Virtual Earth at Realcomm

 

Today I had the pleasure to talk at the Realcomm Europe conference in London.  Realcomm is the main conference for everyone in the property industry and talks about how you can apply technology in this particular industry.  Talking about mapping - and Virtual Earth - is particularly apt as I recall the saying is "location, location, location"!  It's amazing to think that 82% of the world's data has a location component which is why visualising that data is so valuable when making sense of huge volumes of it.

Similar to the Virtual Earth Partner day, I didn't want to show too much powerpoint so I kept this to a minimum and did a series of demos - 11 in all in around 20 minutes.  Obviously this is quite a lot to show in such a short period of time but such is the breadth and depth of the technology in Virtual Earth I wanted to give a glimpse of the art of the possible.

Here's what I covered off, if you have any questions about any of these items then please do get in contact: james@microsoft.com

• Photosynth
  • https://labs.live.com/photosynth/view.html?collection=sanmarco/index1.sxs&st=coll
  • Cool Technology
  • Related to Virtual Earth
  • Live labs collaborating with other product groups to help improve features and add new capabilities
  • Last year in October
  • Before you had to switch between 3D mode and Ajax to see the Bird's Eye Imagery - now the same technology used in Photosynth allows us to see the bird's eye imagery in context

• Bird's Eye in 3D
  • https://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=skhkx0gzq0qp&style=o&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=15552566&where1=London&encType=1
  • Unique technology to Microsoft
  • Provides different perspective to satellite imagery - I can tell what buildings look like

• 3D Modelling
  • Using 3DVia
  • Explain how to download it
  • Help Guide: https://help.live.com/help.aspx?project=das&market=en-us&querytype=keyword&query=qaf
  • Model Renaissance London Chancery Court Hotel

• Popfly
  • https://www.popfly.com
  • Award winning mashup maker based in Silverlight
  • Build, publish and share your mashups in a visual way
  • Show Twitter Map: https://www.popfly.com/users/MikeGannotti/FirstTwitterMap

• Redfin
  • www.redfin.com
  • Search Palo Alto
  • Mention Region Outline
  • Show Mitchell Park
  • Show Schools

• MapCruncher
  • https://research.microsoft.com/mapcruncher/
  • Free download
  • Reads in your map (jpg, tip etc) the lets you register it with real world
  • Do Microsoft UK Campus Example
  • Other, better examples of Map Crunching: https://research.microsoft.com/mapcruncher/Gallery/

• Superbowl Coverage
  • https://www.followthegame.com/
  • Demo
  • Show how they did it

• SportsDo
  • Close Great House 3D map in tab - can only have one 3D VE instance in the browser at one time
  • Show Ski Demo: https://www.sportsdo.net/ActivityView.aspx?sid=8289
  • GPS Tracking, recording the coordinates - plotted onto VE later on

• Xbox360
  • Navigate to Seattle
  • Fly around using xbox 360 controller

• Tesco
  • Store Locator: https://www.tesco.com/storelocator/
  • Search for Reading
  • Click on Reading Extra (#1) - talk about opening hours etc

• Live Quick Apps
  • https://dev.live.com/QuickApps/
  • Shows how you can leverage the Windows Live Services to provide more rich and compelling experiences for your users
  • All code is available to download and reuse! https://codeplex.com/WLQuickApps

New!

• SharePoint web parts now on codeplex
  • https://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=tamtam&ReleaseId=10437

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  PingBack from http://superbowl.okblogging.info/?p=5537

• Anonymous
  March 03, 2008
  Great post! I'll be doing a presentation on GIS at a university in Stockholm tomorrow and is looking for a video showing the possibilities of Photosynth in the real estate industry. Any suggestions? (is unable to get the demo at the photosynth site to work) Thanks in advance. regards/magnus