You might notice some big changes have come to the North Pole experience at NORADSanta.ORG this year.  Developer elves have implemented a new JavaScript based site hosted in six Azure Regions worldwide! While that might be fun for developers the real fun can be found in the updated games, new cool maps and faster web site experience when jumping around on the site!   Want to try what’s new? On the top right corner you see “English” but click that and you can change the site to one of eight other languages, now including Korean Hover your mouse over the Village to see great options ..read more

Grey Matter, a Value Added Reseller for Bing Maps, hosts an annual ISV Partner Day event to showcase the latest Microsoft technologies in front of hundreds of ISVs through breakthrough workshops and networking sessions. What is ISV Partner Day? ISV Partner Day, hosted by Grey Matter, is a full-day technical conference focused on helping ISVs accelerate their SaaS business with the support of Microsoft technologies. ISV Partner Day is the only Microsoft-focused tech event in the UK dedicated to ISVs, SaaS providers, and application builders. Grey Matter will be hosted twelve sessions across thr ..read more

Enjoy a less stress-filled commute with time to leave, recommended routes, incident alerts and more! Just go to https://www.bing.com/maps/traffic to get the link or use the QR Code in the image below to download the app from your app store ..read more

Microsoft Maps has a dedicated Maps AI (artificial intelligence) team that has been taking advantage of Microsoft’s investments in deep learning, computer vision, and ML (machine learning). Applying all that cool tech to mapping has yielded many useful datasets and our latest worldwide dataset includes a whopping 1.2B building footprints and 174M building height estimates from Bing Maps imagery between 2014 and 2023 including Maxar, Airbus, and IGN France imagery. This release brings with it all the building footprint data from prior releases and includes the following regions: Image Show ..read more

Throwing a great event can make all the difference for a growing business, but conference planning is a difficult task to pull off on your own–whether that’s juggling accommodations or finding the ideal venue that works for everyone. Bing Maps API lends a helping hand by giving you the tools you need to build the perfect event planning software application with location intelligence. A better way to plan Unless you happen to get lucky, chances are that your attendees will be spread out across many different hotels. This means that each of them will have a different travel time to the venue, an ..read more

According to web search results, there are three main ways to use Bing Maps in a low code solution: You can use Microsoft Power Platform, which includes Bing Maps, to build a website with Power Pages. This is a tool that allows you to create web pages without writing code. You can drag and drop Bing Maps components and customize them with properties and formulas. If you have a WordPress site, a bing search like https://www.bing.com/search?q=Bing+Maps+Wordpress suggests quite a few options: Leverage the Embed a map in your website - Bing Maps experience Create a Custom Map URL ..read more

Selecting new sites for expansion, whether that’s a new distribution center or just another office, is a natural part of growing a business. Along with building site plans, managers have to weigh several different factors to find the ideal new location, including commute times for existing and new employees, proximity to competitors, and access to suppliers. Bing Maps API gives you the tools to do all that and more, powered by location intelligence and spatial data. Site planning with location intelligence Consider the scenario where you are planning to move your office to a new city unfamilia ..read more

Smart Sales Territory Management using Maplytics and Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM! Are you a Manager who wants a permanent solution for your sales reps that unknowingly act on each other’s Leads?  Do you have clients outside of convenient travel areas making scheduling visits a challenge? Is your company looking to branch out sales beyond your current zone but are unsure of how to build the logistics infrastructure required for such expansion? Well then, the common solution to your woes lies in defining Sales Territories! Defining Sales Territories Targeting markets in a country ..read more

Broadband mapping and technology have improved by leaps and bounds in recent years, particularly in critical sectors like education and healthcare. Unfortunately, not everyone gets access to these tech resources, a form of inequity that is fiercely making its presence known as more schools and offices turn to hybrid methods of learning and working. Mapping platforms like Bing Maps API are providing a way to push digital equity, helping governments and businesses make a difference with targeted action. Identifying underserved areas The Digital Equity Data Dashboard is a great example of the map ..read more

The Microsoft Maps AI Team has detected 47.8M km of all roads and 1.16M km of missing roads from Open Street Maps (OSM). These new roads were detected using Bing Maps imagery collected between 2020 and 2022 including sources from both Maxar and Airbus. The complete set of roads is also shared on Github with the open data community and is freely available for download and use under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL). How did they do it? Using a Neural network architecture and dataset of course! The Microsoft Maps AI team’s network was based on UNet and ResNet and the following p ..read more