The Bing Maps Webcasts Now Open for Registration

The Bing Maps Platform from Microsoft enables organizations to easily and cost-effectively deliver geospatial content to the customers and businesses they serve. Not only does this optimize existing investments in GIS and imagery services, it allows organizations to save money using Bing Maps by making strong connections with customers and exposing relevant content easily on a map from Bing.

Register today to attend a webcast and learn more. Topics include:

 

What’s New in the Bing Maps Platform?  | February 16, 2012, 2pm Eastern time, 60-minutes

Attend this session for an overview of the latest capabilities in the Bing Maps Platform. You’ll learn the latest on the Bing Maps Imagery program, how to view the meta data and other features in the platform including the best portal to see the latest new imagery sets.

 

Using the BingMapsPortal.com and keys with Bing Maps Platform | March 15, 2012, 2pm Eastern time, 60-minutes

Attend this session and learn how to use the bingmapsportal.com, tips for using/hiding your Bing Maps key and other helpful development hints.

 

Bing Maps Spatial Data Services | April 19, 2012, 2pm Eastern time, 60-minutes

Attend this session and learn how to take advantage of the Bing Maps Spatial Data Services included with the Bing Maps Platform for data hosting and findnearby/bound box queries.

 

 

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Google Maps API v3: Business icons and styling

When visiting an unfamiliar city for the first time, I often pick up a tourist map when I check-in to the hotel. Tourist maps are distinctive because they apply equal emphasis to the landmarks of the city as they do to the street names and intersections. Landmarks can be extremely valuable for navigational purposes, and for this reason we add icons for prominent businesses and points of interest on Google Maps as you zoom in. These business icons can be clicked to view additional information about the business, such as the rating, address, and phone number.

At Google I/O this year we began integrating access to business information into the Maps API v3 with the launch of the places library, which adds Places Search and Autocomplete. As part of our ongoing effort to extend this integration, deliver a detailed and complete map, and offer a consistent user experience between Google Maps and the Maps API, we will shortly be adding these clickable business icons to the Maps API v3 as well.

If your application does not specify a specific version of the Maps API to load these icons will appear on the map by default from early next week, unless you are a Maps API Premier customer. The business icons will be classified with the poi.business Styled Maps feature type. If you would prefer that your Maps API application not include these icons, you can remove them ahead of next week’s release by setting visibility:off on the labels element of poi.business for your map. Maps API Premier customers who would like their maps to include these icons can enable them today by setting visibility:on.

You can preview these icons, and the InfoWindow that is shown when they are clicked, on the map below:

In order to allow you to control visibility of these icons, and other features, across all the default map types, you can also now specify styles for your map in MapOptions. This enables you to selectively restyle roads, labels, and other features on Hybrid and Terrain maps in addition to Road Maps. Note however that the base satellite imagery (for Satellite and Hybrid maps) and base relief imagery (for Terrain maps) cannot be restyled.

For more information on setting map styles across map types, please see our updated Map Styling documentation. The Styled Maps Wizard has also been updated to apply styles across all maptypes. As always, if you need assistance applying styles to your Maps, or have any other Maps API questions, we recommend you post your questions to the Maps API v3 Forum.

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Secrets and Surprises in Geo APIs Summer Learning Series

The second session of the Geo track at Google I/O was “Secrets of the Surprises of the Google Geo APIs.” Going into I/O we wanted to have a session that could serve as a foundation for later sessions and one where we can feature some of the latest launches leading up to Google I/O. We covered features of the Maps API v3, the Earth API, Fusion Tables, the Maps API Web Services and the Static Maps API in this one session.

What we hope that you take away from this talk is that there is more to the Maps API than just putting markers on a map – we’ve been actively adding many cool features that can really enhance your mapping application and create a better experience for your users.

Here’s a small subset of the features discussed in the talk:

  • With an ever-growing list of cities with 45° imagery available you’re now able to give your users a new perspective of what a place looks like.
    Don’t forget that there are several easy to enable layers available to quickly add content to your map.
  • Developers have frequently requested the ability for API applications users to drag direction routes around the map in a similar manner to Google Maps, so as you might have guessed, enabling draggable directions in the Maps API is now as simple as a one line code change.
  • A favorite feature of the Maps API is the ability to style the base Google map. With the power to change not only the features shown on the map but the color scheme of those features you have tremendous ability to theme your map to fit a look or brand or remove features that are relevant to your users.
  • Street View in the Maps API v3 is implemented entirely in HTML and Javascript so it’s usable on mobile devices with capable browsers without the use of a plugin. This also gives you the power to provide your own custom panoramic imagery and link it to our standard Street View imagery. Don’t let the experience end at the front door – take your users indoors!
  • We’ve added a Distance Matrix service that lets you quickly and easily get travel time and distance between many origins and destinations in one call.

    • In addition to providing driving, walking and bicycling directions the directions service will even optimize the route, determining the best order to visit several destinations.

We talked about a lot more – including AdSense integration, the Places API, useful open source libraries, Fusion Tables and historical imagery, trees and 3D buildings in the Earth API – check out the video or review the slides to learn more!

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The improved Google Docs for mobile

Google Docs is about collaboration, but as many of us know, others often rely on us even when we’re nowhere near a computer. That’s why we’re excited to bring the features you need to your tablet and mobile device’s browser. Today, we’ve updated the look of Google Docs for mobile browsers and added the ability to sort, narrow, and share multiple docs in your mobile docs list.

To get started, go to docs.google.com from your supported device’s browser. Press Sort to organize the list of docs visible in the mobile browser, or press Narrow by to specify the subset of docs you’d like to see.


To share from your mobile docs list, select one or more documents, press the Share button, and select Share, Get the link to share for public or unlisted docs, or Email as attachment. Sharing a doc in your mobile browser works the same way as it does on the desktop.


We’re committed to improving the experience of accessing your docs from your mobile device. We’d love to hear what you think is working and what isn’t in our support forums as well as in the comments of this post.

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