Multimap :: Blog

The first post on this blog was the announcement of the Multimap Open API.

In the 3½ years that have passed, the Open API has attracted a passionate group of developers building some great apps, especially based around our Ordnance Survey and Collins Bartholomew maps.

It is therefore fitting that one of the last posts on this blog also concerns important news about the Multimap Open API.

You may have seen earlier that we announced we are about to complete the movement of users from Multimap.com to Bing Maps. A number of you have asked on the forum whether this affects the Open API. We now have the last bits in place to provide you with a full reply.

To better serve you and all of our customers, our future investments will now focus solely on Bing Maps APIs and on closing any major feature gaps between Bing and Multimap. This will enable us to accelerate delivering you more mapping and location-based services innovation through one platform, across web and mobile.

Therefore, the Multimap Open API service will be discontinued on November 18th, 2011.

To prepare for this change, we will soon discontinue the registration of new Open API keys. Existing keys will continue to operate until the switch off.

We understand that this will be disappointing news for Open API developers, but there is a silver lining to this particular cloud…

Our colleagues at Bing Maps have just released a major update to the Bing Maps AJAX control. In addition to major improvements in performance, mobile support and imagery, the Bing Maps AJAX map control now includes support for Ordnance Survey and Collins Bartholomew maps.

Our commitment: We’re here to help. We have developed migration guides for both the AJAX map control and the REST web services to help get started with your planning process. The Bing Maps Developer Resources site, Bing Maps on MSDN, the Bing Community forums and the Bing Maps blog are also great resources.

From everyone at Multimap, thank you to all Open API developers for your support over the past 3½ years, and we hope to see you build some great new apps on Bing Maps.

In September, we let you know that Multimap.com is moving to Bing Maps, and that we were about to start moving Multimap users over to Bing Maps.

Since then, we’ve been moving hundreds of thousands of you over to Bing Maps every week, and Multimap users now account for a significant percentage of Bing Maps users, especially here in the UK.

We’ve been very happy with the results of this effort so far.  From the feedback that you continue to provide us with, and the data that we collect, we can see that once users have tried Bing Maps for the first time, most return just as frequently as before.  We can also see an increasing number of distinct queries, and greater interaction with many of the features of Bing Maps.

Last night, we released some great new features on Bing Maps including much improved performance, making Bing Maps an even better home for Multimap users.

So today, we are announcing that we expect to complete the movement of Multimap users to Bing Maps by next week, and at that point Multimap.com will be switched off.

As always, there is more information at the Multimap is moving microsite. You can also find out more about Bing Maps at the Discover bing site, and the Bing Maps blog. Finally, you can talk to us, and other users, in the Bing Community forums.

From everyone at Multimap.com, thank you for your support, and we look forward to seeing you all at Bing Maps.

It’s nearly 3 years since Multimap joined the Bing family.

As you can imagine, some things have changed (in fact “Bing” wasn’t even called “Bing” back then, “Live Search” anyone!?…), but many things have stayed the same…

Most importantly, we continue to value you, our users, for making Multimap your destination of choice. Thank you.

Since becoming part of Bing we have been working towards bringing the best of both worlds of Multimap and Bing closer together. We wanted to make important Multimap features available to all Bing Maps users, and introduce you to Bing’s rich features and wider search capabilities.

We knew that these were big changes that we couldn’t make overnight and while we’ve had a bump or two along the way, we take very seriously the responsibility of making changes to a site that you rely on every day.

Last year, the Multimap team built a new version of Bing Maps for the UK and we invited you all to try it via a small link on our homepage. We even put a link on Bing Maps that allowed you easily come back to Multimap if you didn’t like it. Despite it being only a small link, in a very short space of time tens of thousands of you took up that opportunity, and most of you kept using Bing Maps and didn’t come back to Multimap (don’t worry, we didn’t take it personally…).

Looking at the feedback many of you gave us, and the data we collect from the site we were able to see what users liked, and most importantly, what wasn’t so popular.

We could see that users loved the speed of Bing Maps, the large maps and the lack of banner adverts. We saw that users interacted more with the map, and used more of the features and data within the site.

We also saw that we needed to improve a number of other areas of Bing Maps, so we…

• expanded our map data, including our Ordnance Survey maps, made our maps clearer, and improved our Bird’s Eye and Aerial imagery
• added detailed restaurant and hotel information, from partners such as TopTable and Booking.com
• created more flexible route planning, the ability to drag to customise your route, and save your destination history
• produced FAQs and a tutorial to guide you through the most popular features

To test whether the changes had been successful, we needed to get more users to try Bing Maps. Tens of thousands of users may sound like a lot of people, but it’s only a fraction of the users who use Multimap every month.

A few months ago we started automatically selecting some of you to give Bing Maps a try when you accessed Multimap (actually, when we say a few, we actually mean hundreds of thousands of you…). We still gave you a link to come back to Multimap, but once again the overwhelming majority of you kept using Bing Maps, and we saw that you used it even more than you used Multimap.

So why are we telling you this? Well…

Between now and the end of 2010, we plan to move all Multimap users to Bing Maps.

Big news, eh?!…

That’s a lot of users to move over. The hundreds of thousands of users that have moved to Bing Maps are but a fraction of the total number of users who regularly use Multimap, and we want to do this carefully and at a gradual rate.

You’ll know when you have been moved as you will see the Bing Maps site, with a special message for Multimap users…

You’re ready to move now? Great! Simply visit http://www.multimap.com/bing/try and we’ll move you over to Bing Maps right away, and we’ll also remember this choice in the future.

If you have Multimap bookmarks in your browser, we’ll also make sure that these still work with Bing Maps, although you can update your bookmarks to http://www.bing.com/maps/ now if you like. Any old Multimap links you may find on websites or old emails will also continue to work.

There is a lot more information about this important news at our new Multimap is moving microsite. You can also find out more about Bing Maps at the Discover bing site. Finally, you can talk to us, and other users, in the Bing Community forums.

If you’re a Multimap business services customer, rest assured that it is business as usual and that your service will continue to run. Our support teams are ready as always to deal with any queries.

Anyone who’s moved home knows that it’s a bitter sweet experience. The anticipation and excitement of future possibilities sometimes mixes with feelings of anxiety and a longing for times past. For those of us who have been with Multimap through the years there is a touch of sadness as the Multimap name passes, but most importantly we look forward with great excitement to welcoming you all to our new home at Bing Maps.

Once again, thank you.

Today we‘ve refreshed the Multimap homepage and we’ve added a link to try out our latest handy work on Bing maps UK. You’ll spot the Multimap influence with Ordnance Survey and London Street maps (Collins Bartholomew), plus some all new features like draggable routes and a new London tube overlay.

Try these:

• Drag your route to tailor your journey,
• Additional public transport information and a London Tube map overlay,
• What’s nearby – book restaurants with Toptable, find hotels and other businesses at your location

You can check out the Bing blog for more release details:
http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2009/11/12/released-bing-maps-uk.aspx

In my opinion this years AGI conference could be the best Geocommunity event to date. The program speaks for itself and is looking pretty exciting, lots of geoweb workshops, presentations, comedy, soap box rants and more civilised discussions. Bing Maps/Multimap will be presenting and will have a stand again this year, so come and say hello and have a play on Microsoft Surface! I am particularly looking forward to seeing the presentation from The Grammar School at Leeds, where we will see school children talking about their GIS mapping projects, very inspiring. We have also teamed up with ESRI for a competition to win a Xbox, see this link for more details.

The bad news is that the 2 and 3 day passes are sold out, but the good news is there are still some 1 day passes available. A little secret, if you read this blog, you could get cheap day rates.

So what are you waiting for?

Conference season is approaching and the call for papers is closing this week on two conferences that are well worth attending. Both these conferences are great value for money, especially in the current economic conditions.

First up is the AGI’s GeoCommunity conference.

Not many people are aware on how much the conference has changed in the last 3 years. Historically it was based on a large Exhibition with a smaller conference format (Birmingham NEC and Earls Court days). While it was a good format for those days, over the years delegate numbers have declined. Under the leadership of the current Chairman Steve Feldman, it has been completely overhauled and now the focus is on the conference with a smaller exhibition.

Last year the conference attracted over 600 delegates who participated in more than 50 workshops, presentations and debates. This year, the conference is taking a further step forward and will unite the traditional GIS industry with the Neogeography geo community with the help of Christopher Osborne the founder of the London based #Geomob meetup group. You will also see a presence from Microsoft Virtual Earth and Andrew Turner, a well known Neogeography Evangelist will be the first plenary speaker.

The conference is a two day event in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and with early bird prices of £275 (Member) or £355 (non member) including accommodation, it’s extremely good value for money. If you want to present a paper or workshop, you can get it even cheaper.

The Call for papers closes this Friday May 1st, so jump in there!

Follow GeoCommunity at http://twitter.com/GeoCommunity
Join the GeoCommunity discussion on LinkedIn at http://twurl.nl/lrf4lh

Second up is the OpenStreetMap State of the Map conference. Multimap has supported the OpenStreetMap movement in the past, sponsoring them on several occasions.  Members use the GPS capability of mobile phones and aerial imagery, to create their own map of the world. The maps they create are available for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap community wants everyone to take part and they recently passed 100,000 mappers.

There is something in OpenStreetMap for everyone. Walkers, runners and cyclists can add running trails, footpaths and cycle routes to the map. Once you’ve been mapping a few times it becomes part of your hobby. The map below shows cycle paths in central Berlin.

The conference is in Amsterdam, from the 10th - 11th July 2009. The conference will feature three days of talks and is not to be missed by anyone interested in joining OpenStreetMap’s mapping project. Weekend tickets cost just €100 - and until Sunday 29th March you can get your ticket at a special early bird rate of €75.

The call for presentations closes this Sunday on the 3rd May 2009, and you can find out more about the event here.

Readers of this blog might feel that we talk rather a lot about the different map styles that we offer on multimap.com.

For many people, the simple style of maps that sites such as multimap.com offer work best for them, particularly when driving.

We are also frequently reminded by you however, that there are many other purposes for a using a map, rather than just driving. Anyone who loves things such as walking, cycling, climbing, camping, surfing and fishing in the UK, will know that nothing beats an Ordnance Survey map.

Multimap.com has offered the popular 1:50k Landranger maps as an alternative map style for some time, and I’m really pleased to announce the addition of the popular 1:25k Explorer maps on Multimap.com that add even more detail, depth and accuracy.

Read the rest of this entry »

The BBC have been running an interesting debate lead by Mary Spence (the president of the British Cartographic Society), in which she argues that online mapping sites are “wiping out history”. This is an area which we feel quite passionate about too. As mentioned in previous posts, we have invested lots of effort in providing standard maps as-well as traditional maps created by skilled cartographers who are firmly keeping history alive. For example:

• The famous Ordnance Survey Land Ranger map of Great Britain (as mentioned by Mary Spence)
• Collins Bartholomew London street maps
• Malaysia street maps by local Malaysian cartographers Navi&Map
• ..and many more to come!

That said, there is nothing wrong with our standard maps too, having a simple “base map” enables our users and customers to overlay their own content that is relevant to their needs. After all, one of the principal elements of cartographic design is a map “must be designed foremost with consideration to the audience and its needs” (Robinson, A.H,1953). There is not one size that fits all for our users. Online map users have many diverse needs, and in the last few years have become extremely educated in the use of online mapping sites and personal navigation devices. This means that online map providers like ourselves have had to be flexible, offering choice.

So if you are planning a holiday to the Lake District, please try our Ordnance Survey Land Ranger maps or if you are planning a city break you might want our standard maps with some landmarks and perhaps even some Bird’s Eye imagery, or if you simply want a map of wi-fi hot spots in Paris, then please take one. The choice is yours!

We’ve been releasing a lot of new Aerial and Bird’s Eye imagery lately, so we thought it was time to do the same for our maps.

The keen-eyed among you may have noticed that we released maps of many new areas over the weekend on Multimap.com. We’ve combined our street level maps in Europe, with maps from Microsoft Virtual Earth that provide you with improved country and region level maps worldwide and new street level coverage of including…

Asia - Japan
Africa - Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, South Africa
Eastern Europe -Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia
Central and South America - Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile

These new maps are available on Multimap.com today, and will be available via our Multimap API for business customers and Open API for developers over the next few weeks.

Our friends on the Microsoft Virtual Earth team have also just delivered another 20TB of Aerial and Bird’s Eye images, which also includes some new UK imagery. A big thank you to them all!!

Enjoy!!

We announced last month that we’re partners for Mashed 08 which is taking place this weekend at Alexandra Palace. To mark this occasion we’ve added some new features to the Multimap Open API that many of you have been asking for.

• High Resolution Aerial and Bird’s Eye from Microsoft Virtual Earth - All the great imagery that you see on Multimap.com is now available in the Open API.
• Local Information - As well as offering direct access to geocoding, routing, and static map services through our web services API, we have today added the ability to directly query our local information databases through the same REST style interface. This will enable you to mash data such as cash points, transport links, wi-fi hotspots and Wikipedia articles into your applications. Special thanks go to TeleAtlas and TotalHotspots for helping to make this happen.

In the last week or so, many of you told us that you have wanted to build mash-ups with data stored in OSGB x/y co-ordinates and grid references that are tricky to use with mapping API’s such as the Open API (which only tend to support WGS84 co-ordinates). To help make this easier, we’re making available a beta feature that allows you transform these co-ordinates so that you can place them onto our maps. We’ve put it together so quickly, that we haven’t had chance to finish to documentation for it, but Richard’s blog has much more.

We’ve also taken the opportunity to smarten up the sign-up process to make it more straightforward to get an API key. Existing Open API users will need to go back to the sign-up page and update your API key to get access to the new features.

For those of you going to Mashed, we’ve created a cheat sheet that has links to all the Multimap and Microsoft tools you can use, along with code snippets and links to tools and libraries that others have built.

The final batch of tickets has been released, but you’ll need to be quick as the tickets we released went in a few hours.

There will be a bunch of us wandering around at Mashed all weekend wearing Multimap t-shirts, and hopefully we’ll camp out in a corner armed with beanbags and Xbox’s, so come over and say hello.

See you there!!