Integrating Geospatial Technology in Everyday Life

Microsoft Virtual Earth

“In the style of Google Maps” proclaimed the popular German magazine, FOCUS Online, back in July 2005. But Virtual Earth has definitely distinguished itself from its competitor since then. For better insight I spoke to Dr. Josef Kauer, Business Development Manager for Virtual Earth, and Michael Amrehn, Manager, Virtual Earth and also to Tobias Lörracher, a graduate student at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences. All three belong to the Virtual Earth Business Unit for Central & Eastern Europe based in Microsoft’s offices in Munich, Germany.

A Realistic 3D World

Bird’s Eye integrated 3D view on Las Vegas by Microsoft Virtual Earth.

Keeping an Eye on Media Events

Release 6.1 offers more cities in 3D and the functionality to draft 3D tours for the media producer. Dr. Kauer explained that one 3D city is added on average every day, while Microsoft normally publishes new material every month. “At the moment approximately 40 planes are flying on behalf of Microsoft to take aerial

photos – sometimes more, sometimes less” Kauer adds. In March 2008 Microsoft released an impressive amount, 42 terabytes, of image data including all the Austrian and Swiss sites for Euro 2008. The soccer public can thus explore these cities of interest in great detail during halftime. Moreover, the whole of Vienna will soon be available in 3D. Focusing data preparation on the locales of important media events proved its value during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. It is an important strategy for marketing the digital globes and meeting the demands of supporters worldwide who visit the host countries or follow the games on TV.

Dr. Josef Kauer, Business Development Manager for Virtual Earth.

The Euro 2008 is indeed a big issue for Virtual Earth. Media companies need graphical material about the stadiums and their surroundings for reports and broadcasts. But Virtual Earth also provides the platform to locate news from broadcasting companies and thus allow for a geo-enabled overview of newscasts. “The market is very dynamic at the moment”, states Dr. Kauer. Microsoft follows a quite different approach from Google. They do not rely solely on the innovative power of the consumers but actively prepare markets through strategic partners. Dr. Kauer explains that Microsoft delivers the platform with basic data and their partners do the mash-ups: “That is important to assure data quality, and data quality is still very important”. They contend that consumers can contribute data and applications, but then the issue of data quality becomes increasingly difficult to handle. Therefore Microsoft cooperates with partners who build mash-ups, contribute data and create applications to ensure quality. Real estate and tourism are currently the most active arenas for market preparation. It seems that high quality geographic visualization is very important for these particular sectors. For financial and insurance services as well as chain stores, familiar branch-finder services have been installed by Virtual Earth partners. Starbucks even runs such a service on mobile phones. The big advantage in using Virtual Earth is that all the rendering is done by the company’s website. A company can easily update the page display to match graphics and content elsewhere on the site. Virtual Earth provides the visualization service and everything else happens on the company’s website. The user therefore never leaves the site. That is what companies want -- to keep clicks and users on their sites. Some examples can be found on Microsoft’s Virtual Earth gallery (see links below).

Business Models

Concerning business models, Microsoft does not differ that much from its competitor. For consumers the application is free to use and it can be integrated into personal websites without any cost. If Virtual Earth is used in a professional context Microsoft offers three rate scales. First there is a transaction-based model that includes a basic fee and charges the user per click. Secondly, power users can get a flat rate for unlimited clicks, and thirdly, the business license enables flat rate access on multiple machines. Next, Microsoft offers a broadcast license that is free unless the attribution and copyright are abused. With regard to online products, the situation is different and usually handled individually by Microsoft and the respective agency. Eventually Microsoft still considers floating billboards in the free consumer applications to get some revenues by advertisements. Everything else will definitely be free of advertising.

OGC Welcomes Microsoft Again

In October 2007 Microsoft re-joined the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) after a multi-year hiatus. The memberships of Google and Microsoft mark a big step in the history of the OGC. “In its early years, OGC was supported primarily by developers of geospatial tools for vertical markets, such as ESRI and Autodesk. The recent addition of Google and Microsoft represents a sea change”, said David Schell, OGC Chairman and CEO, according to the October 29, 2007 release of Government Computer News (GCN). “That will provide the very stabilizing and constructive influence within the consortium, and the consortium’s allies are going to be much more confident that a responsible policy and set of best practices will result from the process. That’s terribly important for government [clients] as well as for major

corporations.” he added. David Schell’s prospects put Microsoft’s membership in a holding role to promote standards for geospatial and location-based services on a horizontal market level and produce stability for OGC ideas. Although Microsoft and Google co-jointly passed the OpenGIS KML 2.2 Encoding Standard (OGC KML) on April 14, 2008, Microsoft will not put much effort into pushing the standardization processes within the OGC in general. “That’s not our business,” stated Dr. Kauer, but he explained that Microsoft wants to keep close contact with the field of SDI in the context of its government clients.

Tobias Lörracher, graduate from the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences.

Michael Amrehn, Manager for Virtual Earth.

Microsoft Spatial

OGC membership is thus essential to maintain awareness of the requirements that are made of digital earth platforms by governments and major corporations. Hence Microsoft aims to match its products to OGC requirements. The Virtual Earth platform will be integrated into government SDI as seamlessly as possible, as is Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008. The 2008 version has full spatial support and offers two

spatial models. On the one hand is a Flat Earth planar data type that supports the OGC Simple Features for SQL Specification with approximately 70 spatial operations. It also offers a Round Earth geodetic data type with spatial indexes for both planar and geodetic data types. “Thus SQL Server becomes the data engine and Virtual Earth is the presentation layer for Spatial Business Intelligence” explains Tobias Lörracher, a graduate student who is working on his diploma thesis at the Virtual Earth Business Unit for Central & Eastern Europe for a short period of time. In his work he aims to highlight the potential of mash-ups based on Virtual Earth for business-related decision making. In that regard he focuses on enterprise mash-ups which are a combination of web-based mapping services such as Microsoft Virtual Earth, spatially enabled databases and external data like GeoRSS or KML.

Mobile Worlds

Mobile applications have recently become more and more popular. In particular, Location Based Services are in the forefront of the consumer sector as a venue for mobile social networking and mobile collaborative mapping. Microsoft offers a consumer release to build mobile clients for Virtual Earth and a rich client application for Windows Mobile that works on J2ME (Java) phones as well and is called “Mobile Search”. It offers maps, directions and business searches and a host of advanced features not possible in the browser-based application. However, Microsoft focuses mainly on the business-to-business (B2B) sector. Again, partners are developing the mash-ups and Microsoft provides its professional Virtual Earth platform. “Sometimes it’s more a B2B2C approach,” Dr. Kauer admits. “But most applications are not available on mobile phones solely. A combination of web client and mobile client is more common,” remarks Michael Amrehn. He explains that the market still has to get used to mobile applications. Therefore applications that integrate a collaborative mapping approach are considered seriously by Microsoft but their time is yet to come. A nice example of collaborative mapping is the Harley-Davidson Great Roads Explorer for the Harley-Davidson community. This Virtual Earth-based application is firstly an information tool that presents great biking roads, gas stations and hotels and thus helps members of the Harley-Davidson community organize individual activities. Secondly, members can create their own tours, add points of interest and share them with others. It is a great way to mobilize the community and create identification with the Harley-Davidson product.

Do You Believe the Sun revolves around the Earth?

Me neither! But the classic GIS industry is still somehow captured in a geo-centric approach, assiduously ignoring the demands of the broad mass. In the 16th century Nikolaus Kopernikus and Johannes Kepler dislodged the geo-centric world view – and today Microsoft and Google are dislodging the geo-centric world view of the GIS industry with geospatial integration everywhere and in various aspects of life. They are precursors of a geo-enabled information society that can access, share and integrate a vast amount of geo-information in everyday life with a simple click. Previously specialist markets for GIS software and geo-information are now expanding into the mass market, and hence GIS is becoming integrated into mass media. “It has been a game-change” Dr. Kauer concludes, and the GIS industry is torn. They enjoy a vast amount of enhanced awareness from the rise of digital globes, but at the same time they have to fear a shrinking market share as Microsoft and Google are indeed poaching in their patch. In any case, the race for the best representation of the world is still undecided, and the competition between Microsoft and Google promises ever-increasing integration of geospatial technology into everyday life.

Florian Fischer ffischer@geoinformatics.com is contributing editor GIS for Geoinformatics.

Links:

• Chris Pendleton’s “Virtual Earth, An Evangelist's Blog”: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtualearth/archive/

2008/05.aspx

• N.N. (2005): Microsofts virtuelle Erde. Available Online: www.focus.de/digital/diverses/im-google-maps-stil_aid_97236.html

• Marshall P., (2007): Microsoft Joins OGC. Available Online: www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/45310-1.html

• Microsoft’s Virtual Earth gallery: www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/platform/gallery.aspx