This is a very cool, it displays Open Street Map maps within the Bing Maps Silverlight API.  A super slick silverlighty navigation experience!  You can set the opacity so you can see the bing maps and aerial underneath.  You can even rotate on the X, Y and Z axis!

More info here on this and the interesting concept of “Stacking Maps”.

Soul Solutions have a great blog post on using Azure to store custom image tiles (i.e. with your own data) for overlay on Bing Maps.

A little bit of GIS in the cloud…  Neat…

from the BBC.

My slides are here and:

The event is at at the Festspielhaus beside Lake Constance (as featured in the latest James Bond film), which is a cool venue:

At the moment they are setting up a strange broken feet set outside for the next opera:

The odd thing I have noticed at this event is that I am the only one using a laptop in the audience and as a result the WiFi is fast!  Perhaps everyone is a lot more polite than me…

Update

I was pleased to see I had at least 3 people using laptops during my presentation

Wondering if your MP (UK Member of Parliament) is on the gravy train?  Well now you can see by checking our this great map mashup. 

It is great implementation using the new Virtual Earth Silverlight Control.  More details here.  Try out those ultra smooth zooms and pans!

This bbc map is very cool!

A lot of people have been asking me if it was possible to use VE imagery and maps directly in ArcGIS Server (as you already can in ArcMap).  Well the good news is now you can!  This approach incorporates the VE tiles directly (rather than using the ArcGIS JavaScript™ Extension for Microsoft Virtual Earth™)

See http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline/whats_new.html

Happy GISing!

I have juts discovered this hotmap that shows tile usage stats for VE.   It is pretty cool and I have been having a bit of fun exploring with it.  More about it is here. 

The pattern of hot spots is interesting for Europe.  It certainly seems that usage follows the density of population (e.g. the urban spin of Britain, Paris and the industrialised areas of Germany).  I suppose the increased usage in Britain reflects the fact that it is data from 2006 (before localised versions of the Map Control and Map Tiles were available in French, Spanish, German and Italian). 

If you are a VE developer you may want to have a look at this contest for your chance to have your work showcased and win a Virtual Earth glass globe!  You can’t loose as all contributors (with valid submissions) will receive a free T-shirt.

Developing with Virtual Earth

Thursday 19^th March – Microsoft, Thames Valley Park, Reading

If you are a developer and want to take working with Virtual Earth to the next level then this event is for you.

The first session will comprise of a platform update to bring you up to speed on the latest version of Virtual Earth. Later, Johannes Kebeck, Tim Warr and Alexis Harakis will show how Virtual Earth interacts with other Microsoft technologies to create a powerful tool that can be used for much more than placing pins on maps.

Whether you need to analyse or display data, or create an immersive end user experience, this event will make you eager to get back to your PC to put the code you have learnt into practice.

The agenda will include

1.    Introduction and What’s New

2.    Virtual Earth and Multimedia Integration

3.    Business Intelligence using Virtual Earth

4.    Virtual Earth and GIS

5.    The 3D World

6.    Ask the Experts

7. Optional Pricing and Terms of Use Session

The day will run from 9.30am until 4.30pm and we do hope you can join us.

Places are limited so if you do wish to register please do so asap here.   Use the invitation Code: 3C27C2

You may also register by telephone: 0870 166 6680 ref: 4610

Looking forward to seeing you there!