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10 November 2009

Bing Maps Revamp - Draggable Routes

Bing Maps Revamp - Draggable Routes

Bing Maps Revamp
Routes can be picked up and moved around the current map - distances are shown on the fly.

Bing Maps Revamp Private Roads
Information on private roads and gated roads is much clearer now.

New Functions
  • Draggable Routes – Bing Maps now allows you to generate a route, then you can change the route, you can simply grab any part of it and drag it to where you want the route to actually go. To use draggable routes, click the directions link in the welcome pane or the car icon near the bottom of the welcome pane. Enter a start and end, generate a route, then grab anywhere on the route to move the route line. The route will regenerate for you.
  • Zoom Bar – No longer just a zoom in and zoom out button, the zoom bar allows you to jump to specific zoom levels within predefined settings.



  • Embeddable Map Cutomizer (EMC) – You can now take a map view right from Bing Maps and embed it into your site. To do this, you’ll want to click the Share button once your map is where you want it to be. You can copy the embed code from there; or, you can click the Customize View link which will take you to the embeddable map customizer (EMC). The EMC allows you to set a map to the map height and width (small, medium, large or custom); the map type (static or draggable); the map styles (road, aerial, aerial w/ labels); and, add links to Bing Maps for Viewing a Larger Map or Getting Directions. Once you’ve set everything the way you want it, click Generate Code and there is your code. You copy it, then paste it into your web page and you’ll have the map you wanted.
Backend:
Dynamic Compute – We’ve moved the processing power closer to the user. Using Microsoft’s ECN, we now have Bing Maps running in data centers in 7 locations around the world. This means wherever you are around the world, you will access Bing Maps from the closest geographic node to where you are physically located.

Front End
New Navigation – We also added a subset of features to a button bar along the bottom of the welcome pane. Each button loads features on Bing Maps. Welcome loads the welcome pane; the car loads the route planner; the star loads My Places, formerly called Collections; the envelop loads the ability to share the map with someone via email, copying a URL or embedding the map into a web page (more on that below); the printer icon is for printing; and, stoplight will load a traffic overlay with flow and incident information.

Faster Cold Start:
Diet Bing Maps - The default Bing Maps home page dropped from 678kb to 484kb. It zips through the pipes much faster now.

source:
http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2009/11/10/bing-maps-gets-an-overhaul-and-some-new-features.aspx

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12 June 2009

Yahoo Maps Updated [Europe]

Yahoo Maps Updated [Europe]

Yahoo Maps New Drag Directions
Now it is possible to drag the routes...
Yahoo Maps New Drag Directions - Compare Old and New Route
Yahoo draggable routes, with option to revert back to original, also compares the route distance.

Other new features & updates
In response to users feedback Yahoo made some major improvements to Yahoo Maps

  • Faster loading time -No more waiting for the application to load - Dial-up mode removed
  • Language preference – Choose from one of the 5 European languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish and German*.
  • Interactive print page – Customize the print page to include only the information you need.
  • Personalised routing – Don’t like the route yahoo provide drag and drop the routes interactively.
  • Saved locations – For convenience, previously entered locations are automatically stored and available within Maps and elsewhere on Yahoo, such as Local and Weather.
  • Quickly look up places through auto-completion.
  • Waypoint support – Get driving directions for trips with multiple stops.
  • Save driving directions – Two places to save, Yahoo! Bookmarks and delicious
  • Zoom bar – now with the ‘+’ on top.
*Yahoo will be rolling out the same set of Maps improvements in Germany in the coming weeks.

Try it
http://tinyurl.com/NewYahoo-Maps-Routes
(above example)

Yahoo Maps Europe main sites:
http://uk.maps.yahoo.com/ (UK)
http://fr.maps.yahoo.com/ (France)
http://de.maps.yahoo.com/ (Germany)
http://espanol.maps.yahoo.com/ (Spain)

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25 May 2009

Google Maps Now Suggests Alternative Routes

Google Maps Now Suggests Alternative Routes

Google Maps Now Suggests Alternative Routes
Google Maps now in certain routes automatically creates an
alternative route.

This can be helpful for users wanting more choice when using the
driving directions from Google.
The 'suggested' option is currently available in Google Maps only
and not the Google Maps API.

The map above route with suggested routes is available with this link:

Dragging the routes is still available after a suggested route is selected.

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15 November 2007

Google Directions Tweak

Google Directions Tweak - Non Stop

The Google Directions with the draggable route (auto-recalculates your route) has had a tweak.
When you now drag the route and release at a location there is no longer an intermediate stop marker added. This makes a small but very good improvement on the results of the directions.

here is a quick example sw1 to sw2 and re-routed
Google Maps Drag Directions Update Tweak

Google Maps Drag Directions Update Tweak - Non Stop
see the route, now excludes a stop so directions are more accurate.

Simple but very useful.

Official blog post on this
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2007/11/viva-la-via.html

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14 November 2007

New Draggable Geograph Map (Beta)

New Draggable Geograph Map

Geograph Map just got easier to use...

Geograph Draggable Map Beta
New draggable maps using Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 mapping (Landranger series)
What is Geograph?
"The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and you can be part of it."

Draggable Geograph Map of Great Britain (beta)

64% complete for the British Isles
http://www.geograph.org.uk/numbers.php

How is this done?
Servers “Jam” “Toast”, “Scone” and “Crumpet” (a good start to any day)
http://blog.dixo.net/2006/07/28/geograph-servers-coming-to-life/

This site uses an Educational Licence from the Ordnance Survey
"Great Britain 1:50 000 Scale Colour Raster Mapping © Crown copyright Ordnance Survey. All Rights Reserved. Educational licence 100045616."

How is the done?
"But basically it just (JUST!?) involved cutting up 12GB of raw tiff files from the
OS, into more manageable png chunks using imagemagick, and then on
demand but cached on disk it cut into png tiles. The overlay is also
generated in php, ondemand and cached with memcached. And of course it
using openlayers as the client library."
Barry Hunter (nearby.org.uk)

Mapperz thanks Barry for sharing his time and tweaks on this. Well done and keep up the good work.




Just a quick note to UK Teachers out there - the 16th November is the last date to get Free Ordnance Survey Maps (for 11 year olds)
http://freemaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/freemapsfor11yearolds/

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28 June 2007

Google Maps - Drag Directions (New Feature)

Update - The official post with video now available

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/directions/


Funky new feature from Google Maps - Drag Directions...on the fly.

Here's what Mapperz likes about it.

Google Maps Directions - Drag Route
Now if you grab the blue directions line on the map

Google Maps Directions - Drag Route Alternative
Google then re-calculates live on the fly new route.

Try it out

Also when you right click on the blue directions route you can specify a new destination stop.
Right Click on Map adds New Destination
Dynamic Routing is alive!!

Well done Google. :)

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