webDotWiz Online has a Space: Virtual Earth

Show me the way to Amarillo

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:07:40 GMT

Remember the days when an atlas was compulsory on the school book list? Then we had homework that consisted mainly finding capital cities, rivers and mountains. We traced maps out of our atlas and coloured them in (tracing paper was another tool we required in those times).

Now that we have web resources such as Live Maps (Live Search Maps to give it its full name – you’ll see why in a minute) we can locate a city and, in a whiz, have a list of restaurants, plumbers, hotels and theatres all located on the map we’re viewing.

We can search for towns, cities, regions and landmarks – and plumbers, electricians or takeaways (that’s where the Search in Live Search Maps comes into the picture).

The businesses or locations we search for will be clearly displayed on our Live Map and as we pan the map, new items will be displayed from our search query. For example, try searching for hotels around your local town and then pan the map to another nearby town or city. By the way, the way this works is that Live Maps shows those businesses who have registered with Yellowpages.

Our school atlas couldn’t give us directions from, say, our home to our relatives in our capital city. So obtaining driving directions is another feature of the web’s online maps. You can try obtaining directions from your home to the MCG when your team reaches the Grand Final.

On Live Maps, a click on the Collections button opens up more possibilities. Leaving aside the ability to add various locations to your own list which you can save and thus come back to at a later time, there is a set of drawing tools.

These tools enable you to carry out tasks such as finding the straight line distance between two places or the area of selected region of the map. For example, you could obtain the length of the street you live in or the area of your house block.

Perhaps you’re looking at buying some real estate and want to do some checking for yourself – put Live Maps to work to obtain the information you need. In fact you’ll find that more real estate agents are using Live Maps to show off the properties they have for sale or rent.

Naturally big events have their place in the world of maps. So, for example, the BBC have an interactive map of all the locations where the various sports will be held in Beijing and you can spend some time familiarising yourself with the city. If sport is not your thing, in Live Maps go to the Collections button and choose Explore collections to plan your next overseas trip.

Homework: how many banks are available in the Amarillo area?

Here are some sites you should browse to see more about what webDotWiz has mentioned above:

Ask.com Maps and Directions: maps.ask.com/maps
BBC Sport's Beijing Olympic Interactive Map: news.bbc.co.uk
Harley-Davidson Great Roads Explorer: www.harley-davidson.com
Indianapolis Motor Speedway Virtual Seating Map on Live Maps: www.virtualbirdseye.com
London Executive Property Map on Live Maps: www.london-executive.com/propertybird/
Mapping Balloon Travel Patterns on Live Maps: blogs.msdn.com/virtualearth/
Measuring distance and area in Live Maps: virtualearth.spaces.live.com/Blog/
OpenStreetMap: en.wikipedia.org
OpenStreetMap - London: www.openstreetmap.org
PlanetEye Maps: www.planeteye.com/Map.aspx
Spyk Property Search (Australia): www.spyk.com
UltraCamX Digital Aerial Camera: www.vexcel.com/products/photogram/ultracamx/
Virtual Bird's Eye: www.virtualbirdseye.com
Virtual Globetrotting: www.virtualglobetrotting.com
Windows Live Maps Sightings (Bird's Eye): virtualglobetrotting.com

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Posted using the Tech Preview of Windows Live Writer.

Technorati Tags: Live Maps,Live Search Maps,Maps,Searching

See the world on Live Maps

Thu, 15 May 2008 09:42:49 GMT

Over a cuppa the other day the webDotWizards at Rushworth Community House were running through all the computer jobs that were pending:

backing up more photos onto Windows Live Skydrive (to make use of the free 5000 megabytes of online storage)
taking some more shots to create panoramic photos in Live Photo Gallery and upload to an abum on Live Spaces
organising photos with tags using Live Photo Gallery
creating some movies with Photo Story for Windows and uploading them online to Soapbox for others to view
begin geotagging photos using the just-released Microsoft Pro Photo Tool.

And so the list grew.

In the end some of us called up Office Live Workspace, created a to-do task list and began filling in what we've got to catch up on. Then somebody mentioned that there had been an update to the imagery on Live Maps with bird's eye views of Hobart, Sydney, Gold Coast and Wollongong. So it was off to explore.

Go to http://maps.live.com in your browser, enter sydney, click Locations then the Search Maps button.

We'll return to the Explore collections link later (if time and space allow) but clicking will give you lists of places that other people around the world have contributed. They're all related to Sydney because that's where our focus is at the moment. If you were to re-locate the map to another city or region, the list of highlights would adjust.

The interesting feature we notice for Sydney is that the Bird's eye link is bolded so that means we can use this view. Let's click it and see what we get.

The road-view small map at the top right can be used to pan around the bird's eye view. Note the trapezium shape blue highlighted area which designates the current view (the trapezium shape comes about because the plane cameras are aimed obliquely to capture the edges of buildings and terrain). You can pan the map using this thumbnail image or pan the large view. Remember that the scrollwheel zooms in and out. To get a better view, let's remove the left-hand pane - you can either click the X or drag the divider to the left. Now we've got a larger map area to explore.

On the left of the navigation menu you'll see we're facing north and below there's a + button so we can zoom in. Because we're in bird's eye view, we can rotate our view using the two curly arrows at the bottom of the navigation pane.

Let's rotate the camera clockwise to change our view.

Now the compass is pointing eastwards to the top of the screen, north is to the left - check the way George St is running, for example. So in this shot, Circular Quay and the Opera House is to the left and that's the direction we'd have to pan to view these Sydney highlights. Let's rotate our view back so north is at the top of the screen and head down to Circular Quay.

After going up George St (panning north) and taking a look at some of the commercial buildings along the way (particularly those at the top of George St), we pan a little eastwards and come to Circular Quay.

Panning further eastwards and a little northwards, we arrive at this landmark.

Here's the view looking south (a couple of clicks on the rotate arrow) and zooming in for more detail (click the + button until it greys out).

Now you should be ready to travel the world. Before you go, though, go westwards to view another famous structure. You might like to pan around a little and explore The Rocks.

Then you can head off to the Gold Coast, Wollongong and Hobart for more bird's eye viewing. It won't be too long before other Australian cities have the bird's eye feature (imagery is usually updated each month for cities and regions on a world-wide basis).

One more thing before heading overseas, spend some time exploring Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong which only have the normal oblique imagery at the moment but there's plenty to see. For example in Bendigo, find the historic sandstone police barracks building.

If buildings aren't your interest, there are planes to be observed (e.g., O'Hare airport in Chicago or Heathrow near London), trains to be spotted at Waterloo Station, London, and Marseille, France, shipping containers by the tens of thousands at the Port of Los Angeles, world famous gold courses, or you might prefer a sight-seeing tour of Venice or Rome.

Posted with the help of Windows Live Writer, Microsoft OneNote, Paint.NET and Live Search Maps.

Technorati Tags: webDotWiz column,Live Maps,Sydney,Opera House

Live Maps update

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:52:26 GMT

Courtesy of LiveSide:

Just checked on maps.live.com and noticed a bunch of new features, and checked with the Virtual Earth / Live Maps blog and sure enough the new release is now live.

Denver in 3D (you really have to try it out, much improved!)
Man there's a lot of stuff here. Just taking the high points from Steve Lombardi's blog post:

Lots of back end improvements (seems much snappier, right off the bat)
Safari and IE8 compatibility
Map Control update to version 6.1 (for developers
Export your Collection to your Nav/GPS device (nice!)
Improved "version 2" cities (Las Vegas, Dallas, Denver, Phoenix to start, lots more to come)
3D modeling with 3DVIA (much improved)
Labels for Bird's Eye imagery
1-Click Directions improvments
MapCruncher integration (this is very cool, add layers of information from within Live Maps)
"GeoWeb" tagging and collections enhancements
Neighborhood Subscribe via GeoRSS
Tour Enhancements including Hi-Def Movies
Directions and Traffic Enhancements
Improved KML display including Google MyMaps links

So much stuff it's going to take a lot more than one post to tell you about. Check out Live Maps, and the Virtual Earth / Live Maps blog and let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted using Windows Live Writer.

Technorati Tags: Live Maps,Live Search Maps,Virtual Earth,update

Talking about New Birds Eye and 3D cities in Virtual Earth. Portugal, Italy, and Austria get big updates.

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:48:17 GMT

There's a big list of updated cities that have new imagery (see below) so this is the easiest way to pass on the latest Live Maps/Virtual Earth news .

Quote

New Birds Eye and 3D cities in Virtual Earth. Portugal, Italy, and Austria get big updates.

The latest monthly update of maps is complete. Highlights include all maps for North America republished with the latest NavteQ street data, new JD Barnes aerial imagery in Canada, and lots of new aerial imagery in India and China. Below is a list of new and expanded Birds Eye and 3D cities as well.
I'm glad to see the Birds eye in Portugal getting a big lift.

New/Updated Birds Eye Cities in the US

Etowah Co, AL
Mobile Co, AL
Monterey Co, CA
Boulder Co
Broomfield Co
WashingtonDC.
Cobb Co, GA
De Kalb Co, GA
Muscogee Co, GA
Macon Co, IL
Will Co, IL
Rowan Co, KY
Fayette Co, KY
Anne Arundel Co, MD
Grand Rapids Metro, MI
Detroit Metro North, MI
Cottonwood Co, MN

Buncombe Co, NC
Greenville Metro, NC
Wilson Co, NC
Lancaster Co, NE
Strafford Co, NH
San Juan Co, NM
Binghamton Metro, NY
Butler Co, PA
Westmoreland Co, PA
Greenwood Co, SC
Williamson Co, TX
Fisher Co, TX
Salt Lake City Metro, UT
Hampton Metro, VA
Alexandria, VA
Arlington Co, VA
Spokane, WA

New/Updated Birds Eye Cities in Europe

London, UK
Medway Towns Urban Area, UK
Islwyn, UK
Leighton-Buzzard, UK
Londonderry, UK
Galway, Ireland
Reims, France
Besancon, France
Chalon, France
Strasbourg, France
Belfort, France
Colmar, France
Metz, France
Mulhouse, France
Nancy, France
Troyes, France
Parma (integration), France
BustArsizio/Legnano, Italy
Alghero, Italy
Como, Italy
Empoli, Italy
Enna, Italy
Frosinone, Italy
Gorizia, Italy
Isernia, Italy
Mantova (integration), Italy
Nuoro, Italy
Oristano, Italy
Foligno, Italy
Marsala, Italy
Modica, Italy
Siracusa, Italy
Varese, Italy
Vittoria, Italy
Rieti, Italy
San Marino, Italy
Urbino, Italy
Verbania, Italy
VibValentia, Italy

Lisbon, Portugal
Faro, Portugal
Aveiro, Portugal
Braga, Portugal
Coimbra, Portugal
Guimaraes, Portugal
Leiria, Portugal
Porto, Portugal
Setubal, Portugal
Austria
Innsbruck, Austria
Klagenfurt, Austria
Linz, Austria
Salzburg, Austria
St. Polten (Sankt Pelten), Austria
Villach, Austria
Wels, Austria
Germany
Lüdenschied, Germany
Norway
Bergen, Norway
Stavanger, Norway
Denmark
Herning, Denmark
Horsens, Denmark
Silkeborg, Denmark
Vejle, Denmark
Spain
Arrecife, Spain
Santa Lucia de Tiranjana, Spain
Finland
Hamnlinna, Finland
Belgium
Mouscron (Mouskroen), Belgium

New/Enhanced 3D cities

France

Vannes

Great Britain

Southampton

Colorado

Pueblo

Connecticut

Bridgeport
Stamford

Maine

Portland

Michigan

Battle Creek
Grand Rapids
Warren

Missouri

Springfield

Montana

Billings

New Jersey

Trenton

Nevada

Henderson
Sunrise Manor

New York

Rochester
Syracuse

Pennsylvania

Allentown

Washington

Olympia
Yakima

Wisconsin

La Crosse
Madison

Searching the GeoWeb - exploring collections in Live Maps

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:50:59 GMT

One of the new features in the latest update to Live Maps is being able to locate items of interest (e.g., landmarks, buildings, famous sights) by exploring Live Map collections and other collections on the 'Net (e.g., KML collections).

All these collections - contributed by you and me - make up the GeoWeb and Live Search is currently trawling (the tech term is crawling but trawling brings a more relevant image to mind for webDotWiz) the 'Net to index all such geo data for us to use when we want to find an item in Live Maps.

In a write-up titled GeoWeb Exploration - Mining Information from Collections and KML the Virtual Earth/Live Maps team gives an example of finding what the area around the Trevi Fountain (featured in Fellini's film La Dolce Vita) might look like. This post adds a few more steps and screenshots to what the Virtual Earth/Live Maps team did. As well a couple of local examples will be left for you explore.

Assuming you've read the above article to get an idea of where to start our search, we firstly enter our search query dolce vita in rome italy. Note Live Maps now has only one search box - whoopee (and Dare is now very happy, too):

and before clicking the Search button, we choose Collections:

After a click on the Search button, the left-hand side of the screen lists locations from various collections:

and on the map to the right we immediately get pushpins related to each item in the list above:

Either from reading the description of locations in the list or hovering your mouse over each pushpin, you'll find that pushpin no. 7 is probably the best bet to give us the location of the Trevi Fountain and what its surroundings are.

Another way to go about our search is to enter Trevi Fountain in the search box, leave Collections turned on and click the Search button:

We've now got a different list of locations and the map shows them (we've zoomed in and turned on Bird's Eye view):

Another way of getting better information about what buildings are around the Trevi Fountain location is to use the Explore collections feature. You get to that by going to Collections over at the top right:

Click and choose Explore collections:

Live Maps now mines data from public Live Map collections from users such as you and I (you'll see a good example at the end of this post and we get lots more relevant info:

...as indicated by the increase in the number of pushpins on our map:

Now let's look at an example closer to home. We'll do a search to locate Rushworth and try a simpler way to Explore collections to see what we get (hint: webDotWiz knows we should be able to come up with at least one collection because he submitted it some time ago when the Live Maps/Virtual Earth team were asking for collections; webDotWiz didn't know, however, what the team were planning):

You only need to enter Rushworth in the search box. Note we've chosen Locations so we get a map and the Explore collections link:

So what do we get when we click on Explore collections?

(webDotWiz must speak to himself when he's next at the Rushworth Community House and fix that missing photo).

You'll see that Live Maps has found entries from a Live Maps collection called Rushworth and district services.

If you try this search for Rushworth yourself using Explore collections, you'll also get to entries from the The Early Families of Whroo collection.

In both cases, these examples not only locate Rushworth and Whroo on a map, but you get lots more information about what services are available in Rushworth and a history of where the early families of Whroo lived in the 1850's. Here's what you see on the Rushworth map:

The Explore collections is one of several new features as of the result of updates of October 16 2007 but it's a fun way to get more information about a place you're looking at on a map from data put together by... us! So, explore and have fun .

Posted using Windows Live Writer.

Technorati tags: Live Maps, explore collections, Live Map collections, GeoWeb, geo data

Talking about You want MORE, BETTER, NEWER imagery?

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 10:47:08 GMT

A long list of locations which have improved imagery (follow the link below to the original post on the Virtual Earth developer blog).

webDotWiz hasn't had time to investigate as yet and will post some screenshots of what he finds when there's more time.

Quote

Virtual Earth, a developer blog : You want MORE, BETTER, NEWER imagery?

More new imagery on Live Maps/Virtual Earth

Thu, 24 May 2007 09:51:58 GMT

Another 11 terabytes of new imagery iss being added to Live Maps, as of May 23.

You can browse through the complete list of countries and cities on the Virtual Earth Developer Blog but here is a selection:

Hi-res: Toronto Canada, Queens NY, Saint Paul/Minneapolis MN, Cardiff, Briston, Swindon

Hi-res ortho of a number of U.S. cities, including Kansas City MO, Chicago IL, Pittsburg PA

Bird's eye: some regions in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Finland, Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark and Belgium

Higher-res satellite of many areas, including Canberra AU.

Technorati tags: Live Maps imagery, Virtual Earth imagery

Virtual Earth for developers

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:45:16 GMT

Well, actually don't dismiss this post if you're not a professional programmer and web developer because there are a number of ways you can easily get into seeing how the Virtual Earth mapping system works with a little bit of Javascript code and use it on your own web site.

For example, it didn't take George long to put up a map on his Bills Horse Troughs site; there's also one at the Rushworth Community House site. All it took was a copy and paste and a change to a string of characters.

So a read of the Virtual Earth/Live Maps team's Virtual Earth API V5 post of April 27 is worthwhile.

If you want to see the API in action, have a look at Keith Kinnan's blog, e.g. this one, Importing Virtual Earth Collections into VEShapeLayers. One of Keith's demos is here which uses a Live Maps collection.

Technorati tags: Virtual Earth API, Live maps collections, developers

More new imagery on Live Maps

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:30:35 GMT

Live Maps (maps.live.com) was updated the other day with more new imagery.

From the Live Maps/Virtual Earth team space:

New 3D:

Canada: Calgary.
U.S.A.: Redmond, Buffalo, Beaverton, Portland.
UK: Swindon and Brighton.

Aerial and bird's eye coverage:

Italy, 73 new cities
France: Bordeaux, Montpellier, Toulouse, Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo
Canada: Toronto, Quebec City
Mexico: Puerto Vallarta
U.S.: a number of counties now have bird's eye view and the following has new or enhanced aerial view: States of Indiana and Hawaii, Malibu, Joiliet, Miramar, San Francisco, Aurora, La Jolla, Naperville, Niagara Falls, Beaverton, La Mesa, Brooklyn, Portland, Indianapolis, Newark, Roseville, Columbus, Dallas Ft. Worth, Imperial, Juneau, Fairbanks.

Here's a screenshot of Brighton Pier (U.K.) in 3D:

Technorati tags: Live Maps, imagery, 3D map viewing

Best of U.S. Railways Part IV Live Maps collection

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:33:51 GMT

Here's Part IV - the collection begins in North California, visits Donner Pass and Mt. Shasta on the way to the container port at Oakland then down to the container terminals at Long Beach, Los Angeles. To finish, thus far, it's a visit to Cajon Pass and the Tehachapi Pass.

Quote

My Live Search Maps collection

Truckee, California
One end of UP's Donner Pass line.

Donner Pass Rd.
Southern Pacific constructed their route over Donner Pass whereas Southern Pacific followed the Feather River. WP on the Feather River route had grades half those of SP but had an extra 60 miles or so of track to cross the Sierra Nevadas. See Trains, Jan 2007, p. 76.

Norden, California
Western end of UP's Donner Pass.

Train on Donner Pass

Summit Tunnel (west portal)

Summit Tunnel (east portal)
On UP trackage at Donner Pass. Keep following the track "eastwards". There's another tunnel and some snowsheds. Eventually you'll get to the "big loop" (so named by yours truly). This UP trackage is heading for Reno and Reno Junction.

Big loop east of Summit Tunnel
Keep following the track to the east of Summit Tunnel. You'll see some snow sheds and more tunnels.

Truckee on I-80
In case you can't see it but Truckee is just north of here.

Truckee Amtrak Station
Amtrak's California Zephyr, Chicago to San Francisco, travels through here. UP's trackage to Reno follows the Truckee"

Your scratch pad has been truncated.

Best of U.S. Railways Part III Live Maps collection

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 07:24:19 GMT

This is the start to Part III of Best of U.S. Railways collection on Live Maps - click the link below to start viewing the locations that have been marked.

This collection begins at Omaha/Council Bluffs. The Union Pacific Yard at Council Bluffs is where UP marks their zero milepost.

The locations marked at Omaha/Council Bluffs are from the Trains magazine (www.trainsmag.com) Trackside Guide #4 in the Sep 2003 issue.

As well, it's planned to show some locations in California (e.g., Donner Pass) and others from the Jan 2007 issue of Trains (a special issue devoted to the best of all the U.S. states).

Quote

My Live Search Maps collection

Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.A.

Council Bluffs, Iowa, U.S.A.

Union Pacific Council Bluffs Yard
From Trains magazine, Sep 2003, in its Trackside Guide #4: "The mind boggles at the smoky confusion that must have been Council Bluffs in the 1940s... Today Council Bluffs is a fascinating exercise in railroad archaeology... Regardless of mergers, there's still enough train traffic in Council Bluffs to frustrate local drivers" Where this yard is placed in the city can only make the mind boggle!

Milepost 0.0
Approximate location of Union Pacific milepost zero.

UP Council Bluffs West Yard

UP Council Bluffs East Yard

UP Council Bluffs Pool Yard

Union Pacific trackage to North Yard

Daimler Chrysler
According to Trains, Sep 2003, Trackside Guide, p. 7.

IAIS Bluffs Yard
Formerly Rock Island.

Council Bluffs Railway Yard
Formerly MILW yard (Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific).

IAIS trackage to Des Moines, Iowa
Crosses BNSF trackage (out of Council Bluffs Railway yard).

BNSF trackage to Bay"

Your scratch pad has been truncated.

Low-flying plane spotted over St. Paul, Minnesota

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:35:17 GMT

The planes doing the photography for Live Maps have often caught lower-flying aircraft in their lenses.

There's a great selection of planes at Birds Eye Tourist that people have found while browsing different areas in Live Maps - see Aircraft In Flight on Live Maps.

While webDotWiz was following some rail trackage in St. Paul, he found this one:

Here's the link so you can see it for yourself. Pan north and you'll come across BNSF's St. Paul Subdivision trackage, pan southwards and you'll see BNSF's Midway Subdivison line.

Technorati tags: Live Maps, bird's eye tourist

Make your own Live Maps collection

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 02:08:46 GMT

webDotWiz has been creating a couple of Live Map collections of his own lately and has learnt a few tricks along the way.

More specifically, webDotWiz has some railway magazines with very comprehensive maps of various U.S. rail company trackage and freight yards. Curiousity led to wanting to view these freight yards on Live Maps to see if they were as large as the magazine articles described them.

Now you don't have to create your own Live Map of train freight yards but you may want to locate famous landmarks around the world, famous bridges, skyscrapers, famous museums, mountains, planes that were under the mapping photography plane, ships, and more. Or you may simply want to plot some trips you've taken because at various places you took lots of photos. It's this latter option that can be quite exciting because you can accomplish two tasks at once: show family and friends where you've travelled and let them see the sites you photographed along the way.

Belive it or not, even though you're using a map on your computer screen, you'll find it easier to locate places if you have a map on paper alongside you. That's because when you zoom in on your map on the screen in Live Maps you lose the big picture even though you're seeing much more detail. It's all too easy to get lost, so to speak. As well, you get distracted and find lots of other interesting sights, especially if you're viewing the Live Map in aerial or hybrid view.

Some form of paper map or schematic is quite essential if you're viewing locations around the world which you've never visited. It helps you get perspective by finding cities, for example, whose location you know and can use as a reference point. Make sure you put in a pushpin so if you get lost, you can return to this city or town later on.

There are three ways to view a map on Live Maps: road, aerial and hybrid, the latter being a combination of road and aerial to display street and road names and important public places. Road view is similar to a street directory and shows plenty of detail. As well the road map view is available world-wide whereas the aerial and hybrid views may be limited. For example, Australia's capital cities can be zoomed in to a high level of detail in aerial view but once you're out in the rural areas, the same level of detail doesn't apply.

So to make life a little simpler, locate a place in road view then switch to aerial or hybrid view. You'll then find, depending on where you are, that the town or city has a higher level of detail via bird's eye view (a popup will inform you). Sometimes you'll be expecting a location to show in road view but it's not there - that's when you zoom in a bit closer. webDotWiz came across this when trying to find railway lines when creating his Best of U.S. Railways collections.

Finally, if you have your own web site, you'll be able to store and refer to your photos online. Otherwise you'll need to upload your photos you're going to use in your collection onto one of the free online photo storage sites such as BubbleShare, Flickr or Photobucket.

Links to some collections:

Rushworth and local services
Memories of Wellingborugh
Best of US Railways Part I (mainly Pennsylvania and Chicago)
Best of US Railways Part II (Detroit and Minneapolis/St Paul)

Technorati tags: Live Maps, Live Maps collections, hints, tutorial

U.S. Railways highlights Part II Live Maps collection - finished

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:02:06 GMT

There are now 114 points of interest in this collection. Lines are covered in Detroit, Michigan, and in St. Paul / Minneapolis.

For reference purposes, the maps in the Trackside Guides in Trains (www.trainsmag.com) magazines of December 2003 (St Paul-Minneapolis) and June 2003 (Detroit) were used.

Now for Part III - Omaha-Council Bluffs, plus other locations.

Quote

My Live Search Maps collection

Detroit City Airport

GM Technical Centre
I presume they do lots of design work here - may find out if can.

Packard Avenue
Haven't heard of the Packard car... come on...

Detroit Arsenal

Daimler-Chrysler Centre Line

Driving around in circles...
Fancy coming up to this for the first time in your car...

GM Powertrain Plan

Daimler Chrysler Warren Truck Plant

Conrail Mound Road Yard
Alongside the Daimler Chrysler Warren Truck plant. Mound Road is on the western side of the plant (if you can't see it - pan to the left if you want to check).

Daimler Chrysler Engine Plant
Some of these buildings along here should be the ones.

North end of Conrail's North Yard

Line north to Daimler Chrysler plants
D-M Warren truck plant and GM design and power transmission plants.

Branch to Lear Corp
And then on to Terminal West Industrial Track to Highland Park.

Lear Corp ?

Canadian National line to Port Huron

South end of Conrail's North"

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Railway highlights in the U.S. Part II - Live Search collection

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:41:46 GMT

Part II of webDotWiz's selected railway locations (freight yards, stations, trackage) and some miscellaneous sites found along the way.

To know where to look, webDotWiz is using Trains magazine's Trackside Guides that were published in several monthly issues of the magazine in 2003.

Trackside guide for Detroit, for example, featured in the June 2003 issue.

Quote

My Live Search Maps collection

Detroit City Airport

GM Technical Centre
I presume they do lots of design work here - may find out if can.

Packard Avenue
Haven't heard of the Packard car... come on...

Detroit Arsenal

Daimler-Chrysler Centre Line

Driving around in circles...
Fancy coming up to this for the first time in your car...

GM Powertrain Plan

Daimler Chrysler Warren Truck Plant

Conrail Mound Road Yard
Alongside the Daimler Chrysler Warren Truck plant. Mound Road is on the western side of the plant (if you can't see it - pan to the left if you want to check).

Daimler Chrysler Engine Plant
Some of these buildings along here should be the ones.

North end of Conrail's North Yard

Line north to Daimler Chrysler plants
D-M Warren truck plant and GM design and power transmission plants.

Branch to Lear Corp
And then on to Terminal West Industrial Track to Highland Park.

Lear Corp ?

Canadian National line to Port Huron

South end of Conrail's North"

Your scratch pad has been truncated.

Live Search collection of U.S. railway locations part I

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 11:42:34 GMT

Spurred on by the Trains magazine issue of January, 2007, webDotWiz has been finding various locations mentioned.

He's been distracted somewhat by spending a lot of time finding various rail and train locations in Chicago, using Trains issue of July 2003. Chicago has a huge number of freight rail yards, many of which are close to the CBD. As well, there's an extensive commuter system, as well as the "L" suburban system (some of which runs on elevated trackage in the CBD).

To keep up to date, a new feature of Live Maps is being able to subscribe to the RSS feed for this collection, so do that when you open the Live Maps page for this collection by clicking the link on the line below Quote.

Quote

My Live Search Maps collection

Mackinaw City, Cheboygan, Michigan, United States

Altoona, Pennsylvania, United States

Horseshoe Curve
Well-known location up from Altoona. Celebrated 150 years in 2004.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States

Enola Yard, Harrisburg, PA
Norfolk Southern owns this yard. Plenty of freight waiting for classification and a train to take it to its final destination.

Three Mile Island

Tunkhannock
The concrete arch 2,375 feet long Tunkhannock Bridge is somewhere around here. I'll get the exact location another day (I have it in another collection).

Sand Patch, Somerset, Pennsylvania, United States
Probably the correct location. The grade on the former Baltimore and Ohio was so named for the run between Pittsburg, PA, and Cumberland, MD. Now sees about 40 CSX trains per day.

Amblersburg, Preston, West Virginia, United States
Most severe grade on CSX's Cranberry Grade, which begins at Rowlesburg (1,402 feet elevation). Amblersburg is on a 1,600 foot curve with gradient of 1.75%25, increasing to 2.2%25 at the end of the curve.Then all the way up to"

Your scratch pad has been truncated.

New version of Live Maps/Virtual Earth

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 10:49:52 GMT

The Live Maps/Virtual team have announced a new version of Live Maps with lots of enhancements, many of which we ordinary Live Mappers can use while others will filter down to us as developers build new applications around the Virtual Earth engine.

In summary:

Improved performance
Improved Firefox support - including 3D support on Windows (remember that your XBox game controllers works perfectly with Live Maps in 3D)
Ratings and Reviews for search listings of businesses (not yet available in Australia)
Improved details page for search listings when clicking on them (as well, once you start searching for addresses in a particular city, you don't need to re-enter the city name for a new address search)
GeoRSS feeds for user collections (the easy way to know when your favourite collections have been updated - see below)
Improved drawing experience (can find the area of a shape e.g., the area of your property, your local footy ground, your town...)
User experience enhancements to existing features such as the scratchpad, traffic, and driving directions (e.g., drag'n'drop to re-order items in the scratchpad; traffic info is automatically shown when you make a driving route if traffic is available for that city).

Subscribe to a collection using RSS

To make is simple to keep up to date with an author's collection of locations, you can simply subscribe using the orange RSS button at the top of the collection list at the left of the window. Here's where you'd find the RSS button on Bill's Memories of Wellingborough collection (highly praised, mind you, by the Live Maps team - see here):

webDotWiz has shaded in Broad Green on Bill's collection using the Mark an area on the map button on the scratchpad (the area size was automatically calculated and added - it's 4,753 sq metres for your information):

Hopefully your appetite is whetted with the many new - and old - features in Live Maps. webDotWiz will post more later as he tries out - and prompts the webDotWizards to try out - new things.

Technorati tags: Live Maps, collections, collection RSS feed

Third World to launch this week

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:27:13 GMT

Via the Live Maps/Virtual Earth team blog - Microsoft to launch Third World as an add-on to Live Maps.

If you're familiar with Second Life from Linden Labs you'll be right at home in Third World, a virtual world without limit. One of the major differences is that the space you live and interact in is actually the Virtual Earth, modeled after the real world you're already used to.
You can even go hang out in actual places that you know from the real world. Among the key differentiators in Third World:

Integrates with existing social networks. No need to make new friends. MySpace, Tribe, and Friendster are initially supported. Facebook integration will follow on shortly.
Dyna-drobe. A dynamic wardrobe. you specify your preferences once, then Third World automatically changes your avatars outfit as you move from place to place. No more stopping at home on your way to dinner after work to change. We used geofencing algorithms to determine when you are near the new destination to trigger the wardrobe change.
Transact with Flooz. We've partnered with the founders of Flooz to bring back the forgotten Web currency. You use your real world credit card to put Flooz in your Third World account, and from there you can participate in virtual commerce within the metaverse. And just about everything is bargain priced - you can pretend to sip a 4 dollar latte for only 20 Flooz which cost you only about a buck fifty of real earth currency.
Adult-only spaces. Just as in the real world, Third World has bars and clubs that are 21 and over. If a RW business is categorized as a bar in our business listing database, you'll be carded by a virtual thug on the way in.
Child Safe spaces. Similarly, there are zones in Third World like schoolyard playgrounds and the big colorful ball pools at Chuck E Cheese where only kids under 12 are permitted.

Keep an eye on the Live Maps/Virtual Earth team space for more info later in the week.

Technorati tags: Live Maps, Virtual Earth, Third World

More cities with birds eye view and high-def imagery

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 01:31:18 GMT

Live Maps has been updated with about another 4 terabyes of imagery (see Virtual Earth Imagery Update for March 29 on the Live Maps/Virtual Earth team blog).

New cities covered with birds eye view are mostly in Europe:

UK: Bedford, Chesterfield, Hull, Ipswich, Lowestoft, Morecambe, Carlisle, Tamworth, Aylesbury, Exeter, Kettinger, Newport, Pontypool, Stafford, Rugby, Taunton, Torbay

Germany: Bremerhaven, Celle, Delmenhorst, Esslingen, Ibbenbuerren, Oldenburg, Osnabrueck, Rheine, Wilhelmshaven, Aachen, Bremen, Flensburg, Fulda, Hamln, Herford, Minden, Muenster, Wetzlar, Ahlen, Arnsberg, Emden, Lippstadt, Wesel, Kassel, Neustadt

Italy: Naples, Bolzano, Cagliari, Trieste, Messina

The Netherlands: The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht

France: Grenoble, Limoges, Tours

As well, there are new cites covered in Spain, Norway, Switzerland and Belgium and more U.S. cities.

A few days earlier more extensive coverage of Chicago was announced. A good collection is the Chicago Architecture Landmarks one.

Update: Here's a collection of U.K. cities in 3D (Plymouth, Cardiff, Bristol, Gloucester and Wolverhampton).

Technorati tags: Live Maps, Virtual Earth, collections

Ten things you mightn't know about using Live Maps

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 09:25:21 GMT

You can get to Live Maps directly via maps.live.com or via a search from www.live.com. For example, you might be searching for an electrician in your local area so on the Live Maps page enter electrician as the type of business and your town name in the address box. A map will come up with all electricians, with phone numbers and addresses listed on the left and pushpins showing location. As you pan the map (hold down the left mouse button and move it), new entries will pop up in the list and on the map.

You can make a collection of these businesses for later use if you want. If the scratchpad isn't open on the right of your screen, click on Collections and choose Open to bring it up. For the businesses listed on the left, hover the mouse over any of interest and choose the Add to scratchpad option. Another way of saving your search for later use is to click on Share, choose Copy permalink and paste this link into your note scraps file.

Right-click can save you lots of time, especially when you've found a city or location and want to get a closer view. When you first right-click, you might only have the option to zoom to regional level - subsequent right-clicks enable you to zoom down to city level then street level.

Another trick is to move a pushpin. It can happen that Live Maps doesn't show the correct placement for an address but you want to correctly place the pushpin. Hover over the pushpin and click Move pushpin, the mouse cursor changes to a pair of cross-hairs and all you need do is click on the correct place on the map.

Using the Draw a path or trail tool at the bottom of the scratchpad pane enables you you to measure distances - you might be planning a walk around heritage sites in town, creating a bushwalk trail or a bike riding route.

Hovering the mouse over pushpin no. 2 gives the distance between pushpin no. 1 and the end of the path (only on a live map, though).

By the way, if you weren't happy with the blue colour of your path or you wanted to make it thicker. then being able to change properties is only a right-click away.

Finally, do you want to see an area in more detail? If you've got a centre scroll wheel on your mouse, hold it down and draw a rectangle - the map view will instantly change to zoom into the area you've selected. If your mouse hasn't a scroll wheel, hold down the ALT key while you mark out a rectangle with your mouse.

All of us are a bit lazy at making the best use of the Help facility in services we use but it's worth spending some time reading through the Live Maps help to find some handy shortcut keystrokes and other tricks.

Technorati tags: Live Maps, tricks, shortcuts, trail path, collections

Some Goodie Gumdrop Uses of Live Maps - Harley-Davidson rides, historic Detroit, Weather.com

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 09:37:47 GMT

Via Live Maps/Virtual Earth team Space.

The first one is Harley-Davidson's Great Roads Explorer. To get to the actual map and all the info about different rides, click the link to get it started from the text, All you need to do now is launch..., over on the right-hand side of the page. Even if you're not a Harley-Davidson rider, you'll get lots of good information about the rides that are up there so far - distance, where to eat, sights along the way, and so on. As well, each trip is clearly marked in colour. All the usual features of Live Maps are available - zoom, pan, road or aerial view, and so on. Note: this link will take you directly to the map.

Next is Detroit Through the Years since 1949. Using the list of aerial photography from different years on the left of the screen, you can overlay today's view of Detroit with that of a year from 1949 through to 1976. As well, you can do a 3D view (see bottom of left-hand side of screen).

The third use is by Weather.com with their cloud cover and radar animated overlays (the weather coverage is U.S. only). It's fun watching the clouds roll in.

Technorati tags: Live Maps, Harley-Davidson, Detroit, Weather.com

Live Search Maps collection - Best U.S. Railways

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 22:49:29 GMT

This collection is not complete so you can call it an ongoing project. The info is coming from various issues of Trains magazine (www.trainsmag.com).

Quote

My Live Search Maps collection

Mackinaw City, Cheboygan, Michigan, United States

Altoona, Pennsylvania, United States

Horseshoe Curve
Well-known location up from Altoona. Celebrated 150 years in 2004.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States

Enola Yard, Harrisburg, PA
Norfolk Southern owns this yard. Plenty of freight waiting for classification and a train to take it to its final destination.

Three Mile Island

Tunkhannock
The concrete arch 2,375 feet long Tunkhannock Bridge is somewhere around here. I'll get the exact location another day (I have it in another collection).

Sand Patch, Somerset, Pennsylvania, United States
Probably the correct location. The grade on the former Baltimore and Ohio was so named for the run between Pittsburg, PA, and Cumberland, MD. Now sees about 40 CSX trains per day.

Amblersburg, Preston, West Virginia, United States
Most severe grade on CSX's Cranberry Grade, which begins at Rowlesburg (1,402 feet elevation). Amblersburg is on a 1,600 foot curve with gradient of 1.75%, increasing to 2.2% at the end of the curve.Then all the way up to Terra Alta, the gradient is at"

Your scratch pad has been truncated.

Live Maps has more high-res imagery

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 09:52:09 GMT

More U.S. cities and regions have hi-res imagery as well several European countries.

See the Windows Live Local/Virtal Earth site for details see Lots of New Birds Eye coverage in Europe (cities are listed for France, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain and Norway), more U.S. cities and Miami in 3D. Here's a link to a collection of all cities in the U.S. with bird's eye coverage (as put together by the Live Local team).

Above is Marseille Saint Charles station (that's a TGV Duplex in centre picture).

Technorati tags: Live Maps, European cities, bird's eye view

Italy now has high resolution imagery on Live Maps

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:08:57 GMT

Via the Windows Live Local / Virtual Earth team Space:

Last night the Virtual Earth Imagery team rolled out a pretty big update, about 20 TB of compressed data in all, most of which represents aerial coverage of all of Italy. The shot below of Mt. Vesuvius is brilliant even in 2d, but switch into 3d for a real viewing treat.

If you haven't already installed the 3D view add-on for Live Maps, simploy follow the prompts when you go to the Mt. Vesuvius link. Note you need 512Mb of RAM on your computer and it's best if you've got a separate video card (rather than having a graphics chip processor integrated on your computer's motherboard). As for CPU speed, webDotWiz's old 900MHz CPU seems to cope ok with Live Maps in 3D but he's got 768Mb RAM and a 64Mb graphics card (an old one, by the way).

If you're happy to just view Mt. Vesuvius in 2D, here's a link.

For the technos, the pics for all of Italy totalled 20Tb (20 terrabytes or 1 000 Gb) of data that was uploaded to the Live Maps servers.

Technorati tags: Live Maps, Italy, high resolution imagery, bird's eye view, 3D map viewing

Live maps bird's eye view update

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 09:17:28 GMT

Apart from lots of new cities being viewable in bird's eye view, another update to Live Maps the other day was the replacement of the grid control to look around in bird's eye view and its with an inset map:

By the way, Live Maps will tell you if a city or region has bird's eye view with a little message popping up near the navigation control and the bird's eye view icon (the bottom of the two in the nav control) will brighten. As well, the inset map will slide out. The viewable area is greyed out on this inset map and you can use it by dragging the mouse to move the vieweable area in the main map view.

There's a write up, too, of the thinking behind the mini-map tool when in bird's eye view mode. Among other things, note the mouse changing from a large hand for panning to a target cursor to indicate you're near the edge of a bird's eye view and a click at this stage will load the next lot of bird's eye view images.

Technorati tags: Windows Live Maps, bird's eye view

More bird's eye views on Live Maps

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 11:07:13 GMT

Many more cities now have bird's eye photography.

At this time cities are in the U.S., U.K. and Italy, with more to follow soon.

The Virtual Earth team have added to their collections so that's the easiest way to see lots of cities from a new angle:

Bird's eye view of cities in Europe: http://local.live.com/?v=2&cid=546E7E30AC2C5011!1193
Bird's eye view of cities in the U.S.: http://local.live.com/?v=2&cid=546E7E30AC2C5011!250

(both links above will open in a new browser window, or, if you're using IE 7, right click on the link and choose Open in a new tab to make life a bit easier).

As well there's a great tour of Rome since this city now has bird's eye view too - here's the link:

Tour of Rome: http://local.live.com/?cid=6056F59B2F5BD698!101

As noted on the Virtual Earth team's Space,

even if your city or a city you are interested in viewing isn't on the list, check it out anyway - chances are good that if it is near a listed city, there may be coverage there.

Technorati tags: Live Maps collection, Rome

Back of my hand - Live Maps collections

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:46:46 GMT

From the site itself (www.backofmyhand.com):

Got a favourite clothes shop, bar or restaurant? Follow the same pre-match routine when you go to watch your football team? Is your town full of hidden gems? Use your local knowledge to make a collection of the important places in your life and share them with the world on BackOfMyHand! Check out our top current featured collections.

PassthePOI (pass the Point Of Interest) has been around a while - it's where you can get links to various collections of locations, sights, famous landmarks, and more, that have been contributed by people from around the world (including webDotWizard Bill for his Memories of Wellingborough).

Another site to which people have contributed is Bird's Eye Tourist - all sorts of interesting places, landmarks, objects, etc., have been spotted.

Anyway, BackOfMyHand is neatly presented and there are already lots of fun collections. Why not contribute your own?

Technorati tags: BackOfMyHand, Virtual Earth, Windows Live Maps