Background

The Microsoft Bing Enterprise Mapping team approached Earthware with a vision to communicate their monthly aerial and bird’s eye imagery releases to clients and partners in a more visually engaging manner.

With each month’s imagery release covering hundreds of locations worldwide, the current approach of publishing a simple list of all the locations was not demonstrating the full impact of each release. Microsoft Bing Maps was also keen to use their latest Bing Maps Silverlight control to create a visually rich, interactive web mapping application which could showcase the monthly imagery updates, as well as the possibilities that Silverlight and Bing maps together can offer.

Microsoft was also keen to host the new application on the Windows Azure platform to demonstrate the flexibility of combining Azure services with the Bing Enterprise maps.

Why Earthware?

Earthware already had extensive experience of working with Bing maps and the new Silverlight control after taking part in the closed beta program in early 2009. As part of this, Earthware produced a Twitter map demo application which Microsoft used as part of the Bing Maps Silverlight control’s release publicity. The Twitter demo also used the Azure platform.

What Did We Deliver?

• A visually rich web mapping application using Microsoft’s Bing Maps Silverlight Control and hosted on the Windows Azure platform.
• A secure back office administration area to allow the Microsoft Bing Maps team to quickly and easily add and update monthly imagery release information
• A back end database built upon the Windows Azure table storage service

Post Script

Since launching the Bing Maps World Tour, Earthware has worked with Microsoft to extend the World Tour to be used for a wider range of applications including publicising Microsoft events like the 2009 Imagine Cup. The Bing Maps World Tour has also been developed to be the main consumer site for a ‘map app’ in the Bing Maps Silverlight gallery.