We’re happy to announce the release of new imagery from around the world, including London! Check out where Eugene can take you for a tour. BIRD’S EYE: IMAGERY CAPTURED AT A 45 DEGREE ANGLE, GIVING DEPTH AND THREE-DIMENSIONALITY TO ORTHO PHOTOGRAPHY
	Total coverage of Bird's Eye imagery currently live on Bing Maps!
	With more timely Bird's Eye published to Bing Maps, our imagery reflects prominent cities undergoing transformation with respect to cultural landmarks and other types of development. This includes the tremendous strides London has made in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games. Our new imagery reveals major changes to the Olympic venue and its surroundings.
	BEFORE AFTER
	Click here to see the London Olympic Park in Bird's Eye!
	Circa 2008, Bing Imagery Technologies (BITs) published over 1.1 million sq km of Bird's Eye imagery around the world, most notably in the Continental United States plus Western Europe. Since 2009, BITs has published 1,105,738 sq km. That's over 2.2 million sq km of our unique 45 degree perspective now live on Bing Maps. Our latest release was a total of 130 TB of Synthview data, as well as 60 TB of native Bird's Eye. A Synth (or Synthview) is a style for creating immersive 3D experiences. Some of the best Synths are made up of many overlapping strong textured images and is most useful when you want to capture different sides or details of a particular object. Find Synths on Bing Maps Our Bird's Eye imagery is extremely popular with end-users because its high-resolution, oblique look angle, and four look-directions provide them with great context for many spatial tasks, such as looking for a new house or planning a vacation.
	Basilique du Sacré-Coeur Brussels Region, Belgium Jewish Museum Berlin, Germany Navy Pier Chicago, Illinois Spanish Steps Rome, Italy ADDITIONAL HEIGHLIGHTS: Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia Newport Beach, California Colosseum, Rome, Italy Nordic Museum, Stockholm, Sweden "The Bean," Chicago, Illinois   UC Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, California   Battleship Texas, Houston, Texas   Mt. Vesuvius, Italy
	STREETSIDE: WITH MICROSOFT'S VEHICLE-MOUNTED ULTRA-CAM MOBILE, OUR STREETSIDE CREW IS COLLECTING IMAGERY AT GROUND LEVEL PROVIDING A VIEW AS IF YOU WERE STANDING THERE IN PERSON
	Since the last release, Streetside has published an additional 125,000 kilometers. That's a total of 365,000 linear kilometers of imagery available for users.
	PARIS, FR (BEFORE) PARIS, FR (AFTER) PHOENIX, AZ (BEFORE) PHOENIX, AZ (AFTER)     To view our full Streetside coverage, visit the "Streetside" Map App, or simply click here! Your Streetside tour guide, Eugene, would be happy to show you around! Simply drop Eugene in an area with a blue overlay to explore that region. For more information about our Streetside services, click here.
	Manhattan Bridge New York, New York Eiffel Tower Paris, France Le David Brasserie Marseille, France Las Vegas Boulevard Las Vegas, Nevada
	ABOUT BITs
	Bing Imagery Technologies is located in Boulder, CO, and is responsible for the creation and publication of four imagery types available on Bing Maps- Aerial, Streetside, Bird’s Eye, and Vector. With unparalleled processing power and a thriving team of developers, program managers, and production engineers, we produce data at a record-setting rate.

- The Bing Maps Team

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/05/08/new-imagery-amp-streetside-coverage-on-bing-maps.aspx

Back in August, Chris Pendleton announced the Beta for our Bing Maps WPF control. Today, Bing Maps moves beyond Silverlight and AJAX with the new native WPF Control, which enables you to build interactive tools for visualizing geographical data on the desktop.

“The two main alternatives to Bing Maps with WPF are Bing Maps AJAX in a Web application and Bing Maps Silverlight. I've used -- and like -- all three approaches, but I really like Bing Maps with WPF. It gives you the combined power of Bing Maps and the WPF programming model, with the convenience of the C# language.

I've found Bing Maps with WPF especially useful when I have to deal with very large data sets. In those scenarios, Bing Maps with WPF was much faster than Web-based alternatives, and it allowed me to effectively handle SQL databases with millions of records, and to display thousands of data points in real time.”

- Dr. James McCaffrey as quoted in [Visual Studio Magazine] [04.01.2012]

Figure 1. A new control/library allows developers to add Bing Maps functionality to a WPF application.

To find out more, check out the Feature Article: Integrating Bing Maps With WPF written by James in Visual Studio Magazine.

A BIG thank you to James for his contributions!! See what James is up to on his personal blog.

Dr. James McCaffrey Works for Volt Information Sciences Inc., where he manages technical training for software engineers working at the Microsoft Redmond, Wash., campus.

- The Bing Maps Team

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/04/26/integrating-bing-maps-with-wpf.aspx

This website is provided by ARTICQUE, an electoral specialist and editor of statistical mapping technologies. With this application, you can easily analyze election results at a Country, Department and even Community level.

 

“ARTICQUE chose to use Microsoft Bing Maps because of their responsiveness and the system reliability. Users will be able to localize the data in an efficient and user friendly way.”

- Helene Junin, Managing Director at ARTICQUE

Official results are available! Watch presidential elections results on a map thanks to http://2012.franceelectorale.com and discover all the local specificities of votes.

- The Bing Maps Team

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/04/25/articque-using-bing-maps-to-localize-french-election-results.aspx

One of the most common themes I hear about Bing Maps is that we don’t make it easy to render “GIS Stuff” via our APIs. In fact, one of the first features I spec’d when I moved to the Bing Maps team as a Lead PM was the ability to render holes in our polygons. I’d seen many attempts to make this easy and find workarounds via the community; however, at the end of the day, developers are reliant on us for this. Well, today I’m happy to announce the availability of the Bing Maps Advanced Shapes Module – a module to add to your Bing Maps AJAX v7 Control implementation for rendering complex shapes on our maps.

In this initial release, the idea is fairly straightforward: if you want to render holes in your polygons, now you can by simply passing in an array of lat, lons and, holy maps it’s done! There are many scenarios that are applicable for a polygon with holes: polygons for land, holes for lakes; polygons for areas of importance, holes for those without importance; or, polygons for retails space; holes for areas not available (or vice versa). The code is simple and the documents provide full examples allowing you to cut, paste and run to get you started.

In addition to the rendering of polygons and holes, the Advanced Shapes Module supports a few aesthetic features such as fill color, fill opacity, border color, border style (dash), border thickness, visibility (for showing and hiding) and infoboxes for annotation. I’ll be looking for some cool community implementations of this, so don’t let me down!

CP

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/04/23/reducing-the-complexity-of-rendering-shapes.aspx

Today we’re excited to announce the release of a handful of updates to maps to help users navigate faster and find business, building and venue information to help you go from doing to done more quickly. Some of these features will also be available in select initial international markets. Let’s take a closer look.

Never miss a venue map again.

Did you know Bing Maps has nearly 900 venue maps including interiors maps of malls, airports, casinos and shopping districts? Well you will now because with this update, we’re making venue maps much easier to find and use. When using Bing Maps, now you can simply zoom-in into your favorite shopping mall or airport and click on its footprint to immerse yourself into it.

Las Vegas strip area featuring the venue maps of several casinos including that of the Bellagio interior

This feature will be initially available for the following markets: United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Local businesses? No problem.

Visiting a new city? Zoom-in into Bing Maps and find some of the most popular businesses in the area, including hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions, shopping centers, art galleries, ATMs, and much more.

Even if you are a local, we think you’ll find this feature useful to find grocery stores, libraries, post offices, schools, and even parking garages.

Simply click on a business name or icon and find out more details about it.

Portland’s Pearl District

This feature will be initially available for the following markets: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, and Germany

3D building outlines help you navigate easier.

Ever wondered how the city looks like when using a non-aerial map? Well, Bing Maps has just added semi- transparent 3D building outlines for metropolitan areas when you zoom in far enough. This provides the user with a much better context of how the city looks like, where the key buildings and city landmarks are, and ultimately help you better orientate yourself when using Bing Maps. Look for your city!

New York’s downtown area

This feature will be initially available for the following markets: United States and select cities in the United Kingdom, Canada and France.

Zoom-in faster.

Get to the level of detail you want even faster. With this release most of the labels in Bing Maps will act as a shortcut to zoom-in to that place. Try it with states, cities, parks, neighborhoods, and many more. Clicking on a label will get to the best map view of that area quick and easy.

Clicking on Washington State label will zoom you in into the best map view of the state

This feature will be initially available for all markets except Japan.

We hope you enjoy these updates and find them useful in finding information on maps more quickly. Let us know what you think.

- Roberto Bojorquez Alfaro, Jason Willison, Philomena Lobo, and the Bing Maps Team

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/04/16/find-venue-maps-businesses-and-buildings-faster-on-bing-maps-test.aspx

The youngest member of our family of mapping APIs allows you to build Metro Style applications for the next generation of Microsoft’s operating system. No matter if you are a hardcore .NET developer or if you prefer developing with HTML5 and JavaScript – Bing Maps has you covered.

If you’re planning to join us on April 2nd for the Bing Maps for Windows 8 Workshop, be sure to confirm that your registration includes Workshops.

Get your mapping applications ready for Windows 8!

The Bing Maps Team

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/03/30/if-you-re-planning-to-attend-the-where-conference-this-year-don-t-miss-the-quot-bing-maps-for-windows-8-workshop-monday-april-2nd.aspx

The Bing Maps team has added a new feature to the Bing Maps REST Services Routes API called “via” waypoints. This feature already exists on the Bing Maps consumer site (http://www.bing.com/maps ) as the ability to drag-and-drop a route to create one or more “via” waypoints. We are excited to expose it to developers using the Bing Maps REST Services API.

The first question that might come to mind is “If there is a new “via” waypoint, then how is that different from a “waypoint”?” For the sake of discussion, let’s call our beloved old waypoint a “stop” waypoint.

First, a little bit of context. In the “old world”, the Routes API only supported “stop” waypoints, and a Routes API request could have two or more “stop" waypoints. In the simplest scenario, two waypoints specify the start and the end locations of the route, and the result is a route leg between these two locations with an itinerary (i.e., set of driving instructions). Adding additional “stop” waypoints adds additional route legs, each with its own itinerary. It is important for a route leg to have its own itinerary because every itinerary includes a “depart” and an “arrive” instruction. The only thing these adjacent route legs have in common is a shared waypoint because each route leg is calculated independently.. This scenario is still supported in the “new world”. The image below shows this scenario with three (3) waypoints.

Note that in this example, [A], [B] and [C] are all stop waypoints. [A-B] and [B-C] represent two different legs that both have their own itinerary and, most importantly, [B-C] is calculated with no assumptions about [A-B].The only thing the legs have in common is a shared waypoint. If you look carefully, you will see that there is an implicit U-turn between legs that is not mentioned in the written instructions. The REST Services URL for this Routes API request looks like this:

http://dev.virtualearth.net/REST/V1/Routes?wp.1=47.617540,-122.353513&wp.2=47.616669,-122.351845&wp.3=47.617410,-122.351909&output=xml&key=[BingMapsKey]

Now, let’s look how “via” waypoints enhance this route.

“Via” waypoints are still waypoints (i.e., they represent a location), but “via” waypoints are used to define intermediate locations between “stop” waypoints. In the “new world”, route legs can contain “via” waypoints that the route must pass through. Going back to our example above, if we change [B] to “via” waypoint (as indicated by the small green point on the map below), the route result changes significantly: (1) There is only one route leg now, and (2) The [B-C] route leg is calculated based on the direction that we are going when we arrive at [B] from [A].

The REST Services URL for this Routes API request looks like this:

http://dev.virtualearth.net/REST/V1/Routes?wp.1=47.617540,-122.353513&vwp.2=47.616669,-122.351845&wp.3=47.617410,-122.351909&output=xml&key=[BingMapsKey]

Note that the only difference is that the second waypoint is specified as a “via” waypoint with the alias “vwp”.

With this new feature, developers can define a maximum of 10 “via” waypoints between each set of “stop” waypoints. “Via” waypoints can support a rich set of scenarios ranging from simple ones like specifying preferred routes, to more sophisticated ones like responding to new route points created by drag-and-drop operations. For details about this new feature, please refer to the Bing Maps REST Routes API reference.

Have fun!

Engin Uzuncaova

Software Design Engineer - Bing Maps Directions Team

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/03/20/new-via-waypoints-feature-added-to-the-rest-services-routes-api.aspx

By Ricky Brundritt, EMEA Bing Maps Technology Solution Professional

The Bing Maps MSDN forums are one of the best places to ask a question if you need help developing with Bing Maps. This forum has served us well for many years, but over time, it’s become more difficult to manage. As the number of Bing Maps API’s has grown, it has become increasingly difficult to answer questions. In many cases, someone would respond to a question with what seems to be a very valid answer, only to find out that the user was using a different API. Needless to say, this has resulted in it taking longer to get the answer you need. Another issue was that the Bing Maps forums were located under the Windows Live Development forum category. This made it hard to find the Bing Maps forums in the first place. Many of the regulars on the Bing Maps forum have been asking for sub-forums for the different API’s for quite some time. I remember first requesting this myself nearly 3 years ago when I first became a moderator for the forums.

A couple of years ago a set of forums were created under the Bing Community site; however, these forums were not adopted by many developers. The developers preferred to keep the forums under MSDN, as this is where the forums for similar technologies like SQL 2008 and Silverlight are located A couple of weeks ago Microsoft held the 2012 Microsoft MVP summit in Redmond. While at the summit, we meet with the Bing Maps MVP’s (yes, Bing Maps is a Microsoft MVP Award category) and gathered a ton of feedback on how we could improve communications in the Bing Maps development community. One of the topics was around creating sub-forums for Bing Maps. After discussing this, it was determined that we didn’t need a forum for each API as like API’s could be grouped together. For example, there is about a 95% overlap between the Bing Maps WPF and Silverlight controls and in a lot of cases code for one is easily reused for the other.

Announcing the New Bing Maps Forums

Since the Microsoft MVP Summit the Bing Maps team has been working on taking the excellent feedback we received from the Bing Maps MVP’s and seeing how we can best make use of it. With that, I would like to announce the creation of the new Bing Maps MSDN forums. In addition to creating 5 new forums we have also created a new Bing Maps forum category in the MSDN forums to make it easier to find these forums. The 5 new Bing Maps sub-forums are as follows:

· Bing Maps General

· Bing Maps AJAX Map Controls

· Bing Maps Silverlight/WPF Controls

· Bing Maps REST/SOAP/SDS Services

· Bing Maps Windows 8 Controls

What about the old Bing Maps forums?

So this is great and all, but what about the old Bing Maps forums you have grown to love? Many of the posts from the past year have already been moved over to the new forums, and the newer posts will be moved shortly. An announcement for the new forums will be added to the top of the forum to redirect developers to the new location. The old forum will then be locked and turned into an archive to prevent anyone from accidentally posting, , but still allowing for the content to be found for those who need it.

What’s this about a Microsoft Bing Maps MVP Award?

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award is an annual award given to outstanding individuals who have made outstanding contributions to Microsoft-related technical communities. At Microsoft we believe that technical communities foster the free and objective exchange of knowledge, thereby creating a reliable source of independent, real-world expertise that benefits everyone. Of 100 million technical community participants worldwide, about 4,000 are MVPs.

Recently Bing Maps has become its own category for an MVP award. Currently there are 8 individuals from around the world who have who have won this award. If you are interested in becoming a Microsoft MVP or would like to nominate someone, then check out the Microsoft MVP website.

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/03/16/the-bing-maps-forums.aspx

By Ricky Brundritt, EMEA Bing Maps Technology Solution Professional

In September of 2011 we started the Bing Maps v7 Module CodePlex Project. The purpose of this project was to create a centralized location where developers could find and share useful modules that expand the functionality of the Bing Maps V7 API. Since the start of the project, we’ve had 12 modules submitted and a handful of new modules currently in development. It’s safe to say that this project is absolutely worth looking into.

Today I would like to highlight the three newest modules added to the project:

Drag Handle Module

Download here

This module was created by Mike Garza, a regular Bing Maps community contributor.

This module makes editing shapes easy by adding handles to drag the vertices of the shapes in order to update their values. This is great if you want to give your users a predefined shape on the map and the ability for them to edit it as they see fit. I’ve seen this functionality used a lot for search-type applications as it gives the user the ability to select the area they want to search, even if that area is a complex-looking polygon.

Shape Toolbox Module

Download here

This module was also created by Mike.

The Shape Toolbox module makes it easy to draw shapes on the map with a mouse. In addition to being able to draw Pushpins, Polylines, and Polygons, Mike has also added in support for Circles and Rectangles. The module also includes a toolbar that you can turn on or off, exposing the drawing tools to users. It’s also worth noting that after drawing shapes on the map, you can click on a given shape and edit it. Again, this is great for search-type applications when you want to give your users the ability to draw a search area on the map. I can see this being used in a number of other types of applications as well. This is bound to be a popular module.

Persistence Module

Download here

This module was created by John O’Brien from SoulSolutions, a Bing Maps partner in Australia. John is also a Microsoft Bing Maps MVP.

This module allows you to provide your users with a URL they can share that will return the map to the exact location, and map style they currently see. Optionally, this can also be automatically saved so that the next time users visit, they can continue exactly where they were last. This makes it easy to bookmark and share your maps with others.

Having tested this module out myself, I have to say, that it’s one of those things you didn’t realize you needed it until you had it. This module makes a great addition to almost any type of Bing Maps application. I highly recommend checking it out.

Hope you get some good use out of these modules!

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/03/16/three-new-bing-maps-v7-modules.aspx

 

We’ve just rolled out some exciting new updates to www.bing.com/maps that make it easier for you to find information on the map, explore the layouts of over 850 venues, as well as get to where you’re going with public transit (or transport). Read on to learn more!

Pushpin and Popup refresh

The pushpin. It’s the most common element overlaid on a map. And today, it’s getting an update. In making these changes, to both the pushpin and corresponding popup, our goals were simple: enable you to find the information you want, more quickly and efficiently, while at the same time minimizing obstruction of the map. Let’s take a deeper look at some before and after examples.

 

The updated pushpins are designed to better overlay on top of our base map color scheme and make it easier to find results when you perform a search. Search related content appears in blue, while user-generated and saved content (such as “My places”) use an orange colored pin. The contrast changes are more pronounced on hover (and for business searches, the corresponding item in the left-hand panel is adjusted as well), and we’ve also added a new small popup to tell you the name or location or the pin you’re hovering over. Now it’s much easier to quickly scan a bunch of pins to see what they are. 

                            

When you click to select a pin, it actually shrinks so as to expose more of the map underneath, and unveil our streamlined popup. Here, we’ve made a number of changes to more compactly display the relevant business or location information and stand out against the backdrop. The most popular actions available for each item have been simplified and consistently placed at the bottom. For most users (except those in the UK), the interaction has changed from a hover-only model to a click-based model for showing the full popup contents. (For users in the UK, where you already had to click to see the popup, we’ve simply added the new smaller hover popup in addition to the layout and style changes.) Overall, these improvements allow you to keep a popup visible while panning/adjusting the map, and even hover over other pins to see what they correspond to, ultimately making it easier for you to find the place you want more efficiently.

One final change you may have noticed is that the pushpins and popups dynamically adjust based on the current map style in order to ensure the information does not get lost on the map.

Enhanced Transit Experience

Public transit (and UK transport) users will find a handful of subtle improvements to our directions experience that make it easier to get where you’re going, and make sure you’re on the right line to get there. We’ve changed the way we represent each transit line to better reflect the actual colors and signage used by the line, both for our US and UK markets. You’ll see this reflected both in the on-map waypoints as well as our enhanced directions list.

 

More sharing options

We’ve also extended our ability to send directions to your mobile phone (via SMS) to support transit directions. This functionality is accessible via the “Send: Mobile” link at the bottom of the directions panel. You’ll receive a link on your mobile phone which loads the directions on m.bing.com, and works for all devices which can access m.bing.com (unfortunately, Windows Phone does not currently support transit).

Drag to modify your route

Users can now easily modify their directions routes by clicking and dragging on start, end, or waypoints. You’ll see a helpful tooltip appear when you hover over an element that can be adjusted simply by dragging and dropping—and the route will be recalculated automatically!

Explore venues

Did you know Bing Maps now has over 850 venue maps of airports, malls, shopping districts, and more? Browsing through them is now easier than ever! Just click on the “explore venue maps” link on Bing Maps, or visit www.bing.com/maps/venues to get there directly, to browse a categorized listing of available venue maps. You can filter them by country, sort them by location (or alphabetically), and browse through them spatially on the map. If you want to have your venue be part of Bing Venue maps, please contact us for details.

We’re excited about this next step in the evolution of our visual design and believe it is a big step forward for simplifying user interaction with the map, and helping users find the information they want quickly and efficiently. We’ll be rolling out these changes to bring consistency across the broader Bing network over the next few weeks.

We hope you like what you see!

Dan Polivy 

Senior Program Manager, Bing Maps

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/03/14/a-new-look-for-pushpins-popups-and-transit.aspx

 

On Wednesday, February 29, our friends over in the Windows division proudly unveiled the Windows 8 Consumer Preview release to the world. Today, we are excited to announce a beta of the new Bing Maps SDK for Metro style apps, which provides a set of controls to help you integrate mapping into your Windows Metro style apps.

Building apps using JavaScript

If you’ve tried to use the Bing Maps AJAX v7 control in a Metro style app using JavaScript, you’ve likely encountered issues (due to sandboxing of the web context) that make it difficult to consume. With the new SDK, we’re now providing a JavaScript control specifically intended for use within your JavaScript apps. This new control is based on our AJAX v7 control, and thus shares a very similar API, but it’s also been enhanced to work within the local app context. For this beta release, you’ll find support for all of the same map types, pushpins, polylines/polygons, infoboxes, and tile layers as AJAX v7, plus the addition of the Venue Maps module. (Directions, traffic, overlays, and other modules are not yet available, but you can still render data provided by our REST APIs.) For more information on getting started, see Developing a Metro Style App using JavaScript.

Building apps using C#, C++, or Visual Basic

For those of you who prefer to code in C#, C++, or Visual Basic and build your UI in XAML, we’re excited to share the first beta release of our native map control as part of this SDK. This new control is written in C++, but is designed to be consumed by any native or managed Metro style app (written in C#, C++, or Visual Basic). One of the unique features of this control is its client vector rendering capability and full hardware acceleration—our ‘road’ map style (as of this beta release, for the US only) is rendered completely on the client, providing for smaller network data downloads and improved rendering performance compared to tile-based modes. In addition to road, this beta release also provides support for our Aerial and Bird’s eye imagery, as well as a traffic overlay. Because we’ve designed it for use with XAML, you can also overlay and position any custom XAML element over the map to enable all sorts of rich visualizations. You can learn more about development with this control at Bing Maps for Metro style apps (Beta).

Updated Licensing Terms

Along with the new controls, today we’re also announcing a new licensing model for the pre-release versions of Windows 8, providing you much more flexibility in developing and testing your Metro style apps on the Consumer Preview. The new Terms of Use for Pre-Release Windows 8 Metro style apps allows free and unlimited use of Bing Maps controls and APIs within your Metro style apps for the duration of the Windows 8 pre-release period. Additionally, you are encouraged to submit your apps to the Windows Store for others to use during the preview. In order to take advantage of this special license, you must use a “Metro style apps (BETA)” key, which is available from www.bingmapsportal.com. Please note: while use is free during the pre-release beta period, we are still finalizing terms for the commercial release of Windows 8 and will communicate more information when that is available.

Getting Started

To help you get started with this new SDK, we’re providing a handful of samples on the MSDN Code Gallery. The documentation is available online, and you can download the Bing Maps SDK for Metro style apps (Beta) from the Visual Studio Gallery, or directly from within the Extension Manager of Visual Studio 11. Of course, to get started developing on Windows 8 you should head over to the Windows 8 Dev Center.

As this is a beta release, you’re likely to hit issues, have feature requests, or want to provide general feedback—we want to hear it all! Please use the Bing Maps Forum on MSDN to let us know what’s working, what isn’t, and how we can improve your mapping development experience for Metro style apps.

Dan Polivy
Senior Program Manager, Bing Maps

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/03/06/announcing-bing-maps-for-metro-style-apps.aspx

Last year, we entered into a strategic partnership with Nokia which included plans to offer a unique and compelling mapping experience for our customers. Since then we’ve been working with Nokia and Windows Phone to deliver a unified map style based on one set of design principles with the goal of providing a more intuitive and pleasing online mapping experience. Our Bing Maps designers teamed closely with our partners at Nokia Maps and the Windows Phone team to unify our map elements, improve contrast and usability to ultimately create a more beautiful and functional map. Today we’re excited to share the new map design, available on desktop and mobile versions of Bing and Nokia maps. You can check out Nokia's announcement post here.

Let’s take a closer look at the updates.

Common color palette for road map style
We’ve updated our color palette to create a cleaner and consistent view of roads and landmarks resulting in a map that’s easier to interpret. For instance, the new road color is further clarified from rivers while not competing with traffic colors or overlaid information.

Celebrate Typography

We focused significantly on improving various typography components in order to provide further clarity on maps including font updates, improved readability and contextual labeling. Type size hierarchy further delineates classes of labels. The user watches city names consistently grow and become more transparent through the zoom levels. Small type is demystified from its surroundings with a technique that reduces clutter instead of adding glows or ever-present strokes. The right use of typography helps our customers consume mapping details more quickly.

Using Visual Hierarchy to create Focus and maintain context

At each level, there’s an appropriate amount of information conveyed to the user. Too little or too much information can lead to overload and thereby an unpleasant user experience. We’ve redesigned with this in mind, so a very different level of information is presented to you when you zoom compared to when you pan out. Go in for detail, pull back for context. We strive to keep the orientation and context of a user within the map surface persistent across various levels of zoom.

In addition to our map design updates, we’re also adding a significant amount of mapping coverage and data due to our partnership with Nokia and NavTeq. Each map data refresh from NavTeq brings with it many improvements, and each one also attempts to include as many new roads/subdivisions/ changes/etc. as possible.  This update is no exception and the changes are too vast to list but most notably, there are a few entire countries that really improved including Egypt, Israel, Malta, Philippines, Uruguay and Venezuela to name a few.

All in all, we believe that the new map styles available on Bing Maps (http://www.bing.com/maps) and Nokia Maps (http://maps.nokia.com) and on your mobile device are easy, satisfying, and truly a delight to use. We hope you enjoy the update.

The Bing Maps team,
Rom Impas, Donald Barnett, Duncan Lawler, Nikolai Faaland, David Buerer, Jason Willison

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/02/28/bing-maps-and-nokia-release-unified-map-design.aspx

As many developers using the Bing Maps Platform know, some Bing Maps API calls generate billable transactions while other Bing Maps API calls don’t. The Bing Maps Platform team has documented which Bing Maps API calls are billable vs. non-billable (and when) here. As a side note, understanding and accessing your Bing Maps usage reports was previously discussed in the Bing Maps blog post here. Please refer to that blog post for info on accessing and understanding your Bing Maps transaction and session usage.

An important thing to understand when it comes to what causes billable vs. non-billable transactions is whether the API call was done within a Bing Maps ‘session’. A session begins anytime the Bing Maps AJAX Control, Bing Maps Silverlight Control, Bing Maps WPF Control or Bing Maps Windows Phone Control is loaded. For example, if you were to first load any of these Map Controls, then subsequently call the Bing Maps REST Locations API (i.e. to geocode a location), that REST Locations API call would generate a non-billable transaction. This is because the REST Locations API call was done within the Map Control session.

This is fine if your application loads the Map Control prior to making additional Bing Maps API calls (i.e. a REST Locations API call). However, what if you first wanted to call the REST Locations API prior to loading the map? In such a scenario, the REST Locations API call would be deemed billable because it occurred before the Map Control was loaded (and thus before the session started). The sequence of events is obviously important here when it comes to what constitutes a billable transaction vs. non-billable transaction. This goes for several other Bing Maps API calls (i.e. Bing Maps REST Routes call, Bing Maps Spatial Data Service Query call, Bing Maps SOAP Service Search call, etc.).

With this in mind, and to ensure that the Bing Maps API call (i.e. REST Locations API call) is done within a map session, you need to be sure to load the Map Control prior to making the REST Locations API call. What if you don’t actually want to display the map until after the REST Locations API call response comes back? One trick you can use to accomplish this is to hide the map after the Map Control loads. Here is an example using the Bing Maps AJAX Control v7 and the Bing Maps REST Locations API:

function getMap() {

              map = new Microsoft.Maps.Map(document.getElementById('myMap'), { credentials: 'BingMapsKey' });

document.getElementById('myMap').style.display = 'none';

          }

...

function showMap()

{

  Microsoft.Maps.Events.removeHandler({handleId:viewChangedHandleId});

  document.getElementById('myMap').style.display = 'block';

}

 

You can then display the map immediately after the REST Locations API call response is completed.

The full code for this example is as follows:

 

</html>

 

This technique can be used for any of the Bing Maps API’s listed here that are considered non-billable if executed within a map session.

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/02/23/optimizing-bing-maps-platform-sessions-and-transactions-usage.aspx

The Bing Maps CRM system is scheduled for maintenance on February 10, 2012, beginning at 8pm PST.  The work is scheduled to be complete within 12 to 16 hours.  During this time the Developer Portal  (www.bingmapsportal.com) will be unavailable for tasks such as key creation, account management, reporting, and SDS via the Developer Portal. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/02/09/bing-maps-crm-system-scheduled-maintenance-on-february-10-starting-at-8pm-pst.aspx

Join Microsoft Global Security and IDV Solutions for an informative presentation and demonstration of Visual Command Center - innovative software that is helping federal agencies and the armed forces protect people, property, and assets.

The Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, SPAWAR, Army Corps of Engineers, and other agencies and commands are using Microsoft and IDV Solutions technology for a variety physical security and public safety missions such as:

• Incident Response
• Executive/Personnel Protection
• Asset Tracking
• Disaster Recovery
• Emergency Management
• Interagency Collaboration
• Border Protection

Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012 - 2:00 EST | Register Here

More About this Webcast

Security Experts from Microsoft Global Security

Security experts from Microsoft and IDV Solutions will be demonstrating how Microsoft Global Security empowers its security workers to respond quickly to incidents by consolidating security data in a solution built with IDV Solutions software. Microsoft Global Security is responsible for the safety and security of 700 offices and thousands of employees.

Visual Command Center

Visual Command Center helps agencies, public safety organizations, and others understand the threats that could impact people or assets by integrating real-time information from data feeds and multiple security systems within the context of location and time.

Visual Command Center works with existing security systems so that agencies and military commands can get the most out of current equipment and team. Feature rich, Visual Command Center gives security teams everything they need to visualize and interrogate the information that is most important to the team.

•  Rapid Floor Plan Integration
•  E-mail Alerts Based on Geography
•  Security Data Pack
•  Process Documentation Management
•  Spatial and Temporal Querying
•  Live Weather and Traffic Reports
•  Built-in, Ready-to-Use Web Feeds
•  Integrated, Mobile Access with Fetch!

Register here to attend today!

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Details: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/02/09/microsoft-and-idv-solutions-present-a-webcast-on-visualizing-physical-security-and-public-safety-with-visual-command-center.aspx