LiveSide - News blog : Collections

Live Maps part 2: Export Collections to Nav device

Kip Kniskern — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 06:55:00 GMT

In part one of this little series on new features of Live Maps, Steve Lombardi, a Live Maps program manager, showed us around Live Maps Collections, and MapCruncher. In the second part, we’ll talk about exporting a Live Maps Collection to a file that can be imported into your Nav device.

First a little more on process. After posting our first video, I got a nice note from Michael Palermiti from Windows Live reminding me that I could upload videos from the Gallery, and it would take care of compression. This video was small enough (<100mb) that it didn’t need compressing, but using Windows Live Photo Gallery definitely saves some steps (although the processing time is still the same, it takes a long time to process the videos once they’re up on Soapbox, a half hour or more). Here’s how you do it:

Open Windows Live Photo Gallery and select your video (you may have add the location)
Click on Publish to MSN Soapbox (you need to be signed in to the correct Windows Live ID in Photo Gallery):
Upload the video

Uploading of course depends on your internet connection, etc. Here on Comcast cable, it takes a bit (upload speeds are much slower than download). Then it takes a while for Soapbox to “process” the video.

OK on to the video. Thanks for the feedback on showing who we’re talking to, I was concentrating on getting a usable “screencast”. We’ll do it next time. I did take a photo of Steve, with the Xacti video cam (basically it’s two buttons: record video, or shoot a still pic, very simple). The camera comes equipped with a hella flash, which might explain Steve’s somewhat startled look:

Live Maps Export to Nav Device - MSN Video

Steve just posted a tutorial on how to export Collections to files, on his Live Maps / Virtual Earth blog. The examples aren’t exactly the same, but you can follow along.

Next, we’ll take a look at making a Live Maps 3D Tour, and labels for Birds Eye imagery. Oh, and yes there’s still one more to come after that, and no I can’t tell you what it is, yet ;)

Live Maps with Steve Lombardi: Part 1 – Explore Collections and Mapcruncher

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:41:00 GMT

The newest release of Live Maps last week introduced some pretty cool new features, and we thought it would be fun to have Steve Lombardi, a Program Manager for Live Maps, take us on a little tour. In this first part, Steve explains two new additions, Explore Collections and MapCruncher.

Just a note on the video: I’ve been thinking about making a move from audio interviews to video, and found a little camera I really like, the Sanyo Xacti CG6. It is very small, almost as small as my phone, very easy to use, and didn’t cost much at all. For these interviews (my first ones) I just set up a little tripod and pointed it at the laptop screen, so it’s more like a screencast. Not much sophisticated videography here, yet. I also wanted to try using Windows Movie Maker (in anticipation of Windows Live Movie Maker, mentions of which are floating around on the interwebs, if you know where to look, and of course we do) and MSN Soapbox, so I built a simple title screen and added a couple of transitions, which was easy and straightforward. After a few fits and starts involving codecs (the Sanyo shoots in .mp4), and a lot of processing time, we have our first LiveSide video. Soapbox only allows 100mb files, and so I compressed this one down (a bit too much). The picture quality is quite good in the original, but I think you get the idea of what Steve is talking about, and we’ll get the processing down once I get the hang of it.

So it’s a bit rough around the edges, but I’m excited to be able to add video capabilities to our LiveSide interviews, and we’ll learn as we go.

Live Maps Part One of Three - MSN Video

Some links:

Steve’s MapCruncher collection

The Live Maps / Virtual Earth blog

Download MapCruncher

In part 2, we’ll take a look at some new 3D features, including how to make high definition movies with Live Maps 3D. I can’t tell you what Part 3 is yet, but I can tell you it’s very cool :)

Live Maps: Create a collection, help the team

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 11:58:00 GMT

Steve Lombardi posted today on the Virtual Earth / Live Maps blog with a request for help:

For our next release we have some pretty neat Collection enhancements coming and could use your help right now in preparation. Helping is easy! All I need you to do is create a Collection showing off your neighborhood to share with others. Collect your favorite movie theater, the new park, the best club for electronic duos, the dog park, the must avoid and overhyped bistro, etc..., Tag it 'MyHood', and send it to me.

The "me" being Steve Lombardi, SteveLom at Microsoft dot com. Actually Steve lists 3 ways to get him the collections:

Email him: SteveLom at Microsoft dot com
Post it to the comments on his blog entry
View your Collection on the public viewer. As long as you have it tagged properly as MyHood, all you need to do is paste the link for your Collection in your browser. I'll be able to grab a report of all Collections with that tag and your will be included

And tell him LiveSide sent ya! Speaking of which, I just added the "MyHood" tag to LiveSide Stickers Around the World!, so LiveSide is "in the hood"!

OK so make LiveSide proud, create a collection (hey I had a lot of fun with the stickers collection, it's a good way to get to know Live Maps), tag it MyHood (and go ahead and tag it LiveSide, too), and get it to Steve, and maybe he'll tell us what he's up to!

Live.com Sharing enabled

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:24:05 GMT

Tonight brings an update to the Live.com home page, allowing for sharing of Live.com collections, which we recently posted about. By clicking on the new "Share" button on Live.com:

You can share your Live.com collections, either by email or by posting them to Gallery.Live.com, where you'll also find some new celebrity home pages to share:

Check out more at the Gallery.Live.com Collections page

Live.com to get social - share your own pages

Chris — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 06:00:00 GMT

In a relatively un-noticed post on the Windows Live Gallery blog last week, a new feature called Windows Live Collections was mentioned. Collections are pre-made Live.com pages with feeds and gadgets that you can add to your own Live.com homepage. Although the only collections currently available are celebrity pages and the standard Live.com pages such as the new Valentine's Day template, users will soon be able to share their own pages.

While letting users share pages is a great feature, no advertising on live.com means the corporate angle is equally as important. The Bacardi Instant Party gadget is one existing example and in time I suspect we'll see companies create full pages of content, using both RSS and gadgets. Any suggestions for full pages you'd consider using? (Some ideas I had were entertainment based - TV shows, movies, music artists....)

There's also the possibility of seeing more co-branded Live.com homepages. With Verizon already signed up, some of the other ISPs such as Qwest, who currently has an MSN co-branded homepage, might decide to follow suit. Then there are the ever-powerful PC manufacturers, with Google already providing a personalised homepage for Dell, although Dell has changed providers all the time [first MSN, then Excite]. For Live.com to really take off, Microsoft needs to partner with the likes of Lenovo or HP and ensure its place as default in the browser - afterall, this strategy worked for MSN.com. Interestingly enough, lenovo.live.com currently redirects to live.com.