LiveSide - News blog : Live Local

3D Virtual Earth imagery added for New York City

Harrison Hoffman — Tue, 29 May 2007 12:01:00 GMT

Up until today, the most notable absence from Virtual Earth's catalog of 3D imagery was, without a doubt, New York City. Fortunately, Microsoft just pushed their brand new imagery for NYC live to local.live.com.

Click to Enlarge

In addition to the new NYC imagery, eight other cities have also been added. Those added include:

Austin, Texas
Cape Coral, Florida
Cincinnati, Ohio
Indianapolis, Indiana (too bad this one wasn't in time for the 500 this weekend)
Northampton, England
Ottawa
Savanna, Georgia
Tampa, Florida

I'll leave you with a couple of shots of Lady Liberty. Thanks to Brandon LeBlanc for the screencaps since my internet was acting shaky at the time.
Press Release

Click to Enlarge

Latest release of Virtual Earth sports new features

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 14:40:49 GMT

Hey Berkowitz try selling this stuff instead of bashing it, it rocks.

The Windows Live Local blog announced a new minor point release that packs in lots of new features. First, the Birds Eye navigation control has been replaced, the thumbnail grid is out and a very cool new draggable inset map is in. Much easier and much more intuitive.

Another very useful new feature: the drawing tools now report distance as you draw in a tooltip, and when you're done drawing, the distance appears on the scratchpad. Use this with in a Collection, and catalog bike trips, jogging runs or favorite drives.

In addition to the distance feature, drawing on a map will now auto-scroll in the direction you are drawing if you come to the edge of the view, and you can extend previously drawn routes.

Lots more on the VE Team Spaces blog, with promises of more info on the new drawing tools soon.

Very cool stuff guys keep up the good work!

What's the name of that Map thing?

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 02:41:00 GMT

Virtual Earth? Local.live.com? Maps.live.com? It's all so confusing. We've suggested just changing the name to Maps and be done with it, and recently there have been signs that the change has occured.

First, http://maps.live.com works, and doesn't resolve to http://local.live.com as it used to.

Then on the Live Search menu, Local has been replaced by Maps:

and in recent posts by Soma Somasegar, MSN Search's blog, and others, they're using the maps.live.com address.

Finally, in a post the night before Virtual Earth 3d went live, CIO India reported that the change had been made:

"Microsoft plans to announce the new feature, called Virtual Earth 3D, on Monday afternoon at a press conference in San Francisco, where the company will also change the service's name from Live Local to Live Search Maps, as well as the Web address..."

There's been no official word that we can find on the change, but it seems to be a done deal.

QnA adds and improves; Local turns Japanese; a note on VE 3d

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 11:44:00 GMT

Word is out from Betsy about some new features over at Windows Live QnA, including a new browse page for tags, a new question page interface, the initiation of a content rating system, an email a question to a friend feature, and some improvements to the interface with Live Search. Check out the post on the Live QnA team blog.

Local.live.com has some 2D news as well as the big news in 3D, a localized Japanese version of the site. According to the Virtual Earth blog:

Features include:

Road, aerial and hybrid maps, with high-res aerial coverage for most major metro areas
Yellow page based local search
Full support for collections
Locally developed street address geocoder with rooftop accuracy for about 30 million Japanese addresses

To get the localized language, go to http://local.live.com/?mkt=ja-jp. (You can get back to English by changing the market back: http://local.live.com/?mkt=en-us).

And while our esteemed LiveSide colleagues introduce you to the finer points of map controls and hosting VE on a Sharepoint Server, I've been having fun just zooming around in VE 3d. For a camping enthusiast like me, it's as much fun to check out Mt. St. Helens in 3d as it is to cruise downtown Detroit. Remember that even though only 15 cities are currently represented in 3d, the whole Virtual Earth is a 3d Spaceland! Enjoy!

Virtual Earth goes 3D

Chris — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 04:08:00 GMT

Today sees a Virtual Earth update that adds a wealth of new features to Windows Live Local (local.live.com). Changes include:

3D representations of 15 major US cities (San Francisco, CA, Seattle, WA, Boston, MA, Philadelphia, PA, Los Angeles, CA, Las Vegas, NV, Baltimore, MD, Dallas, TX, Fort Worth, TX, Atlanta, GA, Denver, CO, Detroit, MI, San Jose, CA, Phoenix, AZ, Houston, TX) - Codenamed Spaceland
A new "flythrough" mode that allows the user to roam and discover
In-world advertising

Because of the scale of the release, we've made several posts covering the changes, have a screencast showing the update in action, and an audio interview with Stephen Lawler (General Manager for VE product development).

The interview covers a range of topics, including how the 3D photorealistic cities are made, whether there will be a Virtual Earth client and whether Virtual Earth will be going mobile.

Update: The press release just went live, check it out here: Official Press Release

Interview with Stephen Lawler

Screenshots (Click to enlarge):

Virtual Earth update - In world advertising

Chris — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 04:01:00 GMT

Today's Virtual Earth update sees the inclusion of in-world advertising, powered by Microsoft's acquisition earlier this year of Massive Inc. Though Massive's technology is mainly used to include advertising in games, usually from large corporations, this horizontal step into Windows Live Local provides a wealth of advertising opportunities for smaller businesses.

Combining Massive's technology with "Call for Free" - another Live Local feature that allows consumers to be called back by advertisers if they want more information on a service - gives Windows Live a powerful and perhaps almost unexpected, monetisation platform. It actually resembles an approach adopted by some players in Second Life, the online virtual world.

Two issues regarding this development is whether negative, or disruptive advertising will be allowed, and if there are any legal lssues concerning advertising on a virtual representation of other people's property.

November 7th - "Get ready for a New Dimension in Search"

Chris — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 20:36:00 GMT

The live.com homepage is today displaying a teaser message, confirming an earlier post that VirtualEarth/Windows Live Local will be experiencing a major update on November 7th. The message reads (emphasis is mine):

"Get ready for a new dimension in search...November 7th"

Start guessing!

Virtual Earth update next week

Chris — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:44:00 GMT

From the Virtual Earth (Mappoint) blog:

Please be advised that we will release a new version of the Virtual Earth Map Control on Tuesday, November 7th 2006.
...
Due to an upcoming marketing campaign surrounding this release we cannot elaborate on the exciting new features that will be in the release. We will announce the features and details of this release on the launch date (November 7th).

We always like hearing the words "marketing campaign" as this imples they believe they have a product worth promoting, and therefore worth spending more money on. Though it is always open for interpretation about when a product is ready, the recent Live Search advertisement shows that Microsoft is getting it right so far for Windows Live.

Lets put this update up for discussion and find out what people would like to see in the update, and what they think might be coming from the Virtual Earth team. Brainstorming always produces some interesting and unexpected results!

Local and Safety Scanner come out of beta

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 00:05:28 GMT

Just in from http://ideas.live.com , although no official announcement as yet, but Live Local and Safety Scanner have dropped the beta tag and graduated to full blown Windows Live Services. This brings the list of released products to 10, according to ideas.live.com

Windows Live News on a Tuesday night

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 12:54:00 GMT

While we're waiting to get a peek at Soapbox (well more than the dancing butterfly, anyway), here's some Windows Live news:

Danny Thorpe writes that the Windows Live Contacts Gadget is due for an update soon, one that's going to break existing apps that use the contacts control. This one time change in the data connection that delivers the contacts data to the control UI is going to allow for a lot more functionality coming up, and will only require some URL changes to existing web apps that use the contacts control. Read more about where the Live Contacts gadget beta is heading on Danny's blog.
JCXP points out that Windows Live OneCare is getting ready to beta test version 1.5. You can sign up for the beta, which will include file cleaning options for infected files, better firewall configuration settings, and more backup restore options.
And is it time for a "change the name of local.live.com" revolt? Dare points out that you can just as easily use http://maps.live.com. Can you say no-brainer?

Virtual Earth updates SDK: Version 3.1 includes new map contols

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 01:44:00 GMT

A new version of the Virtual Earth SDK is out, that's the very nicely done interactive SDK at dev.live.com. New features include:

Add Custom Tiles:
Generate map tiles using the MapCruncher from Microsoft Research to add custom overlays, in varying transparencies, to your maps:

"The Virtual Earth API allows web developers to supplement Virtual Earth's maps with pushpins and lines. MapCruncher brings mashups to a whole new level by allowing developers to import entire maps to supplement the existing road and aerial imagery with detailed, application-specific information. The possibilities are endless: bicycle maps, transit maps, national park maps, university maps, antique city maps, or whatever drawn-to-scale maps you personally find interesting. You can even augment Virtual Earth with Do-It-Yourself Aerial Photography. See our Gallery for more examples"

Draw Polygons:
The VE Polyline feature has been expanded to support filled polygons, again with varying transparency

Disambiguate Address:
A new VESearchResult object lets you work with returned addresses from a VEMap.Find method call.

Change the Map Scale Bar:
Change the map scale bar to miles or kilometers.

For more on some interesting uses of the new controls, check out these two entries in the Windows Live Local/Virtual Earth blog:

Map Controls to the Extreme!
Thematic Mapping and Shaded Area Maps with Virtual Earth

New version of Live Local for Outlook available

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 11:55:41 GMT

The Road To Know Where points to a new version of Windows Live Local for Outlook, now available for download.

From the download site:

Now you can add maps and directions to your Outlook meeting requests, see meeting locations in bird’s eye view maps*, get real-time traffic* updates, calculate the travel distance between your start location and your appointment location, adjust your meeting departure time based on the estimated travel time, store custom locations, search for nearby business, as well as print the map and directions to take with you on the road.
* Bird’s eye view maps and traffic updates are available in most major U.S. cities.
Note: This product is compatible only with U.S. English versions of Outlook (Office Language Interface Packs and Multilingual User Interface Packs are not supported).

Oh yeah, and Virtual Earth, too

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 13:29:10 GMT

Windows Live Local, "powered by" Virtual Earth, has come out of beta, too. Looking quite polished, with Bird's Eye Views added for many cities (take a look at the collection, thanks to the Virtual Earth blog) , Live Local is quietly and rapidly coming into it's own. Collections of pushpins, traffic maps, business, people, and map search, locate me, driving directions, share via messenger, email, blog, or the clipboard - there's a lot to offer here.

More Mobile on the way

Chris — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 17:39:00 GMT

Recently I got a demo of some upcoming Windows Live Mobile applications, one of which, the Live Local mobile application, has just been updated and is available for public download. As with G2, the new mobile Messenger client for smartphones , the Live...(read more)

Windows Live Local Comes to Australia with Aerial Imagery

Harrison Hoffman — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:12:00 GMT

Not long ago I made a post on my own blog about Windows Live Local Coming to Australia after seeing this post on a Windows Live Local Australia Blog announcing it, unfortunately though Windows Live Local imagery support for Australia never happened! However...(read more)