The blog took a break for the holidays, but I (Alex Daley) am back and will be posting more regularly again.  While we were off, Chandu Thota‘s book, Programming MapPoint in .NET was published. It is a great book for programmer’s interested in doing location and mapping solutions and covers MapPoint, the MapPoint Web Service, and even has a chapter on the Virtual Earth Map Control. Programming MapPoint in .NET ...
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When we ask people what they think of our Instant Answers, a common response is “they are great, but I want MORE”.  We hear you and recently added about 1 million facts for your querying pleasure. Here are a few examples: Baseball stats Numerous statistics for historical baseball players and teams along with season data for current players. babe ruth home runs, babe ruth home runs allowed, ichiro suzuki hits 2003, Seattle...
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Our recent change of the consumer site to Windows Live Local broke some of the functionality of the Map Search Control, or Commercial Control.  Apparently when we updated the site’s URL the redirect to the new URL didn’t work for the proxy we wrote, an error that didn’t surface in our testing. So, your Commercial Control application probably needs updating.  The change is simple but necessary–you must manually...
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In v1 of the standard control, if you needed to get the bounding lat/long of the map you could do this: var y1 = map.GetLatitude(0);var x1 = map.GetLongitude(0);     var y2 = map.GetLatitude(map.height);var x2 = map.GetLongitude(map.width); There were two problems with this approach. For the South East corner it relies on map.width and height, which no longer exist in the v2 control (map width and height are...
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A few days ago, Mike Liebhold on Geowanking expressed concern over privacy of personal information in the context of the “Locate Me” feature in Windows Live Local. This has been discussed further on BoingBoing and O’Reilly’s Radar; so we thought of adding some clarity on what goes on behind the scenes in this application and with your information. When you visit the Windows Live Local and hit “Locate Me”...
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Just quick but important reminder note: Now that Windows Live Local has launched, if you are referencing the v1 of the standard control on the old URL: http://virtualearth.msn.com/js/MapControl.js You should update this to http://dev.virtualearth.net/standard/v1/MapControl.js This will keep your application working until you are able to transition to v2. See the original post for details. Alex DaleyTechnical Evangelist
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We will be posting a number of resources here and on MSDN to assist with migration ot the v2 Virtual Earth controls.   This post is the first of a number we have planned highlighting notable changes in the control and providing guidance on updating code.   One minor change to make note of when migrating to the v2 Standard Control is that the “onmouseclick” event is now the “onclick” event.  In...
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When we launched the initial beta of Virtual Earth in the summer, we talked about how we are set to create an immersive experience in local search and mapping. During the last couple of months, we got great deal of feedback from you suggesting new features and sending us bugs – so thank you for your support! Now, we are back with new and exciting features (and don’t just take our word for it, both Michael Arrington and Charlene Li have...
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Update 1:  The Virtual Earth Standard Control SDK is avilable on MSDN: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=4304174 The news is out: the MSN Virtual Earth site is now called Windows Live Local.  Check it out: http://local.live.com The reviews so far have been great, and it is excellent to see such a positive response from our customers.  It was from all of your excellent feedback from the first beta that we were able to build...
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Danny is holding the last Search Engine Strategies conference of the year in Chicago this week. We’ll be there to answer questions and discuss our products. You can see some of my teammates at the following talks: Tuesday, December 6th (today!)4:30 PM: the Search Ad Vendors – Doug Stotland, Group Product Manager Wednesday, December 7th2:00pm – 3:30pm: Search Engine Q&A on Links – Ramez Naam, Group Program Manager,...
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