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I am surprised that the Microsoft Environmental team still talks to me. They launched a really cool Microsoft Environment site back in May and I have been remiss in sharing that with my Virtual Earth for Public Sector readers. The site shares how Microsoft and its partners use innovative technologies and responsible business practices to address environmental challenges worldwide. And if I am writing about it, you know that Virtual Earth is well-represented. The site can be found here. Look for the following Virtual Earth related information: - Sungevity Uses Virtual Earth to Quickly, Remotely Assess Customer Sites. Solar power has enormous potential. But so far it’s not living up to that potential. In the U.S., for instance, solar provides less than 1 percent of the nation’s energy needs. That’s in part because solar energy installations for homes are typically custom-made, expensive units. What’s needed is a new way to market and install solar energy. "Solar is going to be huge, but to get there it needs to smarten up its game," says Danny Kennedy, CEO of Sungevity, a solar-energy startup that is looking to take that step. Based in Berkeley, Calif., and founded in 2008, Sungevity is aiming to become, as Fortune magazine called it, "the Dell of solar energy," using technology to create new efficiencies and better service customers. A key part of that is the way Sungevity takes advantage of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth global mapping platform to lower the cost of solar energy installation, help homeowners easily see the value of solar energy, and make its usage more widespread. Read full article here.
- Virtual Earth Brings Limited Water Resource into Focus. In 2007, the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) in Victoria, Australia engaged Geomatic Technologies, a Microsoft partner and specialist in location-based business intelligence, to develop a Groundwater Management Unit Inventory. The new Microsoft Virtual Earth-based groundwater management tool is designed to overcome a simple but daunting problem: mapping out areas of intensive groundwater use, determining management actions for stressed aquifers, and making that information quickly and widely available. Read full article.
- Microsoft Technology Powers Environmental Crisis–Response Tool. When a crisis strikes, timing is an organization's greatest resource, and often means the difference between containment and escalation. Enter JEPRS, the Joint Emergency Planning & Response System.JEPRS is a crisis and incident management solution developed by Infusion Development, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. JEPRS connects all critical stakeholders, including Disaster Managers, Operations Managers, and Field First Responders with common operating information about a crisis that they can access anytime, anywhere. The 3-D mapping capabilities of Microsoft Virtual Earth combined with the data power of Microsoft SharePoint make JEPRS an extremely effective tool for managing environmental events. Read full article here.
- Environmental Protection Agency Improves Data Visualization with Mapping Technology. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for ensuring public access to environmental information associated with facilities and sites across the country. For years, EPA provided a Web-based data-access tool that combined facility-level environmental information with online maps. However, the technology in use provided only static maps with limited interactive functionality. EPA recently replaced its outdated technology with Microsoft® Virtual Earth™ technology, which offers high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery, dramatically faster response times, and easy integration with environmental data sets. As a result, EPA expects a more consumer-friendly data resource, an innovative foundation for future growth, and a more efficient IT platform. Full case study here.
- European Environment Agency and Microsoft Eye on Earth Observatory Bring European Beach Quality Into Sharp Focus. Microsoft Corp and the European Environment Agency (EEA) today announced the launch of the pioneering Eye on Earth online environmental observatory with the first of its resources, Water Watch. Eye on Earth is part of a five-year collaboration between the EEA and Microsoft that will ultimately gather together critical information, including European water soil, air and ozone indicators, into one place. From today, Eye on Earth allows governments, policymakers and individuals to compare the cleanliness of bathing water from sites across 27 European countries, giving people the power to choose where they swim and to influence their environment. Read full story.
While you're out on the site, be sure to check out the other articles, case studies and information on how Microsoft is actively striving to be a good steward for the environment by adhering to sound environmental principles and business practices. 
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I am often asked by public sector customers about the ability to consume Virtual Earth imagery outside of Virtual Earth. This was recently made possible within ESRI ArcGIS tools and is now made possible completely offline through two new resellers, i-cubed and MapMart.com. The following are points from an announcement that was distributed late last week. Why is the Virtual Earth team licensing imagery for offline use? Our high-resolution UltraCam ortho-imagery is prized for GIS, urban planning, engineering and other applications that are often performed in offline desktop environments, yet our existing Virtual Earth offerings prohibit any offline use of our data. By offering our data in an offline mode, we complement our online Virtual Earth web service offerings, increase Microsoft and Virtual Earth brand awareness worldwide, and generate revenues. These groundbreaking deals are the first milestone in Virtual Earth's monetization of MS-owned geospatial products for offline use. How is this Being Done? Our resellers will host the data and provide sales, marketing and fulfillment services. We selected i-cubed, LLC and Mapmart.com as our first resellers. Both are top-notch companies with proven leadership in the geodata markets, and we’re excited to have them lead our channel sales. · i-cubed, LLC is a top-tier provider of imagery, data distribution software, and image processing services to governments and commercial entities worldwide. As the exclusive data provider for ESRI’s ArcGIS users who want to use data locally, they will offer VE’s UltraCam imagery through the ESRI platform (Beta) and through a standalone web site they’ll launch in the coming weeks. · MapMart.com is a high volume geodata provider with strong experience in the prosumer market. They just launched VE’s UltraCam data on their website last week. Their announcement can be read here: http://www.amerisurv.com/content/view/5334/2/ What’s Available and Who Needs it? Currently we have over 200 cities of mosaicked color airborne imagery collected at 6” nominal resolution, averaging less than two years old. The 6” spatial resolution rivals any large-scale commercial source today, and our newest processing techniques produce orthomosaics with almost no building lean in the image--invaluable for unobstructed views into areas with tall buildings, etc. As Microsoft acquires and processes imagery for more cities around the world, the archive is expected to grow substantially. This imagery is invaluable for urban planners, GIS analysts, and the prosumer geospatial market. We expect municipalities, engineering firms, emergency response agencies, and utilities to be core customers. 
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Here's a technology I really haven't discussed much on the Virtual Earth for Public Sector blog (shame on me). Until now, Photosynth was a Live Labs research project that you could just get a glimpse of through a technology preview web site. But the Photosynth team was recently moved into the Virtual Earth team and has released an official Photosynth site that allows you to not only view Photosynth collections hosted there, but to add your own. Time to bring it to the attention of Public Sector customers, given its ability to allow for images collected in the field to be assembled in a manner to then allow the scene to be explored and navigated in a 3D like manner. So what is Photosynth? Borrowing from the About Photosynth discussion on the site: It is a potent mixture of two independent breakthroughs--the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet. Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point the photos were taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos. Providing that experience requires viewing a LOT of data though—much more than you generally get at any one time by surfing someone’s photo album on the web. That’s where our Seadragon™ technology comes in: delivering just the pixels you need, exactly when you need them. It allows you to browse through dozens of 5, 10, or 100(!) megapixel photos effortlessly, without fiddling with a bunch of thumbnails and waiting around for everything to load. The new Photosynth site hosts some great collections. You can check out some photos of Constitution Hall on the site here. Press the down arrow a few times to see the document in the context of the whole hall. This one of a Boulder tea house illustrates how a complex room can be quickly recorded and easily reviewed and shared, zoom back with the scroll wheel to see the whole room. This Boulder aerial synth is wild ... it shows a great view of Boulder, about 400 of them actually, all automagically assembled into a 3D web accessible collection in a matter of a few hours. Next best thing to buying an UltraCam, Microsoft's large format digital aerial camera, holding it out the window of your plane, and building your own Virtual Town! [NOTE: Viewing the Photosynth site requires installation of the The best part: Photosynth will be linking up more with Virtual Earth. For now Photosynth lets you geotag your Synth collections with Virtual Earth, just look for the little  button next to the Synth’s viewer window. Chris Pendleton provides an example of this, code and all, in his Virtual Earth Developer's blog. Meanwhile, you can see an instructional video on collecting imagery and creating the Synth collection.  
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I am at the Microsoft Federal kickoff meeting this week, where we are looking forward to a great new fiscal year serving Public Sector customers. Seems an appropriate day for the Microsoft Virtual Earth team and ESRI to have announced an enhanced partnership that is going to allow ArcGIS 9.3 users one click access to Virtual Earth maps and imagery to perform data creation, editing, analysis, authoring and map publishing. At last year's ESRI International User Conference, ESRI pre-announced a REST API to allow ArcGIS 9.3 users to integrate Virtual Earth maps in ArcGIS applications. But as of today, Virtual Earth is directly available as a premium service in the ESRI Desktop product and will be available with ArcGIS Server to follow. Chris Pendleton, Microsoft Virtual Earth technical evangelist, includes the full press release, some FAQs, and screenshots in his Developer's Blog entry today. To see this in action, come see us at the ESRI International User conference next week.  
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Out of the office on travel this week ... blogging could be light. Want to quickly pass on this announcement made today: ASP.NET Virtual Earth Map Control released Monday, 7/28/08. This map control enables you to provide your website visitors immersive experiences that integrate Microsoft Virtual Earth maps, aerial imagery and bird’s eye view. Now, you can download this free map control and get the functionality of Microsoft Virtual Earth. Just drag and drop this control from Visual Studio toolbox onto your webpage, set-up properties and implement a Virtual Earth map on your web site. Download the new map control from July 2008 CTP of Windows Live Tools here ( http://dev.live.com/tools/). Learn more here (http://dev.live.com/blogs/devlive/archive/2008/07/27/386.aspx)
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Back in February I posted an entry on the acquisition of 3D modeling company, Caligari, by Microsoft. Since that time I have been waiting to share how that acquisition would play into the Virtual Earth platform story. This week Caligari released trueSpace7.6, putting a fully-featured 3D authoring tool in the hands of anyone who wants it, at no cost! This enables you to create 3D content for Virtual Earth powered applications including Live Search Maps, for trueSpace shared spaces, for use in XNA when developing your own games, and also traditional 3D illustration and animation. Take a look at this entry from the Virtual Earth 3D blog for a better understanding of the significance of this 3D modeling tool for Virtual Earth applications. This should be of particular interest to those of you who have asked me at various events if Virtual Earth can import other 3D models into its 3D environment. You now have a powerful tool, at no cost, to do this. Note the ability to create and explore building interiors and the realism that can be accomplished. I would say Virtual Earth just became an even better platform for creating training and simulation applications. 
 
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Virtual Earth for Government blog readers are by now well familiar with Microsoft partner IDV Solutions and its Visual Fusion Suite offering that allows customers to build visual composite applications that integrate customer data with the Virtual Earth mapping platform. And since you are, you also know how slick these applications have always been. An early Virtual Earth "integrator" (if I may say use that word), IDV has in many ways set the bar early on for intuitive and visually appealing user interfaces for business intelligence mapping applications. In the past, this was often accomplished using FLASH technology but recently IDV unveiled a mapviewer demo that utilizes Microsoft Silverlight technology. Silverlight is a programmable web browser plug-in that provides support for rich Internet applications such as animation, vector graphics and audio-video playback. The demo features an enhanced navigation interface that, among other things, provides an almost 3D-like map control over Virtual Earth 2D views. You can rotate the map to orient the view to your liking, a feature that I would like to see added to our Virtual Earth powered Live Search Maps someday so that I can view my driving directions with my target destination shown at the top of the map which currently always denotes north. This would keep me from making the wrong left and right turns I sometimes make along my drive because I am following a route in my mind that was mapped with north positioned top screen while I am actually driving south. (Okay ... remember that I'm a marketing guy.) John Nelson of IDV discusses the demo's navigation scheme in more detail here in his blog. Additionally, the demo provides slick annotation capabilities. A description of this can also be found on IDV's blog (here) so I won't cover it all, but I would like to quickly call out a particularly cool feature which is the ability to create what I am going to call multi-point polygons. You can trace an area on the map to create a filled polygon, much as you might in Live Search Maps using the polygon tool there, but IDV provides the ability to add to the trace what they are calling "tics" and users of Adobe products might consider "nodes" ... points along that line that can be added, deleted but more importantly adjusted to provide a highly precise outline. Wow. I like the user empowerment! 
For those of you who still insist on providing maps to your users that are locked down and don't provide the interaction found with a Virtual Earth powered web site, this demo provides the ability to export to KML. It also allows you to export your drawings as an SQL Server 2008-ready spatial script. Read John's blog entries and then take some time to have some fun with the demo. You will need to have the latest addition of Silverlight installed and can get that here.
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Just ran across this article written about the Virtual Earth powered Trip Planner for the New York City Transit in my Outlook inbox and want to quickly share. Regular readers will remember that I blogged on this some time ago, but this makes an interesting read and my Virtual Earth colleague, Kevin Adler, is quoted. NYC Transit Uses Digital Maps and 3-D Modeling to Help Travelers 
Jun 20, 2008, By David Raths I live in a suburb of Philadelphia. This morning as I planned a business trip to New York for next week, I went online to New York City Transit's Trip Planner to figure out how I would make my way from Penn Station to the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers at 7th Avenue and West 53rd Street. Entering my starting point and destination quickly brought up several public transportation options along with walking directions from the closest subway stops. New features recently added to the Trip Planner make the experience much more immersive for users and reduce the likelihood that visitors will end up calling Metropolitan Transit Authority's NYC Transit agency seeking help. The updated Trip Planner includes aerial and three-dimensional views of the city. Users can get now get walking directions and print walking maps from the closest subway stop to their destination. By using Microsoft Virtual Earth and map data from Navteq, NYC Transit says it is able to provide a more realistic view of the street grid than it previously could, making it easier for users to visualize the walking instructions. More Detailed Maps
Like other public transit and departments of transportation around the country, NYC Transit is taking advantage of its own databases and enhanced mapping capability to empower citizens to take better advantage of transportation systems. NYC Transit began offering the online Trip Planner in late 2006, when the agency switched the database software used by call takers in its own travel information center to a product called Transit Information System (ATIS), from Trapeze Software Inc. Agency staff wrote Trip Planner as an interface to the ATIS database and made the interface available online to the public. "We needed a product that was scalable and Windows-based. At the same time, we realized we needed a good online tool," Fleuranges said. "We provide information to a huge number of users, so it was important to get in the game with trip planning." A team from NYC Transit's staff of 16 Internet developers wrote Trip Planner as an interface to the ATIS database in 2006, said Sohaib Mallick, senior director of Internet technologies at NYC Transit. The same team worked on the Virtual Earth mapping upgrade and a feature that allows users to use Trip Planner from mobile devices. Enhancements to Trip Planner using Microsoft's Virtual Earth platform allow for accurate 3D city modeling, Mallick said, and the map data from Navteq, a digital map provider, is much more detailed than the data previously provided by Trapeze. The new version makes zooming in and out easier as well. NYC Transit's Internet Technologies Group programmed the application to allow users to overlay the subway routes and stations on the street grid. The project to add Virtual Earth and Navteq features took the Internet team only a few weeks in January before going live in February 2008, Mallick said. Although he declined to provide detailed cost figures, Mallick did say the expense was minimal because the agency is on a transactional licensing model. Fred Benjamin, assistant vice president for customer service, said the Trip Planner pays dividends to the agency. "Since December 2006 we have seen a 193 percent increase in unique visitors to our Web site," he said. "We had 1.3 million visitors in 2007 and 185,000 in January, so the number of customers we're serving keeps growing." Additionally, people getting directions through self service instead of calling for help translates into cost savings, and Benjamin said his agency has started work to quantify them. For instance, the abandonment rate on calls-people who get tired of waiting on hold-has dropped dramatically. "This is allowing our call center to handle calls from substantially more people, and we can redeploy some staffers who previously answered phones." Making the Portal Interactive
Trip Planner improvements are just one of many enhancements to NYC Transit's Web site. Riders can use Trip Planner not just from PCs but from mobile devices as well. Through the portal, users can get real-time information about elevator and escalator outages. Alerts provide riders with information on unplanned disruptions in subway service, and users can sign up to receive e-mail notifications of planned construction work. Advisories, which detail information on planned service disruptions, are attached to all itinerary requests. Users can send e-mails directly to individuals assigned responsibility for customer service by rail line, and they can read the results of rider customer service report card survey results. "With the portal we try to offer as much information as we can, because we recognize it has become a vital tool for people said Paul Fleuranges, NYC Transit's vice president of corporate communications. "We always offered directions and fare structures online, but we have made a big push in the last three years to improve on that." Kevin Adler, geospatial solutions specialist from Microsoft, said one of the neat things to realize about the Trip Planner upgrade is that the agency "built it themselves and have made it much more of an immersive experience. They are not geospatial specialists, yet they can create something quite sophisticated-for instance, using a tool called Mapcruncher to overlay subway routes on city maps." Adler said he likes to see public-sector customers able to innovate. For instance, in Texas both the El Paso and Houston areas have created portals that allow members of the public to check on traffic flow, accidents, camera views of highways, and message signs-with all data overlaid on maps. "These examples are enabling public agencies to better expose their data to citizens," Adler said. The cities can visualize their data on top of our maps, and they can focus on their data." Other transit agencies around the country are looking at ways to use GIS and global positioning system (GPS) technology to enhance their trip planners. For instance, TriMet, the public transit agency in the Portland, Ore., area has added a feature called TransitTracker that provides real-time bus and light-rail train arrival times that riders can access online, on the street and over the phone. By equipping every TriMet bus with a GPS transmitter, the agency can relay to users exactly how far a bus is from their stop. Powered by Google Maps and map data from Tele Atlas, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's Boston-area trip planner allows riders to add to their itinerary map landmarks such as museums, shopping centers and hospitals, with walking directions and their distance from the nearest subway stop. NYC Transit's Mallick said his team is constantly looking for ways to improve their Trip Planner as well as other interactive features of the agency's portal. "We are always looking at the best and brightest in other regions for ideas," he said, "as well as at the newest technology on the market or about to come on the market."
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This month's imagery update was not quite as large as usual but still quite impressive (14TB) and demonstrates the diligence of the Virtual Earth production team to provide global basemap imagery to bolster your business intelligence applications. Take a look: USA Aerial Views (15 cm) · Elizabeth, NJ · West Allis, WI · Paterson, NJ · Pasadena, TX Europe Aerial Views (20cm) · Tournai, Belgium · Aalst. Belgium · Verviers, Belgium · Sint Niklass, Belgium · Hasselt, Belgium · Genk, Belgium · Mouscron, Belgium · Mons, Belgium · Oostende, Belgium · Mechelen, Belgium · Leuven, Belgium · Kortrijk, Belgium · La Louviere, Belgium · Aalborgk, Denmark · Kolding, Denmark · Arhus, Denmark · Copenhagen, Denmark · Esbjerg, Denmark · Fredericia, Denmark · Silkeborg, Denmark · Roskilde, Denmark · Randers, Denmark · Vejle, Denmark · Odense, Denmark · Horsens, Denmark · Herning, Denmark · Helsingor, Denmark · Turku, Finland · Vassa, Finland · Tampere, Finland · Pori, Finland · Oulu, Finland · Lappeenranta, Finland · Lahti, Finland · Kuopio, Finland · Kotka, Finland · Jyvaskyla, Finland · Joensuu, Finland · Helsinki, Finland · Hameenlina, Finland · Munich, Germany · Hamburg, Germany · Frankfurt, Germany · Stuttgart, Germany · Leipzig, Germany · Potsdam, Germany · Bremen, Germany · Aveiro, Portugal · Braga, Portugal · Coimbra, Portugal · Almada, Portugal · Faro, Portugal · Albacete, Spain · Alcoi, Spain · Algeciras, Spain · Bilbao, Spain · Benidorm, Spain · Alicante, Spain · Badajoz, Spain · Aviles, Spain · Avila, Spain · Caceres, Spain · Burgos, Spain · Aranjuez, Spain · Cuidad Real, Spain · Almeria, Spain · Zamora, Spain · Collado Villalba, Spain · Castellon de la Plana, Spain · Cuenca, Spain · Cartegena, Spain · Donostia San Sebastian, Spain · Valladolid, Spain · Elda, Spain · El Escorial, Spain · El Ejido, Spain · Estepona, Spain · Torrevieja, Spain · Torrelavega, Spain · Fuengirola, Spain · Gandia, Spain · Gijon, Spain · Setubal, Spain · Girona, Spain · Granollers, Spain · Granada, Spain · Guadalajara, Spain · Guimaraes, Spain · Segovia, Spain · Santander, Spain · Salamanca, Spain · Palencia, Spain · Motril, Spain · Molina de Segura, Spain · Huelva, Spain · Jaen, Spain · Jerez, Spain · Mataro, Spain · Leira, Spain · Leon, Spain · Linares, Spain · Lleida, Spain · Lorca, Spain · Ferrol, Spain · Cadiz, Spain · Arona (Canaries), Spain · Arrecife (Canaries), Spain · Wexford, Ireland · Cork, Ireland · Galway, Ireland · Carlow, Ireland · Limerick, Ireland · Navan, Ireland · Eskilstuna, Sweden · Falun, Sweden · Boras, Sweden · Gavle, Sweden · Goteborg, Sweden · Vaxjo, Sweden · Varberg, Sweden · Uppsala, Sweden · Umea, Sweden · Sundsvall, Sweden · Stockholm, Sweden · Sodertolje, Sweden · Skovde, Sweden · Skellefteo, Sweden · Ostersund, Sweden · Ornskoldsvik, Sweden · Orebro, Sweden · Norrkoping, Sweden · Malmo, Sweden · Lulea, Sweden · Linkoping, Sweden · Kungsbacka, Sweden · Karlskrona, Sweden · Kalmar, Sweden · Jonkoping, Sweden · Helsingborg, Sweden · Halmstad, Sweden · Trollhatton, Sweden · Karlstad, Sweden · Vasteras, Sweden · Uddevalla, Sweden · Fredrikstad, Norway · Honefoss, Norway · Narvik, Norway · Haugesund, Norway · Skedsmo, Norway · Trondheim, Norway · Stavanger, Norway · Skien, Norway · Oslo, Norway · Kristianstad, Norway · Kristiansand, Norway · Drammen, Norway · Luzern, Switzerland · Lausanne, Switzerland · Winterthur, Switzerland GeoEye Satellite Views (1m) · Midway_Island, USA · Oahu, Hawaii · Belfast, N. Ireland · Tegucigalpa, Honduras · Guatemala_City, Guatemala · Manaus, Brazil · Porto_Alegre, Brazil · Racife, Brazil · Luxembourg, Luxembourg · Irkalion, Greece · Nicosia, Cyprus · Esfahan, Iran · Accra, Ghana · Lagos, Nigeria · Podgorica, Montenegro · Samara, Russia · Tblisi, Georgia · Almaty, Kazakhstan · Ljubjana, Slovenia · Rabat, Morocco · Tirana, Albania · Vilnius, Lithuania Bird's Eye Views - North America · Marin Co, CA · Santa Cruz Co, CA · Filler South of Fresno, CA (Selma) · Bay Co, FL · Bossier Co, FL · Dougherty Co, GA · Coeur d'Alene, ID · Champaign Co, IL · Filler in De Soto, IL · St John the Baptist Co, LA · Rapides Co, LA · St Tammany Co, LA · Ouachita, LA · York Co, ME · Essex Co, MA · Boone Co, MO · Filler in North Springfield, MO · Comanche Co, OK · Chickasaw National Recreational Area, OK · Stephens Co, OK · New Hanover Co, NC · Aiken Co, SC · Berkeley Co, SC · Horry Co, SC · Anderson Co, SC · Tom Green Co, TX · Smith Co, TX · Ellis Co, TX · Palo Pinto, TX · Salt Lake Co, UT · Charlottesville Co, VA · Fredericksburg Co, VA · Metro Pasco, WA Bird's Eye Views - Europe · Berlin, Germany · Wiesbaden, Germany · Additional Ruhr Valley (Dortmund), Germany · Vienna, Austria · Palma, Spain · Malaga, Spain · Aranjuez, Spain · East of Vittoria, Spain · Costa Del Sol, Spain · El Escorial, Spain · Soria, Spain · Guipuzcoa, Spain · Teruel, Spain · Parque Natural Sierras Subbeticas, Spain · Huesca, Spain · Angus Co, UK. · Calderdale, UK · Uddevalla, Sweden · Trollhattan, Sweden · Skovde, Sweden · Eskilstuna, Sweden · Boras, Sweden 
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In my last blog entry from Beijing, I focused on the UltraCamX large format digital aerial camera that was highlighted at the ISPRS conference. The UltraCam is a big part of the Virtual Earth story, providing the high resolution aerial imagery found in Virtual Earth (and the Live Search Maps consumer site that it powers) and enables business intelligence applications to bring clarity to customer data by allowing customers to view their data within the context of its location and surroundings. Mark Brown, product manager for Virtual Earth, is putting together a new Microsoft (MSDN) Channel 9 video series entitled "Behind the Maps." As follow-up to my last posting, I would like to share the following link to his first video in which he interviews the brains behind the UltraCam technologies from our Graz, Austria photogrammetry division, Vexcel Imaging. The interview focuses on the technology behind the industry leading UltraCam as well as the UltraMap data workflow management software. Note that the video is around 40 minutes in length.
Behind The Maps - UltraCam
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In Beijing this week for the XXI Congress of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS). This event occurs once every four years in a different international location and brings together delegates from government, commercial and academic organizations from across the globe, eager to learn about the latest developments in photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information services. While Microsoft is participating at this event primarily to support its photgrammetry division--Vexcel Imaging--and their UltraCamX large format digital aerial camera that provides the high resolution aerial views that can be seen in Virtual Earth (and are used to automatically create the 3D city models), we are also showing Virtual Earth on our plasma in the booth and wowing delegates. This community of photogrammetrists are having a hard time believing that the models are created automatically, given some of the building contours that are more intricate than just a box shape (what they expect from other mapping platforms). Our booth has seen much traffic including Chinese ministers who are followed surrounded by their entourage, including guards and photographers. These officials are spending a good deal of time in the Vexcel Imaging/Microsoft booth learning about Virtual Earth and the photogrammetry products. I am pretty sure that some of our staff snapped some photos and I will try to include in a next blog entry. In the meantime, I would like to share with you some slightly off topic news (for this blog) by pointing you to the UltraCam web site where we have just announced two new cameras ... the UltraCamXp that is an enhanced version of the UltraCamX, providing a larger image format and higher storage for large scale mapping projects and the UltraCamL which is a medium resolution camera for smaller aircraft and smaller mapping organizations. You can read about them here as well as other news about recent sales including one to the Tenessee Department of Transportation and the sale of the 100th camera to GeoKosmos. Off to the show floor! More later!  
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Some time ago I blogged on a cooperative service that our data acquisition team established to enable Government organizations to distribute their high-quality public domain data through the Virtual Earth platform. The program has been formalized and has been dubbed "GoVE", which I find pretty clever. My colleague Chris Pendleton provides details in his Virtual Earth Evangelist blog for developers. ![UltraCam-Lvl03
--------------
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CAPTURE_TIME_UTC: 2007-11-28 21:57:09.249
SOFTWARE: OPC V3.1.3
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ROTATION: 0 [degree]
PIXEL_SIZE_WIDTH: 7.200 [micron]
PIXEL_SIZE_HEIGTH: 7.200 [micron]
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PRINCIPAL_POINT_X: 0.000 [mm]
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-------------------------------------](http://do8wtg.tuk.livefilestore.com/y1pEVUyLTl34OrWO_Fr9Ar70g3NyGRlmiVKN3kiBRG907l5gEeuKVXJu5G5TkPQPkt0lpQauTGh9JF5qJzXL_Lx4eTO25pVWbQ7?PARTNER=WRITER)
Image courtesy of HJW.
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I owe my blog readers an apology for the lack of posting these last 2-3 weeks. June has proven a bit crazy for me with many Virtual Earth and UltraCam activities keeping me busy. For example, last week I was in Sacramento for the California Geospatial Executive Conference. Hosted by the State's Chief Information Officer, Teri Takai, the event provided a forum for several hundred California public sector executives to come together to learn how government organizations across the country are using GIS to improve data sharing and citizen services. My role at the event was two-fold: first, manning a table at the Solutions Center where agencies and vendors were showing off their technology enabled solutions. I was of course showing Virtual Earth and using the Miami Gov site (built and recently launched by Microsoft partner IS Consulting working with the City of Miami) to demonstrate the power of Virtual Earth as a user interface, especially for citizens, in this instance, to better understand GIS data (in this case, pulling from an ArcGIS geodatabase) relevant to their community. If you have not seen the application already, take a look at my blog entry. It's very cool. It was a fun experience because delegates were provided with three poker chips to vote on the "Coolest," "Most Innovative," and "Best" solutions (chips labeled accordingly). I had great fun showing Miami parcel data in Virtual Earth 3D, flying through with my Xbox controller. At the end of the day, I believe that the solutions that received the awards were all CA State agency solutions, my observation was that my Virtual Earth & Miami Gov solution received the lion's share of chips for "Coolest" and "Most Innovative" among the vendors solutions. <grin> What was also cool about showing this particular demo is that the Virtual Earth product team recently regenerated the Miami city model using its new fully automated processing technology that results in more buildings being modeled, and enhanced, more detailed and realistic texturing. I hadn't considered this until I zoomed in on some parcels in 3D and noticed that the buildings looked incredible (more so than before) and it illustrates a benefit of the Virtual Earth web service model that ye faithful readers of the Virtual Earth Public Sector blog know by now that I consider significant. Because the data is hosted by Microsoft and served up to your business intelligence applications via a web service model, updates are done for you, removing that burden from your organization. No need for your IT staff or users to install or maintain new datasets or applications. When updates are available, users just log on and marvel at the difference just as I did last week. Meanwhile, agencies that require their geospatial applications to be completely "air-gapped" from the Internet have the option of the Virtual Earth Appliance. My secondary role at the conference was to have the privilege of presenting along side Nate Johnson and Katja Krovoruchko of ESRI. Our presentation focused on the principals, applications and benefits of a GIS system, with me speaking specifically to the benefits of the visualization and dissemination of GIS data by the Virtual Earth platform and best of breed imagery, which is the ability to better understand data within the context of its location to ultimately act on that data in a more timely manner. We punctuated our discussions through several demos showing the value of using the ESRI ArcGIS Server for spatial analysis on the backend and the enhanced understanding of the resulting data by mapping it using Virtual Earth on the front end--a great reminder that when data is plotted on a map, the big picture view makes the geospatial relationship between data points more clear, and trends and patterns become more obvious. From that big picture view, zooming down on a particular point of interest provides better clarity of that datapoint through its location and surroundings. The presentation and demos were extremely well-received. Because I like to show off with my Xbox controller in the Virtual Earth 3D environment, we showed the plume model demo that I shared with you all previously in this blog entry, underscoring the value of visualization by switching to the Virtual Earth 3D mode once the plume had been modeled, showing how the Virtual Earth accurate imagery and geocoding provides a much clearer understanding of the impact of the plume on the community, which buildings would be affected and those that would not. We also showcased the ability of ESRI's Desktop software along with Virtual Earth to integrate, visualize, and analyze data from a variety of sources (California Department of Health Services, US EPA, census, etc.) and to expose the results of the analysis to all members of the organization, as a web service integrated with Microsoft SharePoint. This is a great demo because for a mapping platform to be truly efficient and cost-effective, it must extend the investments your organization has already made in existing technologies (no demo link to share, unfortunately). Towards the end of this demo, one State executive stood, apologized for interrupting, and announced that we had just demonstrated a capability that his organization had spent years working to accomplish. This was followed by applause from all watching. It doesn't get much better than that folks. This was a great event that I look forward to doing again next year. (sorry ... no pics this time).
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Last week the City of Richmond unveiled its public facing Parcel Mapping web site that, via IS Consulting's Mapdotnet Server technology, layers parcel data from an ESRI ArcGIS Server 9.2 geodatabase on the Virtual Earth mapping platform, allowing city planners and citizens alike to query, locate and display property outlines for real estate found in the City of Richmond. Three query types are supported in the Find Location panel found to the left of the map. Address or Intersection queries use the Virtual Earth location services, while both Owner Name and Map Reference Number queries are issued against Richmond GIS parcels. Selecting the results from either an Owner Name or Map Reference Number query provides a link to detailed parcel information displayed in a separate Property Report window. What I like about the site is that through the Virtual Earth aerial imagery, you can locate a property that perhaps you don't have an address for, and click directly on it to get parcel information. The parcel outline is filled and a pushpin appears that you can mouse over to get basic parcel info and click on a URL to get a full report. To illustrate, I am including the below screenshots. Meanwhile, you can check out the application itself here. 
 
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The Virtual Earth product team is conducting a satisfaction survey and would like you to evaluate the level and quality of services you’re receiving from Microsoft. This information will be used to identify areas where we are doing well and where we need to make improvements. Also, your feedback will help the team prioritize future Virtual Earth feature development and service enhancements. The survey is being conducted by Akona Consulting, an independent research firm. Unless you choose otherwise, all answers and comments are made anonymously to Microsoft. The survey should take approximately 15 minutes of your time. At the end of the survey, as a token of appreciation, Microsoft will donate $10 to International Services of the Red Cross on your behalf. I encourage all public sector customers to take advantage of this opportunity to provide feedback directly to Virtual Earth product team. The survey can be found here.
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