Bing Maps Revamp - Draggable Routes

Bing Maps Revamp - Draggable Routes


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


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.

View Larger Map
Get Directions
View Bird's Eye

• 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

The Met Office Weather Maps - October 2009 update

The Met Office Weather Maps - October 2009 update

The biggest difference is speed, layers of weather data have improved and load even faster.

The rainfall layer shows you a radar image of rain across the country. The different colours show different intensities of rain, from dark blue (least severe rain) to white (most severe).

Faster radar and coverage expanded users will find the 'Tools' easier to control opacity (even in timeline mode).

Timeline: (animated weather in time lapse)

The timeline has been improved due to the layers speed, one of the most important parts of the weather map. By clicking on timeline, you can see recent observations or forecast weather.

The weather that is being displayed on the map has its date and time shown on the timeline, and its segment is highlighted in green.

Note that segments on the left-hand side (weather already happened) have a grey bottom. Segments on the right (which show show weather forecasts) have a green bottom.

As your mouse moves over each segment, you will see the date and time of the information, shown in light blue. Click the segment to display the weather you're hovering over.

With some options, there is a play button shown next to the timeline. Clicking it will step through the information one segment at a time. This can be very useful to see how rainfall or cloud is moving across your area. Click the pause button to stop the animation.

Layers that can't be animated show a play button with a red line through it.

The locations box now allows you to store up to 8 places, for quick navigation to those points on the map.


The pressure layer now shows text and lines called isobars. Each isobar connects points that have the same atmospheric pressure.


Require imperial measurements?, then they are available in preferences.
Welsh is in the pipeline but not available currently.


National Parks (Leisure areas) have now got there own unique weather warnings, specifically to highlight Blizzards, Heavy snow, Storm force winds,Gales, Severe chill effect, Persistent extensive hill fog, Thunderstorms and Heavy persistent rain.

See previous posts on this topic versions
http://mapperz.blogspot.com/2009/06/met-office-google-maps-weather.html
http://mapperz.blogspot.com/2009/07/best-uk-google-map-api-mashup-ever.html
(note suggestions have been picked up on)

Brand New Google Maps API v3

Brand New Google Maps API v3 (in Labs)

Just released... and its even faster....lots of code changes...

"Welcome to the release of version 3 of the Google Maps API. This JavaScript API will look similar to the existing version 2 of the Google Maps API. However, much has changed under the hood: Version 3 (called V3 within this document) has been designed to load fast, especially on mobile browsers such as Android-based devices and the iPhone™. The initial launch has a smaller feature set than that available in the V2 API. We will migrate additional features from V2 while working to keep the size of the JavaScript code small and maintain our optimized loading speeds. We welcome your feedback and comments on this version of the Google Maps API within the Google Maps API V3 discussion group."

Major Changes:

• No API keys required! so can embed in RSS readers

• Geocoding API has been overhauled!

• Model–view–controller (MVC) based - so faster downloading javascript!

• New API Group (V3)

example of code changes:

function initialize() {
var myOptions = {
zoom: 4,
center: new google.maps.LatLng(-33, 151),
navigationControl = false,
scaleControl: true,
mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP
}
var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"),
                             myOptions);

More Information:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/v3/
Official Blog Post:
http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2009/05/announcing-google-maps-api-v3.html

ESRI ArcGIS 9.2 - Tips and Tricks (Updated)

updated 16/11/2007
So ArcGIS 9.2 and with Service Pack 4 installed.
and still going slow?

Here is Mapperz ArcGIS Tips and Tricks to get you more productive without the caffeine.

Okay Please note not supported by Mapperz but these methods 'help' ArcGIS run faster and give extra memory allocation.

You will have to log on your system as an administrator to make these tweaks

Before ArcGIS the Operating System should be tuned for ArcGIS.

Based on Windows XP Pro Starting Point

Make XP Run for ARCGIS better

RAM, Virtual Memory, Pagefile and all that stuff
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555223

How to set performance options in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308417/

Edit the Boot.ini My Computer>Properties>Advanced>Start Up and Recovery>Edit (Boot.ini)

/MAXRAM

If using an AMD Processor switch off 'Data Execution Protection'
* A common problem this is left on and some ArcGIS code is detected as 'bad' code therefore arcgis install will roll back
and unistall.

NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSOFF


http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/
information/bootini.mspx

How to configure SQL Server to use more than 2 GB of physical memory
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/274750
SQL Server 2GB

Increases the size of the user process address space from 2 GB to 3 GB
(and therefore reduces the size of system space from 2 GB to 1 GB).
Giving virtual-memory
intensive applications such as database servers a larger address space can improve their performance

/3GB

so boot.ini looks like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=AlwaysOff /MAXMEM /3GB /fastdetect

Now install ArcGIS 9.2 with the service pack 4
(you can make these changes after you have installed ArcGIS)

Got Floating licenses?
If so and you want to share Arc/Info licenses but allow the user to use ArcGIS you can add ArcView single license to the Desktop Administrator.

It is very simple to do this. Just add the ArcView DVD to the DVD and got to install it. It will detect that ArcInfo is already installed and adds a component into desktop administrator.




ArcGIS Improvements

C:\arcgis\Utilities\AdvancedArcMapSettings.exe
Change
Jet Engine to 120000 from the default 9600
This allows more records to be written from memory to shapefile/geodatabase


Printing Large Plots? (over 40 inches)
http://support.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=knowledgebase.
techarticles.articleShow&d=30516

Resizing from 42 inches to 60 inches
arcview\arcpress\etc directory
arcexe9x\etc\device1.dat file
To make the RTL drivers print wider than 36":
in the four lines beginning with 'RTL', change '10350' to '12150' to print 42" wide
'14550' to print 50" wide
and '17550' to print 60" wide

Finally got a PC with or over 2GB of RAM?
make the page file size bigger

Using RegEdit (Only do this if you know what it is)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\
SessionManager\MemoryManagement

c:\pagefile1\pagefile.sys 3000 4000
c:\pagefile2\pagefile.sys 3000 4000
c:\pagefile3\Pagefile.sys 3000 4000

Source:
Overcoming the 4,095 MB paging file size limit in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/237740


and a last tip is those pesky *.aux files that ArcGIS creates for raster display - delete them by a dos batch file and apply it to your start up (aux_delete.bat)

ECHO OFF
ECHO .
ECHO .
ECHO .
ECHO ***************************************
ECHO * *
ECHO * DELETING TEMPORARY AUX FILES... *
ECHO * *
ECHO ***************************************
ECHO .
ECHO .
ECHO ON
cd c:\data
cd d:\data
del *.aux /s
exit

*change c:\data & cd d:\data to your own raster locations

that should make ArcGIS go a little faster.

This post is a result of user experience and Microsoft Pages and ESRI Support.
Use at your own risk.

Use the ESRI Web Based Help - this is more up-to-date than the Installed version.