Reading Time: < 1 min As you’ve likely heard, Microsoft has unveiled it’s new Bing search engine. As part of that rebranding process, other Microsoft applications are getting renamed. Of particular interest to us are the new names for their mapping products. Live Search Maps will now be simply called “Bing Maps”, and the Virtual Earth platform will now be […]
Virtual Earth / Live Maps
Microsoft Integrates Photosynth into Virtual Earth
Reading Time: < 1 min This could be pretty cool. Microsoft’s remarkable Photosynth software now is playing nicely with Virtual Earth. From their press release: Photosynth software analyzes digital photographs and generates a 3-D model by “stitching” the photos together. These models, or “synths,” can now be viewed using Silverlight technology across multiple platforms. Virtual Earth brings together features, functionality […]
Virtual Earth 6.2 released, with stunning clouds
Reading Time: < 1 min Virtual Earth 6.2 has been released, with a whole host of new features. Among them: New imagery — “Richer bird’s eye” and new 3D imagery, but I can’t find a list of what’s been updated. Weather integration — Real-time clouds (see more below) Localized maps — English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. Near-matching — Helps […]
The energy costs of Hurricane Ike
Reading Time: < 1 min Brian Timoney has made some nice updates to GulfImpact.com ahead of Hurricane Ike. Not only does it give you the location and path of the storm, but it shows all of the affected oil wells in the Gulf, broken down by company. He uses Virtual Earth to power it. I’ve heard a lot of news […]
OS independent 3D map of Stockholm released
Reading Time: < 1 min Hitta.se, a Swedish search and mapping site, has just released a 3D map of Stockholm that works in virtually any browser in any operating system. The technology is powered in part by C3 Technologies, who explain their software as follows: The technology is based on high-resolution aerial photography with carefully calibrated cameras. For every picture, […]
WorldWide Telescope now available for download
Reading Time: < 1 min Two days ago we told you it’d be here this month, and it’s out already! As reported by Ogle Earth and the Virtual Earth Developer Blog, you can go download it right now. Some initial thoughts: It really is a stunning tool. It has SpaceNavigator support (sort of), but it tends to freak out as […]
Google Earth vs. Virtual Earth in Denver
Reading Time: 2 min Denver has emerged as one of the flagship cities for both Google Earth and Virtual Earth. Google Earth has built a ton of 3D models in the city, and Virtual Earth has already converted it to “version 2.0” with over 100,000 3D models (as well as 300,000 trees). Therefore, I thought it’d be a good […]
Google Earth 4.3 thoughts, screenshots and a video
Reading Time: 2 min Google Earth 4.3 is just starting to become available. You probably won’t find it through the normal pages yet, but the Google Earth Blog found a clever loophole to allow you to get it now — simply visit this page and you can grab it. My initial thoughts: StreetView is neat, but not very useful. […]
KML is now an international standard
Reading Time: < 1 min As reported by the Google LatLong Blog, KML has now officially become an OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standard. According to Google, there are tens of millions of KML documents available online, hosted on over 100,000 unique domain names. The number of files isn’t a huge surprise, but 100,000 unique domains seem like a ton! As […]
Trees and Highway Overpasses
Reading Time: 2 min I’ve long felt that two things would need to happen to get to the next level in 3D imagery — trees and highway overpasses. Since one of the neat features in Google Earth is the ability to fly a route, having proper overpasses would make things look much better. The latest version of Virtual Earth […]