• [01:55] - Location API
• [15:29] - Location tracking in the background
• [21:59] - Maps
• [28:36] - Pushpins

Full course outline:

• Mod 01a: Introducing Windows Phone 8 Development Part 1
• Mod 01b: Introducing Windows Phone 8 Development Part 2
• Mod 02: Designing Windows Phone 8 Apps
• Mod 03: Building Windows Phone 8 Apps
• Mod 04: Files and Storage on Windows Phone 8
• Mod 05: Windows Phone 8 Application Lifecycle
• Mod 06: Background Agents
• Mod 07: Tiles and Lock Screen Notifications
• Mod 08: Push Notifications
• Mod 09: Using Phone Resources in Windows Phone 8
• Mod 10: App to App Communication in Windows Phone 8
• Mod 11: Network Communication in Windows Phone 8
• Mod 12: Proximity Sensors and Bluetooth in Windows Phone 8
• Mod 13: Speech Input in Windows Phone 8
• Mod 14: Maps and Location in Windows Phone 8
• Mod 15: Wallet Support
• Mod 16: In-App Purchasing
• Mod 17: The Windows Phone Store
• Mod 18: Enterprise App Architecture
• Mod 19: Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 Cross Platform Development
• Mod 20: Mobile Web

ISV Architect Evangelist Bruce Kyle talks with Jared Vogt, Avalara's CTO, about how they developed the services, how they needed to think about moving an application from their data centers into Windows Azure. When they wanted to show on a map how a tax is calculated, they turned to Windows Azure and Bing Maps. Jared provides a demo too of GeoSalesTax.com.

About Avalara

Avalara is a leader in providing sales tax service online. The company provides the sales tax calculation services as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering using Windows Server and SQL Server.

Headquartered in Bainbridge Island, WA, Avalara is the recognized leader in web-based sales tax solutions, and is transforming the sales and use tax compliance process for businesses of all sizes. Avalara’s AvaTax family of products provides end-to-end compliance solutions and is regarded as the fastest, easiest, most accurate and affordable way for companies to address their statutory tax requirements. Avalara is the industry's most trusted provider of sales and use tax automation solutions and is one of America’s fastest growing companies earning recognitions such as Microsoft’s SaaS Partner of the Year for 2010.

Other ISV Videos

For videos on Windows Azure Platform, see:

• Accumulus Makes Subscription Billing Easy for Windows Azure
• Azure Email-Enables Lists, Low-Cost Storage for SharePoint
• Credit Card Processing for Windows Phone 7 on Windows Azure
• Crowd-Sourcing Public Sector App for Windows Phone, Azure
• Food Buster Game Achieves Scalability with Windows Azure
• BI Solutions Join On-Premises To Windows Azure Using Star Analytics Command Center
• StorSimple Integrates On-Premises, Cloud Storage with Windows Azure
• How Quark Promote Hosts Multiple Tenants on Windows Azure
• NewsGator Moves 3 Million Blog Posts Per Day on Azure

The Location Service for Windows Phone 7 uses a combination of GPS, cell-tower data, and even Wi-Fi data to determine the phone's longitude, latitude, altitude, course, speed, and more.

Click here to download the source code for this app at the Silverlight for Windows Phone Code Gallery.

Engadget (via MIT’s Technology Review) uncovered a cool Microsoft Research project called “Street Slide” view. The project attempts to create a new interface for viewing the street-level photos used in online applications like Bing Maps Streetside View.

As explained on the project’s homepage, today’s mapping applications enable users to virtually visit cities by way of “immersive 360 degree panoramas, or bubbles.” Users move from bubble to bubble, but this doesn’t necessarily provide the best visual sense of a city street.

With Street Slide, the researchers took the best aspects of the “immersive bubbles” and transformed them into multi-perspective strip panoramas. You can actually slide out of a bubble to see the street from a different perspective – a strip that’s viewed from a greater difference. When viewed in this mode, the empty space above and below the strip could be used for business logos and building numbers (addresses), or even ads.

According to the MIT article, the researchers have already made a version of this technology for mobile devices, including the iPhone. “It broadens out your visual sense to cover a two-block radius,” says Michael Cohen, a senior scientist at Microsoft Research.

Who’s hoping for a WP7 phone implementation of this tech? I know I am. In case I didn’t explain this too well, you can see Street Slide in action in the video here.

This is one of Bing’s undiscovered gems, I think, since map apps that add Photosynth, Twitter, traffic, and Streetside Photos are the ones getting all the attention these days. Local Lens is certainly deserving of a deeper look too.

I was reminded of Local Lens when Matthew Hurst updated his blog with a note about an update just pushed out on Thursday, the 18th. The backend text mining systems which recognize map entity names (restaurants, shops, etc.) and addresses has been improved, he says. Now, even when an address isn’t obvious (e.g. “123 Main St.”), Local Lens can pick it up. In the example on his blog, he cited an article which read “Irving Street remained closed between 19th and 20th.” Local Lens can identify that more complex expression as an address and hyperlink it to an exact location on the map. Click the link and the map zooms right to that location. 

The only downside regarding this technology is that it has just been rolled out for a handful of major U.S. cities for now. At the moment, only Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, L.A., Miami, NYC, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle are supported. I only hope the next update will add more cities soon!

The autosuggest feature, which suggests words and phrases as you type into Bing’s search box, has been improved to include breaking news and trending topics for more timely information on events occurring now. Although not quite real-time – the feature is updated every 15 minutes – you’re still able to access the most recent news faster than ever before.

Bing Maps has added a new “mapplication” (apps that layer on to of the Bing Maps service) called “Local Events.” This new app lets you search for local events happening in your area and displays them to you as items pinned to the map. You filter the events displayed by date range or event type. When you find an event you like, you can quickly get directions, share the event info, or save the event to your “Saved Places,” too.

The Destination Maps feature is another new Bing Maps application that lets you create maps for those attending your event, whether that’s a large conference or a small house party. Using a selection tool, you outline the area with a box to encompass all the areas people are coming from. This box is saved as your Destination Map and is available for sharing. You can even pick from different map styles like Sketchy, European, American, or Treasure (pictured below).

Finally, the Bing Maps Silverlight site is leaving beta and becoming the default version for Bing Maps. Over the coming weeks, U.S. visitors with Silverlight already installed will be redirected to the Silverlight site. The change will be rolled out to a small percentage of users at first increasing to 100% “in a few weeks” notes the blog post.

ESRI has been working to extend that functionality to Windows Azure and SQL Azure.  MapIt takes advantage of SQL Azure to consume location-based data.  The MapIt spatial data service can be deployed as a role on Windows Azure and provides spatial data capabilities to applications using SQL Azure.  This provides a valuable service to folks that miss the spatial data types they were used to using in SQL Server.

Rex walked me through building a Silverlight application with their Silverlight Control Toolkit in Expression Blend.  As Rex mentions in the video ESRI has released the source code for their Silverlight toolkit controls.  You can find those on CodePlex here: http://ESRISilverlight.codeplex.com/

It sounds like ESRI has some big plans for where they want to take the MapIt product to provide even better integration with SQL Azure.

You can find out more about the ESRI MapIt product here.

The new draggable routes feature lets you customize the auto-generated route from point A to point B when using the Driving Directions feature. Now you can just grab anywhere on the route to move it around. After placing the route in the new position, Bing Maps will regenerate the route for you.

Another much-requested feature is the new embeddable maps option. You can now copy the embed code available from the “Share” button for any map and then paste the code into your website or blog. You can also further customize the map, if you wish using the “Customize View” option. This lets you adjust the height and width of the embed, choose from different map styles (aerial, aerial with labels, etc.), the map type (static or draggable), and more.

The Bing Maps search box is now smarter, too. It can understand what you want to see with less text input on your part. For example, if you want directions, you can just type the beginning destination, the word “to,” and then the end destination. For example, “Tampa, FL to Clearwater Beach, FL.” The begging or end points can even be a landmark or business listing, instead of an actual city or street. And if you’re just looking for traffic information, you can just type “[City] Traffic.” For example, “Tampa traffic.” This quickly brings up one of Bing’s unique features which shows the traffic times in your area using color-coded lines to indicate traffic speeds.

Other new features include improved zooming options, new navigational features, and “world wrap,” meaning that Bing Maps no longer stops at the international date line – you can keep moving around and around the globe while using the service.

For more details on the new options, check out the Bing Team blog post about the update.

At The Virtual Twilight Tour website, you can pull up the various locations on the map then watch related videos that show the actual locations used in the filming. (For example, did you know that Bella Italia is a real restaurant?)

You can also watch exclusive videos like the featured video called “Land of Legends” which talks about the vampires of Forks, Washington or a clip from a “Stephanie Meyer Day” event. There are also links to online photo galleries from the new movie, actor photos, and Twilight rumors on MSN’s celebrity-themed Wonderwall site.

The new Twilight application uses Bing Maps Silverlight control for location context and integration of the video and audio elements, but most visitors won’t care about that part…they’re just there to see Edward, Bella, and everything else Twilight-related that they can get their hands on.

(via the Bing Maps blog)

In conjunction with the satellite’s launch, the Bing Team announced the launch of Mission: 10000 Rockets, a program for schoolchildren which aims to teach them about rockets and rocketry. They’re asking 1000 students to submit the rocket design of the future and send it in to them. Then, a panel of scientists from across the U.S. will judge the designs and pick winners whose rockets will be turned into 3-D models. Also, all 1000 drawings will be made into a book whose sales proceeds will be given back to the schools. In addition, eight of the participating schools will be chosen at random to receive $5000 each.

Elsewhere on the ReportStorms site, registered users can share info and discuss weather-related news in the site’s forums. It’s citizen journalism for weather reporting and a social community all in one. Weather enthusiasts everywhere will love this one.  

This season, weather watchers can track these and all other future storms using the new MSNBC Hurricane Tracker. Built on top of Virtual Earth, you can pick a storm to track from the dropdown provided (the link reads “more”) to see its path displayed on a map alongside other information like wind speed, ground speed, and pressure. Circles representing the eye of the storm are color-coded to denote how strong the storm is (Category 1 – 5) and when you hover your mouse over them, the exact GPS coordinates display. The bottom left side of the screen has a graph that shows a progress of the storm over time. You can also zoom in and out, pan, and rotate the map to get a better look. The Hurricane Tracker is a really handy tool to use to see exactly where the storms are and where they are headed, too.

For anyone in the path of any of these storms, we hope you take precautions and stay safe. Good luck!

But now, with Ask’s maps gone, Jordan from Marketing Pilgrim mentions that he’s going to miss the walking directions feature which the maps provided. Well, as it turns out, Chris had already shared some sample code for walking directions in VE – it looks like it’s just a matter of someone building an app to support this.  (img via Chris Pendleton)

I'm constantly impressed by VE's imagery - even my house (which is outside of Tampa in Pasco County, Florida - an area that doesn't often get updated), shows up in both aerial and Bird's Eye view with recent images (I can tell because of our brand-new landscaping in the yard), while other mapping services still show outdated images of my neighborhood. Check to see if your house has a Bird's Eye view of it yet - you'll be impressed! (via LiveSide)