Tag Archive for 'hotels'

Hate maps, love Birds Eye

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on July 28, 2008
in Multimap, Virtual Earth and Web Mapping
. 0 Comments

One of the more popular features in Multimap and Virtual Earth is the Birds Eye (oblique) imagery.  The coverage of Birds Eye is now awesome and it can provide great context information.  for example if you are booking a hotel you can check out the neighbourhood and see if it is next to a busy road to see beyond any ’spin’ in the brochure.  Many implementations of the  Multimap API and Virtual Earth in the travel sector allow users to navigate a map and switch to Birds Eye view.

However the snag is that many web site users are not really into maps and some figures suggest that only 20% of users ever interact with an AjAx map (e.g. by panning).  But wouldn’t all these people who hate maps still not find a bird’s eye view of their hotel useful?  It is only a photo after all….

I think Active Hotels have come up with a great solution for this.  On the brochure pages for hotels, as well as a user being able to use a map, there is also a simple link for users to click on to see a Birds Eye photo:

This link simply opens up a birds eye view of the hotel (using the Multimap API behind the scenes).  It’s that simple, and therefore a brilliant idea.

Using the Multimap API you can do the same (and even remove all the controls for a clean look).  For example here is a simple picture of Big Ben.

image

Here is the JavaScript you need:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://clients.multimap.com/API/maps/[api_key]"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" type="JavaScript ">
         var mapviewer;

         function onLoad()
         {
           //Add the map 
           mapviewer = MMFactory.createViewer(document.getElementById('mapviewer'));

            mapviewer.setMapType( MM_WORLD_BEHYBRID );

                mapviewer.goToPosition( new MMLatLon( 51.50064,-0.12453 ) );
         }

      MMAttachEvent( window, 'load', onLoad );

         </script>
And the associated HTML:
<body>
  <!-- The Multimap Map-->
  <div id="mapviewer" style="position : absolute;top : 0;left : 0;width : 700px; height : 700px;"></div>
</body>

You can also use the API to check that there is BE coverage for a location.

So if you hate maps you can still use bird’s eye views!