Bing Spatial Data Services – Next Gen Spatial Search Comes to the Bing API

In August of 2001, we released the MapPoint Web Service that introduced spatial search and data hosting capabilities for our users. Since then, large and small businesses, government agencies and non-profits have used the service to support geospatial functionality such as store locators, fleet tracking, and real estate applications for their customers.

Today, we launched Bing Spatial Data Services, adding next generation spatial search to the Bing API offering. This release offers the benefits of cloud hosting and distributed computing, allowing customers to upload their data to our servers and perform spatial queries under the umbrella of their existing Bing Maps License.

Here’s a little more detail about what the service does and how it works.

– Geocode Dataflow API (Batch Geocode):

  • Use it to batch geocode large sets of data (upload a process a then download)

– Data Source Management API (Load):

    • Use to load, manage (update, delete) data for long term hosting.
    • Data can be in a file or a Windows Azure™ Blob Service location.
    • Load is required before being able to query with Query API.

– Query API (Spatial Query):

    • Used to query hosted data; a query response can contain a maximum number of 250 results (the new Bing Maps AJAX v7 makes light work of displaying large numbers of points on a map)

By Area <aka FindNearby>:

· Either specify a center point (radius search) or bounding box to search for matching entities. Use built in filters to refine the response. Results are “as the crow flies”. Example:

How many matching entities fall within this specified area (circle or rectangle)?

By Property:

· Search a hosted data source for one or more entities by specifying property values. Example:

Return all entities (customers) with sales person John Smith.

By ID:

· Specify an entity ID and receive in response all related information for the given entity. Example for Contoso Corporation:

For entity of ID “Contoso Store 1200”, return all associated property information (store #, address, open times, WiFi, etc)

For entity of ID “Contoso’s Best Coffee Store 5”, return all associated property information (store #, address, open times, WiFi, etc)

For more details, you can check out our documentation, or sign up for our upcoming webcast on March 1st. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Max Artemov
Senior Program Manager
Bing Mobile

Android 2.3.3 Platform, New NFC Capabilities

Several weeks ago we released Android 2.3, which introduced several new forms of communication for developers and users. One of those, Near Field Communications (NFC), let developers get started creating a new class of contactless, proximity-based applications for users.

NFC is an emerging technology that promises exciting new ways to use mobile devices, including ticketing, advertising, ratings, and even data exchange with other devices. We know there’s a strong interest to include these capabilities into many applications, so we’re happy to announce an update to Android 2.3 that adds new NFC capabilities for developers. Some of the features include:

  • A comprehensive NFC reader/writer API that lets apps read and write to almost any standard NFC tag in use today.
  • Advanced Intent dispatching that gives apps more control over how/when they are launched when an NFC tag comes into range.
  • Some limited support for peer-to-peer connection with other NFC devices.

We hope you’ll find these new capabilities useful and we’re looking forward to seeing the innovative apps that you will create using them.

Android 2.3.3 is a small feature release that includes a new API level, 10.
Going forward, we expect most devices shipping with an Android 2.3 platform to run Android 2.3.3 (or later). For an overview of the API changes, see the Android 2.3.3 Version Notes. The Android 2.3.3 SDK platform for development and testing is available through the Android SDK Manager.

Google Places Tidbits

This in from frequent contributor Plamen. Google has shifted their current “Offers” down on the Places Page to the bottom of the Page. Plamen speculates its perhaps to make room for paid offers higher up the page. Google has in the past noted that they are continually testing page content and moving down and out those things that do not perform well:

Frequent commenter Earlpearl noticed this use of the 7-Pack to promote Hotpot. Clearly Google is using their many properties up to and including the main search engine results page to send users over to their new recommendation engine:

Related posts:

  1. Google Hotpot Recommendations Now Surfacing on Places Page and Maps
  2. Google Maps Tidbits
  3. Google Places Upgrade: Reviews with Sentiments & Hotel Booking Tool