantly. Live Maps will also be using this collections data to further augment business search results when there aren't any business listings that exist for the term you entered. That will definitely be helpful.

I’m also glad to see that they've added the ability to get multi-point directions which is handy when you’re planning a route that has several different stops along the way. However, I'm personally the most excited about the new "landmark hints" feature. I believe that this must have been added in just for me. When I’m going somewhere new, I hate having to look for street signs. Now, thanks to this excellent feature I see "landmarks hints" to help me find my way. Here in the U.S. only, the landmark hints will include things like gas stations, hotels, restaurants, convenience stores, grocery stores, and car dealerships. So now I'll know to turn RIGHT at the McDonalds, not at some street. Awesome! I'm going to use this new feature today to map my trip to Blogorlando.

The Live Search Maps update also includes several other improvements like better geocoding precision, more aerial updates and bird's eye views (my favorite), updated vector data (roads and places), localized tiles for Western Europe which show place names in the local language, and a lot of other great new features. For the full run-down, check out Chris's blog. In the meantime, I'm off to pack for my trip...and I can finally be happy that this time I won't get lost!

Reuters AlertNet Makes Featured Mashup List

Sarah Perez — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:36:00 GMT

Reuters AlertNet is a web-based humanitarian news network launched by Reuters in ‘97 to keep relief professionals, journalists, and the public current on humanitarian crises worldwide. The site was recently selected as a featured mashup by the Windows Live Dev team, who picked out 10 of the most innovative mashups that feature the use of Windows Live technology. AlertNet was my personal favorite as it incorporates Virtual Earth in a really unique way. On the site, you can visually “mine” for headlines from a particular part of the world on their interactive map just by zooming into a country or region. You can select what kind of crises you want the map to display from conflicts to food shortages to natural disasters and more, or you can choose all the categories to see everything. This is really an ingenious use of the Virtual Earth mapping technology and one that serves such a good purpose, too. Before the Windows Dev article, I was not even aware of the map existence, but I’m glad to have found it as this could prove to be an invaluable resource for learning about what’s happening in different parts of the world.

New Version of Virtual Earth-3DVIA Arrives

Sarah Perez — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:48:00 GMT

Make Your Own 3D Models…Or Just Reuse Those Already Made By Others

Recently the latest version of Microsoft Virtual Earth-3DVIA was announced. This software combines Microsoft’s mapping platform (Virtual Earth) with the 3D modeling and visualization platform provided by 3DVIA. The end result is a tool that lets you easily design and create 3D scenes of your own or make mashups using the content already posted online at 3DVIA.com, an online content creation community where users make and share their 3D models. For making these mashups, the latest release of Microsoft Virtual Earth-3DVIA introduces a new “remix” feature. Now, instead of having to learn how to make 3D models yourself, you can just search 3DVIA.com for the models you need and then import those directly into your Virtual Earth projects. With these online models, you can build houses, buildings, or even your own neighborhood, if you so desire, among many other things.

To get you started with the new 3D remix functionality, there are interactive tutorials and videos that teach you how you can build a house in 5 minutes or less. The new version also includes an updated UI and navigation, both of which make the software easier to use. If you want to start building your own 3D models for Virtual Earth, just download the application from http://maps.live.com/Help/en-us/VE3DVIADownload.htm.

Looking at V2 Cities in Virtual Earth

Sarah Perez — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:35:00 GMT

At this year's Virtual Earth and Location Summit, hosted by Microsoft Research in May, Steve Stanzel of the 3D Imagery Group gave a presentation about the new Virtual Earth released earlier this year. Virtual Earth version 2, in case you don't know, is a pretty impressive step forward in this mapping product. There are currently over 300 cities in 3D and many of them are already "V2" cities. In a V2 city, the texture qualities are greatly improved, making the buildings look more real. V2 cities all use what's called "oblique" imagery, aka "Bird's Eye View," that presents the imagery at a 45 degree angle, letting you clearly see the sides of the buildings. In V2 cities, you can also toggle street and building labels.

Another difference between V1 and V2 cities is the increase in the number of buildings displayed. In the earlier version of VE, only the taller buildings were rendered, but one and two-story structures were largely ignored. Now with V2, the number of buildings in a city has increased from about 6,000 to over 150,000, according to this Radar post blogged from the Summit. In addition to the buildings, trees have been rendered and placed in specific spots based on the height and diameter of the real trees. The trees are a nice touch, but its the sheer number of buildings that make a V2 city stand out - they have far more buildings that any competitive mapping product.

At the time of launch, four cities received the V2 face lift: Vegas, Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix, and today there are a total of seven (Vienna, Seattle, and Miami have now been added). However, by the end of this year, there will be hundreds of these cities online, says the team. Sounds like they are going to be busy!

Vídeo - Veja como fica a integração de Photosynth no Virtual Earth

Galileu Vieira — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:23:00 GMT

O Photosynth mal saiu do forno e o gerente de produto do Virtual Earth já criou um mashup do Photosynth, embutindo uma janela do Photosynth dentro de um ponto do Virtual Earth, a plataforma de mapas da Microsoft. Confira o vídeo e aprenda como fazer isso você mesmo no blog oficial do Virtual Earth.

trueSpace: Realistic, High-Res 3D Modeling for VE and Live Maps

Sarah Perez — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:53:00 GMT

Back in February, Microsoft acquired a company called Caligari mainly for their 3D modeling and animation software, trueSpace. As of now, trueSpace is available for download – for free. With trueSpace, you can create high-resolution models, landscapes, buildings, and more for Virtual Earth and Live Maps. After creating these models, they can then be uploaded from trueSpace directly into Live Maps as a collections item. Why is trueSpace important? Well, for one, this is not sketching software – these aren’t drawings, but detailed, rich and realistic models. For example, take this Starbucks model (image to the left - see the full video on Chris Pendleton’s blog). This could either be a 3D model of the actual store or a mockup of one they’re thinking of building. That mockup could then be aaded to Live Maps in order to get feedback from the community. Even better, trueSpace supports importing of models drawn within other 3D software environments, including AutoCAD, Illustrator, and more. (The full list is here). For more details on how to use trueSpace, Chris has a great walkthough on his site. To register and download trueSpace, click here.

New Video Series Shows the Tech in Virtual Earth

Sarah Perez — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:21:00 GMT

There’s a new video series available on our sister site, Channel 9, that delves into the tech behind Virtual Earth. The series is called “Behind the Maps,” and it will show you how the data and imagery in Virtual Earth goes through the whole process from camera to web and beyond. You’ll learn about the high-resolution cameras used – like the incredible UltraCam, how imagery is captured from a plane, how imagery is processed, and more. Of course, you’ll get to learn more about the Virtual Earth platform itself and its 3D control that delivers the imagery to your browser window. The first video is up now and will feature an up-close look at the UltraCam – check it out!

Ask Maps Are Now Virtual Earth

Sarah Perez — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:21:00 GMT

Big news! Chris Pendleton is reporting that Ask.com has decided to forgo their mapping service in favor of the Virtual Earth platform. If you go to maps.ask.com now, you’ll see a Virtual Earth map. Chris notes that this choice is common among portal sites who realize that the upkeep involved in running a mapping service requires a lot of infrastructure, frequent imagery and photography acquisitions, data updates, etc. So, instead they’ll often turn to another service like Virtual Earth, for example.

But now, with Ask’s maps gone, Jordan from Marketing Pilgrim mentions that he’s going to miss the walking directions feature which the maps provided. Well, as it turns out, Chris had already shared some sample code for walking directions in VE – it looks like it’s just a matter of someone building an app to support this. (img via Chris Pendleton)

Virtual Earth Team Launches "GoVE"

Sarah Perez — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:13:00 GMT

The Virtual Earth team has just launched a new program called GoVE which lets state and local governments, municipalities, and aerial photographers share their own imagery with Microsoft and get it published on Virtual Earth. After checking out maps.live.com to verify that the imagery they have it news and has a higher resolution of what's currently being offered online, the organizations can then contact the team by sending an email to Steve Clayton blogged about DeepEarth, and I would be neglectful if I didn’t pass this link on to you. DeepEarth is, in one word, incredible. And it really shows off what Deep Zoom is capable of. The DeepEarth project was an open source community effort that was meant to be a learning experience for the participants as well as a way to show off Silverlight 2’s Deep Zoom capabilities in something both cool and useful. The result is a deep zoomable world map featuring imagery from Microsoft Virtual Earth. You can watch a video on YouTube about DeepEarth or you can just watch the video I made.

[Update: Also check out http://silverlight.idvsolutions.com/, Thanks Scott]

Loopt’s Mobile Network Now Runs Virtual Earth

Sarah Perez — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:57:00 GMT

At the recent AWDC event on the 10th, Loopt CEO Sam Altman demonstrated the upcoming Loopt mobile social network for iPhone (Loopt currently runs on numerous phones already, including Blackberry). The mobile social network they provide helps you connect with friends in the real world by dropping pins on a map to show your friends’ locations. What’s interesting about all this is that they chose Microsoft Virtual Earth to be the mapping service for Loopt on iPhone. This was spotted by VE evangelist Chris Pendleton, who caught a screenshot of the demo (pictured to the left - thanks Chris!). That’s especially interesting because this seems to be a departure from the mapping service they used before. Hmmm, wonder if they’ll let us switch to Bird’s Eye view? Anyway, congrats VE team! Hey, I heard you were just on CNN, too.

The Microsoft 216 Megapixel Camera

Larry Larsen — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:41:00 GMT

Did you know that Microsoft makes a 216 Megapixel camera? I didn't know either until I read it on Mark Brown's Virtual Earth blog, but it turns out that this is the photobeastie behind the orthogonal imagery on Virtual Earth. The UltraCams are also used to create the 3D models you see on Virtual Earth through photogrammetric processing.

The UltraCam snaps an impressive 14,430 x 9,420 pixel image using 13 CCD's, sending them through 14 CPU's. The camera captures data at 3Gbits/sec, which led them to use two Infiniband cables rather than 14 firewire cables. Look for more info in a future episode of ShutterSpeed.

Get Addresses Using Aerial Photos in Live Maps

Sarah Perez — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:19:00 GMT

Chris Pendleton recently wrote a mashup for Virtual Earth (Live Maps) that provides and address and a latitude/longitude whenever you click on any location on the map. After you install the app, click anywhere on the map and you'll get a pushpin. Hover over the pushpin and you'll get a pop-up that shows the nearest address to that point on the map as well as the lat/long of that location. He has now also added a link to the pop-up that will show you a Bird's Eye Photo of the location as sort of a picture-in-picture option. (see the picture to the left for an example). The app is available for download from his SkyDrive from here. If you want to help him improve the code, he has posted it to his site here.