Virtual Earth: Catering to the API and Data Needs for Application Development

Abstract
Map world forum 2009

Virtual Earth: Catering to the API and Data Needs for Application Development

Alok Kumar
SENIOR PROGRAM MANAGER - LIVE SEARCH AND MSN TECHNOLOGIES
MICROSOFT
INDIA
alok.kumar@microsoft.com

Abstract

Virtual Earth by Microsoft empowers users to create engaging applications for their customers and to develop powerful ways to visualize business information by combining online maps with integrated data. At one hand, it offers a platform where developer community and enterprises can create their own custom mapping application. On the other hand, Microsoft offers a comprehensive end-to-end mapping solution to end consumers. This power and popularity of Virtual Earth has been brought to India (maps.live.co.in and dev.mapindia.live.com) as well. This exposes a wide and rich set of APIs (e.g. Virtual Earth Web Services API which offers mobile-optimized static map pushpin clustering, landmark-based routing, direct map tile access, geocoding, reverse Geocoding, and routing) and the readily usable content to all.