Silverlight Maps and Earthware

Is Microsoft Bing Maps Silverlight the future of internet marketing? The technology is still so new that no-one knows the answer, but here at Earthware, we think it might. Silverlight maps allow so much more than has previously been possible within a mapping API. As we are exploring the “Art of the Possible” with clients we find ourselves saying “Think more Jon Snow BBC news than aerial photos with a placemark”.

We are proud to have worked closely with the Microsoft team during the development and beta stages of Silverlight for Bing Maps. This was why we were one of the first in the world to launch a Silverlight maps application which showed live Tweets and deep zoom on the map. Whilst the Bing Maps Silverlight Twitter application was a relatively small app, it was shown throughout the world at MIX 2009, Bing Maps Partner Events, Bing Maps Developer Events and SQL Spatial 2010 as an example of Silverlight Bing Maps in action.

Our Silverlight Twitter map was also a key reason why Microsoft chose Earthware to design, develop and deliver the Bing Maps World Tour application featured on www.microsoft.com/maps. This app was ground breaking as it used both Bing Maps Silverlight and Microsoft Azure cloud hosting when both were very new technologies.

Brian Norman, co-founder of Earthware is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for his contributions to the Bing Maps community and a co-founder of the Bing Maps User Group in the UK. As Brian says “As a dot NET developer, Silverlight is a dream as it enables us to reuse our existing skills to create rich interactive user interfaces within a mapping environment”.

About Silverlight Mapping

Bing Maps Silverlight allows:

• Fully integrated deep zoom (zooming seamlessly through satellite, aerial, bird’s eye and streetside imagery)
• Much improved performance over traditional APIs (such as Bing Maps AJAX, Google Maps)
• Integration of multimedia into the map to create more visually appealing functionality for videos, images, Photosynth and text

For more information, please visit our blog articles on Silverlight or contact us to find out more about how you might create amazing mapping experiences using Microsoft Silverlight.