|
Steve Needs Help!
|
|
Steve Lombardi of the MapPoint ‘Where is Steve’ fame needs help, and in this case I don’t mean the ole ‘sure anybody who knows Steve, knows that’ kind of help. Unfortunately his ‘Where is Steve’ page no longer appears to be live, but he is still hard at work inside Microsoft making Virtual Earth a better product for all of us. He is one of the key players behind the Live Collections functionality of Virtual Earth (aka Maps.Live.Com), and as such has recently put out an appeal to the community in the Virtual Earth Blog to ask for help seeding the system with some test collections. You can help him by creating a collection or two and sending him the link as described in his blog post.
|
|
Exploring Something Massive in Vancouver
|
|
Vancouver BC is one of the technology epicenters of Canada that attracts hi-tech companies of all sizes and is a cauldron of innovation. Leonard Brody presented a thought provoking keynote at the opening of the Massive Technology Show followed by a day of presentations from Google, Yahoo and other companies who are helping shape the real world metaverse. Read on for a short report on the conference and the keynote.
|
|
Digging into WE-DIG
|
|
Have you attended a local user group meeting lately? Have you been planning to go to a meeting, but could never find the time to attend? Maybe you just have no idea as to what goes on at a user group meeting? Here is the inside scoop on what went on at a recent WE-DIG meeting in Redmond, Washington.
|
|
Virtual Earth is Virtually Live!
|
|
Microsoft's newest member of the MapPoint product family is now available for public viewing. Virtual Earth is a cool combination of
Satellite Imagery, Aerial Photography, Street data, Point Of Interest data and other MapPoint goodness, plus it is a developer play.
Checkout this new approach to MapPoint maps and be sure to check out the
community a blog links as well.
|
|
Job Listings Added to Mobidogs
|
|
We have been approached by companies asking if they could post job and contract opportunities on the Mobidogs site which our readers might be interested in, so we have added a new Job Ops link to our main page. If you are looking for opportunities in the mobile developer space or if you are looking for candidates to help in your mobile related development projects, you should check this new page out.
|
|
Do You Have a Shot at SumoBot at MEDC?
|
|
Do you know what a Sumobot is? If you plan on attending the big event of the year for Windows Mobile, CE and Windows Embedded developers, you have a chance to be the Sumobot Champ of MEDC. Based on last years competition there are things that you may want to put some thought into before arriving at the conference in Las Vegas this year.
|
|
MEDC Site Live
|
|
Have you registered to attend Microsoft's premier mobile and embedded developer event of the year? Now two shows in one, Microsoft has combined what were previously two separate, but somewhat related developer events, MDC and EDC, into a single grand event. It looks like this one event is going to cover everything to do with developing for mobile and embedded devices including topics like Speech.NET, MapPoint and includes a Bill G keynote.
|
|
Getting Real Time with Mike Hall
|
|
During a recent trip to the Redmond campus we met up with Mike Hall and had an hour long chat
about all kinds of things, including up coming developer events, as well as some of Mike's views on
a number of technology fronts and the opportunities they might imply for developers. If you are interested in
learning more about the mobile and embedded industry and the people that make it tick,
you will enjoy this glimpse into our afternoon with Mike.
|
|
US MapPoint Developer Events
|
|
An MSDN Event Series is slated to visit over 100 US cities during the months of October to December. This half day event has an hour long session dedicated to "Programming with MapPoint Web Services" as well as several sessions on programming with VB.NET and ASP.NET. Attendees will also receive a DVD full of tools including a copy of the MapPoint Developer Resource Kit and a 60 day MapPoint trial.
|
|
Wireless Innovation Contest
|
|
WINBC, a wireless association based in British Columbia has recently announced that they will be holding their second annual Wireless Innovation Contest (WIC 2005). With the goal to "drive the adoption of wireless technologies in North America" the contest is looking to award a number of "wireless success stories" with targeted exposure and mentoring. There are six categories: entertainment, public sector, community, enterprise, student, and a most promising category. Entrants in this last category will be competing for access to a state-of-the-art test facility and a number of other perks that are designed to fast-track the wining ideas to become market-ready in six months. The call for entries opens October 18, 2004.
|
|
Bell Wireless Internet Conference Report
|
|
Bell Mobility is currently Canada's largest mobile operator and they held
their 2004 Annual Wireless Internet Conference in Toronto on September
22nd. This was the 6th year that they have hosted the event and you can
read the impressions of one attendee in this short report.
|
|
New MapPoint Developer Center on MSDN
|
|
Microsoft has a new developer resource page on MSDN to help you locate all things MapPoint on the Microsoft site. It covers MapPoint, the MapPoint Web Service as well as MapPoint Location Server. This new doorway into the Microsoft site will be a great help to developers who are looking for MapPoint related materials.
|
|
Web Mapping Contest for GIS and Location solutions
|
|
Microsoft is participating as a sponsor in this years Web Mapping Contest
held by Directions Magazine. The contest is open to innovative websites
that make use of any of a wide variety of GIS and Location technologies
including technologies like MapPoint Location Server. If you have a cool
site that showcases MapPoint and/or MapPoint Location Server technologies that
will be ready to go by October 20, 2004 you may want to enter it into the
contest for a chance to win a Smarphone. The grand prize, an LCD flat
panel TV, gets awarded to a random person who voted on the submissions, so even
if you don't have an entry, it will be worth your while to check what others are
doing with these technologies and voting on your favourite.
|
|
Windows Marketplace
|
|
At this year`s World Wide Partner Conference held in Toronto, Canada, one of the most exciting topics Steve B. and the other top executives from Microsoft where talking about, was the upcoming Microsoft Marketplace. As a small ISV, I found this to be an idea with great potential to open up opportunities for companies of all sizes to reach more customers. The Internet holds great promise in simplifying distribution channels for those of us who would like to get products to market without the complication and expense of going through retail. This may be one more step towards seeing that promise fulfilled.
|
|
New Operators and Support for MLS
|
|
Two more mobile operators (O2 in UK and TeliaSonera in Sweden) and a European mobile LBS aggregator (Teydo) announce support for MLS.
|
|
Free MapPoint Web Service Developer account
|
|
Did you know that if you have an MSDN subscription you can apply for a free one-year MapPoint Web Service account that you can use to integrate, test and even deploy applications that make use of MapPoint WebServices?
|
|
New MapPoint Web Service Reseller Pricing
|
|
MapPoint Value-Added Resellers now have new pricing options available to them that make it easier to provide MapPoint Web Services to their clients as part of their application.
|