Reading gets Birds Eye View on Virtual Earth and use your Wii remote to control Virtual Earth!
An historic moment happened over Christmas - Reading got Birds Eye View imagery on Virtual Earth! Here's the Microsoft UK HQ in Reading - looks like a Friday as the car park is quite empty :-) Building 5 (bottom left) is looking all shiny and new - no one has moved in there yet but the restaurant, starbucks and gym are all up and running.
In the second picture the pin shows where I sit next to the window:
Here's the Oracle shopping center:
Reading wasn't the only place in the UK to get Birds Eye Imagery either! Here is the full list of UK cities which were part of the whopping 36TB upload of data that took place on the 20th December:
Castleford, UK
Chester, UK
Crewe, UK
Darlington, UK
Dearne Valley Urban Area, UK
Harrogate/Knaresborough, UK
Hartlepool, UK
Leeds, UK
London, UK
Macclesfield/Pretsbury, UK
Middlesborough, UK
Milton Keynes, UK
Newcastle, UK
Reading/Workingham, UK
Scarborough, UK
Scunthorpe, UK
York, UK
And in other Virtual Earth news, you might not have known that you can control Virtual Earth using an XBox 360 controller or Space Navigator, but now you can add the Wii remote control to that list. This from the Virtual Earth Blog:
John at SoulSolutions just pointed me to this neat article on Via Windows Live showing how to use your wiimote to navigate in Virtual Earth. So now you have a choice - Space Navigator, XBOX controller or wiimote for surfing in Virtual Earth. Here's the video showing creator Brian Peek in action:
I still believe that Virtual Earth and Live Maps are the best mapping solution out there, and when you consider that software developers get all this stuff out of the box to add into their apps it's pretty mind blowing. Find out more about developing on Virtual Earth. Attend the Virtual Earth UK Partner Day.