LiveSide - News blog : MultiMap

Virtual Earth: Get A MultiMap Map On Your Site For Free!

Sunshine — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:07:00 GMT

If you own a small business and want to show your customers how to get to you, you could of course screenshot some map and/or type out driving instructions. But why not make it easier on yourself? Use Multimap.com’s new service:

The Multimap team has released a new free API which contains lots of robust features which you can leverage in your applications. And, if you're a licensed Virtual Earth customer you can gain access to the Multimap platform via your agreement. So, if you see something you like on the Multimap platform contact your Solution Specialist and get them crackin' to add it to your VE contract!

So, what's the deal with the Multimap Free API? Here are the Marketing facts:

We launched a new service for small businesses, personal websites and hobbyists this week.

The service, available for free from Multimap.com, provides a single line of HTML to cut and paste into a web page.

The user gets a slippy map in a choice of map styles (TeleAtlas, Ordnance Survey and Barts) or aerial for anywhere in the world (US included, using VE maps and aerial).

The pasted HTML includes four hyperlinks back to Multimap.com:

See this location on Multimap (for a bigger map, POI, business listings, etc)

See this location in Birds Eye

Get directions to this location

Get directions from this location

The service is limited to 50,000 transactions per year (which we track) and cannot be used for internal apps (eg BI, CRM)

A free Map, for anybody, anywhere! And as simple as copy/pasting a single line of HTML!

The map control, routing instructions and widgets (POI, map type, zoom/pan) support the following languages: en-US, da-DK, de-DE, es-ES, fr-FR, it-IT, nl-NL, nb-NO, pt-PT, sv-SE, ru-RU and zh-CN.

Want to give it a go?

Go to Multimap.com
Search for a location and zoom in on the map as much as you like, even down to street level!
Select Link (top right of map)

Notice in the above screenshot that you can freely use the link to share the map, only if you wish to embed you need to accept the terms and conditions! After checking this box the code for embedding will be displayed and you can preview and adjust the map to your likings (size, move red circle).

Now I did mention this for small businesses, but of course you can use this for your own personal site too if you want! For more info check out Chris Pendleton’s post: Multimap Launches Free API (And It Includes Virtual Earth).

Additional read:
Microsoft Aquires MultiMap
Previous LiveSide articles about Virtual Earth

Changes Afoot For UK Live Maps Users – A Heads Up

ScottIsAFool — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:58:00 GMT

James Senior, a Microsoft UK blogger, has put up on his blog about an impending change to Live Maps in the UK. Don’t worry, we’re not going to see the farce that happened last time! The changes that will be coming are as follows:

If you visit the URL http://maps.live.com you will get to Live Maps UK.
If you go to maps via http://www.live.com then you will get to Multimap.
If you go to maps via http://www.msn.co.uk then you will get to Multimap.

So at least now if you go to maps.live.com you’ll actually be going to the site you wanted to go to in the first place. James also posts the official statement for this move:

We recently announced the integration of Multimap into Live Search in the UK and will start to route users directly to the Multimap service from MSN UK and Live.com from 9^th May.

This release is part of our longer term consumer strategy to have one mapping and local search site in the UK, integrating the best of both Multimap and Virtual Earth (Live Search Maps) technologies. The management and development teams of Microsoft and Multimap are working collaboratively, with a common vision bringing localised products to market faster. Given that Multimap resonates successfully with UK consumers serving over 45% of the UK mapping audience, building on this brand is the right strategic direction.

We recognise, however, that we must continue to offer users a choice of services while we complete the integration of all Virtual Earth features into the Multimap site. We are therefore maintaining the Live Search Maps UK site and users can still access this at http://maps.live.com to use favourite features such as Windows Live Collections and 3D maps. Powerful VE Aerial and Bird’s Eye imagery has been integrated into the Multimap site to give consumers the broadest array of map styles on the market today.

Additionally, we are going to provide prominent signposting to Live Search Maps UK from the Multimap site for those who are redirected there. All Live Search and MSN UK mapping traffic through ‘Maps’ links will be redirected to www.multimap.com but any shared Collections links will not.

Developers and businesses that have invested in the Virtual Earth technology are unaffected by the redirection of our Live Search Maps and MSN mapping traffic to Multimap. We will continue to support both technology platforms and expect to offer an expanded set of opportunities and features over time.

We thank our users for the feedback and passion they have shared so far as we continue to evolve our local and mapping sites in the UK. We encourage you to try out these sites for yourselves.

So when is this all taking place? James states that this will be switching over on 9th May.

No Live Maps for UK Users? We have the workaround

ScottIsAFool — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:07:00 GMT

Many UK Live Maps users this morning have found that when they go to http://maps.live.com/ they are being rather unceremoniously dumped on the doorstep of MultiMap. You might remember that Microsoft bought Multimap back in December, and now, for UK users, Multimap is all you can use. Or is it…? Whilst this decision seems [to most] to be a bizarre decision, there are some advantages with MultiMap, for example, you can see how many cash points there are in the map area.

However, if I want to check that information, I would go to MultiMap, but if I type in the Live Maps address, I do expect to see Live Maps, and in this post, I will show you after the jump how easy it is to get your regular Live Maps back in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. All we will be doing is changing what language the browser tells the webpage to use.

There is one other way of getting Live Maps if you can’t do either of the above, and that’s by going to http://maps.live.com/?mkt=en-us and you’ll get Live Maps.

What do you think about this decision by Microsoft? Do you like it? Or do you think it’s as baffling as we do?

Internet Explorer

Go to Tools > Options
Click on the Languages button at the bottom
Click Add, and choose English (United States) [en-US], and put it at the top of the list (that’s important!), as per the above screenshot.
Click OK twice to go back to Internet Explorer, then go to http://maps.live.com/ and you will get your regular Live Maps back.

Firefox

Go to Tools > Options > Advanced
Click Choose
Select English/United States [en-us] and add that, again, putting it to the top of the list
OK out of those windows and go to http://maps.live.com/ and you will get your regular Live Maps back.

Microsoft Acquires MultiMap

ScottIsAFool — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 02:05:24 GMT

Microsoft today announced that it had acquired MultiMap, "one of the United Kingdom’s top 100 technology companies and one of the leading online mapping services in the world."

The acquisition gives Microsoft a powerful new location and mapping technology to complement existing offerings such as Virtual Earth, Live Search, Windows Live services, MSN and the aQuantive advertising platform, with future integration potential for a range of other Microsoft products and platforms. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“The addition of Multimap enhances Microsoft’s position as a leading provider of mapping and location platform services,” said Sharon Baylay, general manager of the Online Services Group at Microsoft. “This acquisition will play a significant role in the future growth of our search business and presents a huge opportunity to expand our platform business beyond the U.K. and globally. We are thrilled to welcome Multimap onboard.”

For me, this is quite a surprising move as Microsoft has already established its own mapping technology with Virtual Earth, so it will be interesting to see just how this acquisition pans outs and what will actually come out of it for the end user.