I was just thinking about a couple things today while watching my laptop struggle to execute Kriging.
How cool would it be if someone took the Virtual Earth Shapefile Reader and mashed it up with the MSN Messenger Virtual Earth plugin? Then anyone could send a shapefile to anyone else via an instant message and have it already viewable inside a small browser window. Sounds cool to me. ESRI’s GeoChat seems to be similar to this, but I believe that one requires ArcGIS to work.
Link – VE MapControl Test
Via Virtual Earth has added a test page that shows methods on the MapControl and how to use them. I like the concept of this page and how easy it is to visualize how you want your code to work.
Link – Virtual Earth is one week old – What we’ve learned
We launched Virtual Earth Beta a week ago yesterday, and the response has been overwhelming to say the least. We’ve received a ton of feedback and suggestions from users via email, reviews, and blogs (Check out Jeremy Wright’s review, Austin Pauls’ comments, Search Engine Watch, or this fun thread at /. for a sampling) Work is well underway on the next release of Virtual Earth and your feedback is super important to insure it rocks. Here is a quick summary of the most asked about areas of this beta release:
An interesting look at what the Virtual Earth team has learned over the past week with the launch of MSN Virtual Earth.
Link – Getting Started with the Virtual Earth Map Control – via Via Virtual Earth
Eric shares a very bare-bones example of adding the Virtual Earth control to a web page leaving it to the reader who can hack away with Javascript and html to create a more fully-fledged implementation.
Frankly, MSN Virtual Earth doesn’t interest me too much but if you are interested in getting started this little guide might just help.
Is there a similar guide on ESRI’s site for Public AWS? I see the code samples, but how about the 10 second guide to getting a Public AWS map on your webpage?
Update – Ray Carnes correctly points out in my comments that there is a quick start guide for AWS. Someone should link that right from this page. Thanks for the pointer Ray!
Link – MSN Blogger Map
How long till we see something like this at ESRI? This is the kind of stuff ESRI should be playing around with. Little things that people can then download the code and create other mashups themselves. Sounds like a great ArcWeb demo for ArcWeb – Public Services.
I’m on MSN Instant Messenger so if you want to say hi, just add “cageyjames@hotmail.com” to your contact list.
Link – http://virtualearth.msn.com/
Just a quick note before I head out this morning for San Diego. MSN Virtual Earth is up and running. Looks like they are using the Terraserver images in the background and some more up to date aerials in the urban areas. That works much nicer than those low-res satellite images that Google has and you can zoom in much closer than Google Maps can. The transparency on the toolbar and search is nice as you can see the data layers underneath. I’m quite impressed with it and I think it looks much better than Google Maps to the eye. I might change my mind after using it, but I’ll try it more tonight.
Robert Scoble says that there will be an announcement Monday morning while we are listening to Jack Dangermond. Guess we’ll have to take advantage of the wireless network to find out what they say about MSN Virtual Earth.
[Update] – Check out this comparison between Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth.
Remember my post this morning when I said I liked the look of MSN Virtual Earth? Well I still do but unlike Google Maps it isn’t as easy to use. The more you try other solutions, the more respect one has for how well Google Maps works. Simplicity is key here and MSN Virtual Earth just can’t hold a candle to Google Maps. Four quick thoughts on MSN Virtual Earth before I head down to the beach…
It is a nice first start and some of the features won’t be available until Monday at the official launch. I just don’t see anything here to make me stop using Google Maps as my primary online mapping tool.