John L. Scott does it again. JLS has rolled out their “neighborhood wizard” to help users more precisely locate a home on their consumer web site. JLS was the first to roll out a residential real estate site that featured auto-refreshing, draggable maps. Now you can still have that same functionality, but specify a polygonal shape on the map and only results based on your selected ammenity types will appear on the map. Since I’m...
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Chapters Book Stores is leveraging Virtual Earth to help Harry Potter fans find their bookstores in order to get their hands on a copy of the final novel in the series. As a personal fan of both VE and HP, I’m excited for the final novel so any way to get it is a good one. You can check out the solution here: http://harrypotter.sympatico.msn.ca/StoreLocatorEvents/. CP
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In Australia the NineMSN team has just launched Goldrush – a big initiative to propel search usage.  You can access the game from www.ninemsn.com.au or go direct to www.goldrushgame.com.au The Goldrush game was developed to drive Live Search queries by engaging users in a fun interactive activity that rewarded interaction with big prizes.  There are 3,500 prizes up for grabs worth over $250 000!  Gamers answer...
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Thanks to everyone who attended my Virtual Earth / Live.com Search speaking session and visited me at the Live.com booth @ Tech Ed this year. During my discussion I had promised I would post my app code for converting SOAP XML to JavaScript, so you’ll find step-by-step instructions below. I had originally written this on the B2B blog and have since updated it for Version 5 of the API. Specifically, this application will show you how to use...
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The following imagery was added to Virtual Earth (and Live Search Maps) today. Can you say 11.5 terabytes of new imagery data? Hi-res Orthos (using the UltraCam camera) Canadian Areas…• Toronto US areas…• Savannah, GA• SaintPaul, MN• Queens, NY• Queens, NY• Tampa, FL• Yonkers...
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I’ll be doing a web cast covering the technicalities for Virtual Earth, Version 5. It’s a Level 200 course and should last about an hour with time at the end for Q&A. It’s on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 @ 10AM PDT. Here’s the description: Join this briefing to learn about the new features and functionality in latest release of the Virtual Earth Platform, v5, which was released in April. This briefing builds upon...
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I’ll be working the booth at the Maker Faire this weekend in San Mateo, CA. I’ll be showing some cool sites that are using VE, showing off some coding and highlighting our consumer site features. Stop by and chew the fat with me.
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I’ll be working the booth at Where 2.0 and running the “Going Deep with Virtual Earth” session of “Bird’s of a Feather.” You’ll want to get there early for Erik Jorgensen‘s session called, “Building out a 3D World.” Also, see Stephen Lawler talk in the interactive discussion, “3D Data: Platforms for Real World Virtual World Interaction.” We look forward to a great, interactive...
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Priceline.com just rolled out a new way to visualize locations on a map using Virtual Earth. Do a search for a hotel and under the “Area Map” tab you will see your results on a Virtual Earth map. The map includes a mini-map in the upper right hand corner for better context when zoomed close to street level. Priceline build a custom navigation and zoom bars and links to switch map style, reset the map or print the current map. The...
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RealEstatePlus.ca just launched their site using Virtual Earth. To try it out, enter postal code “M6S 4H7” in the search box. Hover over a listing on the map and select "View Demographics" in the pop-up. You get tons of demographic data about that neighborhood plus 8 layers of POI data. Notice how the neighborhood is now outlined with a green vector line. Drag the map and the adjacent neighborhoods get drawn on the map, the...
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