June 2009

 

Starwood Hotels Utilizes Bing Maps for Enterprise for Multiple Hotel Web Sites

On June 16, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. launched 11 hotel Web sites that use Bing Maps for Enterprise to offer customers a better tool for searching for hotel information. Entering a city, state, country or target date presents customers with an interactive map of relevant hotels — with aerial photographs and Bird’s Eye* imagery available for each location. Each hotel is also marked with a custom rollover that provides detailed location information and features a “Book Now” option for those ready to reserve a room. Starwood also added a traffic feature to allow customers to see the flow of traffic around a given hotel, and it took advantage of the Bing local business listings by including them within the map for additional context. Learn more.

Croatian Team Leverages Bing Maps During Imagine Cup 2009

For its Imagine Cup 2009 project, the Croatian team integrated Deep Earth, which uses Bing Maps, as part of its GeoScout.Net platform. Designed to emphasize information flows, the entire GeoScout.Net platform is based on visualization provided by Bing Maps for Enterprise. Taking advantage of Bing Maps for Enterprise makes navigating through the content easier, as the data is included as part of an interactive map. Learn more.

Boston Pizza Releases Store Locator Using Bing Maps for Enterprise

Boston Pizza International has leveraged Bing Maps for Enterprise to help customers more quickly locate restaurants through its online store locator. Visitors to the Boston Pizza Web site can now enter city information and then click on “Go” to be presented with relevant Boston Pizza locations on an interactive map. Alternatively, customers can enter a postal code and distance radius to locate restaurants in their area. Bing Maps for Enterprise also allows Boston Pizza to include custom pushpins to mark store locations, with the store contact information, links to driving directions and more included directly within the result. Learn more.

Pelican Racing Stays on Course With Inca X Geocasting Technology and Bing Maps for Enterprise

On June 20, British sailing team Pelican Racing used Inca X geocasting technology to help track its progress during the JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island boat race, which takes place annually at the Isle of Wight in the English Channel. The team used onboard Windows Mobile devices to geocast video and send live Global Positioning System (GPS) updates back to base via the Inca X GeocastServer platform (currently hosted by Inca X, but soon to be offered as an Azure hosted set of services). These updates were then used to plot the route of each race team onto a specially developed Bing Maps interface, allowing viewers to monitor the progress and course taken by each of Pelican’s 14 participating boats. The initiative proved highly successful, and the Pelican team plans to use the same geocasting technology during Cowes Week on the Isle of Wight in August. More information on GeocastServer is available at the new Inca X Microsoft Silverlight Web site at http://www.incax.com. The final Pelican live tracking page can be viewed at http://www.ix-m.com/pelican-racing. Learn more.

BBC Powers Interactive Web Site Applications With Bing Maps for Enterprise

The BBC is utilizing Bing Maps for Enterprise for several Web site applications designed to provide customers with more up-to-date information on a given topic. One of the most recent applications is the Wimbledon 2009 interactive map, which allows site visitors to quickly view updates throughout the course of the tournament. When first loaded, the map highlights Centre Court, and customers can then explore the rest of the Wimbledon grounds using Bing Maps imagery. Bing Maps for Enterprise also enables the BBC to embed photo, video, audio and text content directly within the map, with the Wimbledon staff and reporters from BBC Sport and BBC Radio updating the content each day. Learn more.

Eddie Bauer Updates Web Site With Bing Maps for Enterprise

On June 9, Eddie Bauer Inc. updated its Web site using Bing Maps for Enterprise to offer customers a better solution for identifying store locations. Customers can now search for locations directly from the Eddie Bauer home page by entering a postal code, getting back an interactive map of relevant stores within a 50-mile radius. Bing Maps for Enterprise also allows Eddie Bauer to offer visitors several customized features including custom location pushpins and pop-up windows that include store details and access to driving directions. Learn more.

IDV Solutions Integrates Visual Fusion With Windows Azure

On June 4, Microsoft Corp. partner IDV Solutions announced that its geospatial platform, Visual Fusion, is now integrated with Windows Azure. Integrating Visual Fusion with Azure makes developing applications that feature Bing Maps easier and less costly, as developers can now create solutions locally before releasing them to the cloud to make them public. Learn more.

Shoothill’s New TimeMap Application Offers a Glimpse Into the Past of U.K. Cities

On June 23, Bing Maps development partner Shoothill created a unique new application using Bing Maps for Enterprise to overlay historical maps online, giving an immediate visual comparison between the landscape of an area today and how it looked in the past, as far back as 1840. The TimeMap application allows for simultaneous comparative analysis of old ordinance survey maps and aerial photos (including photos of London from 1966), which are overlaid over the modern images, giving a direct comparison between the two. The application demo currently features both Shoothill’s hometown of Shrewsbury and England’s capital, London, with additional cities and locations set to be added in due course. Learn more.

MSN and VisitNorway.no Promote Local Tourism Using Bing Maps

On June 9, MSN Norway, in conjunction with VisitNorway.no and the Norwegian travel industry, commissioned Microsoft to develop an online travel game promoting tourism in the region. The game, which runs on Bing Maps Silverlight Control, challenges players to find a series of geographical points on the map as fast as they can in order achieve the highest score possible in an allotted time. At the end of the promotional period, the players with the highest scores will be awarded prizes provided by the sponsors. Learn more.

Bing Maps at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009

July 13-16, Microsoft hosted the Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 (WPC09) in New Orleans. Bing Maps had a presence at the event as part of the Business Productivity booth, and also hosted several sessions highlighting how partners can best leverage Bing Maps. Bing Maps for Enterprise partners ProModel Corp., Oculus Info Inc. and Shoothill were also recognized as part of the WPC09 Partner of the Year Awards in the Information Worker Solutions, Data Visualization Partner of the Year category. ProModel took home the winning spot, with Oculus Info and Shoothill recognized as finalists. Learn more on Bing Maps at WPC09.
Learn more on the WPC09 Partner of the Year Awards.

Bing Maps at the ESRI International User Conference

With the release of its ArcGIS 9.3.1 System, Microsoft partner ESRI is making Bing Maps base map imagery more easily accessible to its ArcGIS customers on maintenance. As a built-in service integrated throughout the ESRI ArcGIS 9.3.1 System, Bing Maps delivers high-quality base map layers for creating, managing, visualizing and delivering data. This integration helps organizations become productive with GIS more quickly, improve business processes, gain insight into geographic information, and improve customer connections to data and applications. Visit the Bing Maps team in booth 1421 at the ESRI International User Conference in San Diego, July 14-16, and get questions answered about this latest in the integration of ESRI and Microsoft technologies. Learn more.

About Us

 

About Bing Maps for Enterprise

Bing Maps for Enterprise is the mapping platform from Microsoft, used by thousands of companies, governments, developers, individuals and communities around the globe. The platform, previously known as Virtual Earth, delivers global maps coverage with enterprise-class reliability, availability and scalability.

About Bing Maps

Bing Maps for Enterprise powers Bing Maps, an online local search and mapping Web site from Microsoft. Bing Maps represents an exciting component of the Bing vision, which helps people make faster, more informed decisions. A fact sheet about the service is available at http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/presskits/bing/docs/BingFS.doc. Bing Maps can be found at http://www.bing.com/maps.

About Multimap from Bing

Multimap is an innovative provider of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geospatial (“Where’s my nearest?”) searches to a wide variety of companies and organizations. The public Web site, http://www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, fast navigation and planning tools and rich and relevant local information. Key features include street-level maps of major destinations; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; Bird’s Eye imagery; local points of interest; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The site attracts more than 10 million unique users per month. Multimap operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft.

Top of Page ^

---

* Bird’s Eye view and 3-D view are available for many major cities worldwide. In addition, traffic updates are available for many major U.S. cities. For 3-D view, the Bing Maps 3-D beta must be installed on the computer. Traffic information availability can be found by visiting http://www.bing.com/maps and, on the action bar, by clicking on Traffic.

Sign up to receive the monthly Bing Maps for Enterprise newsletter.