Skip to main content

Virtual Earth Mashup does web services one better

Ken posted this last week but I haven't had a chance to try it out.

Now that I have - I have to say, "wow - that was easy".

I had previously signed up to the MapPoint web services to see how we could use those. I'm sorry but the whole registration and entire process of using the web services made it a chore. The Virtual Earth SDK is how every web tool should offer itself over the web.

I love MapPoint (although I have a separate post brewing in me about my latest trip through Penn State with it) - but the fact that I could say "Show me directions" and then switch over to the source code tab to copy and paste it into my very own web page totally rocks.

Well done! This should be a model for how VS automatically creates web services - it's not enough to show the sample call, show an example of how it works and then show the code behind it.

Does it dumb down developers? I don't think so - this is just like "Full Code Intellisense" - let me tell you what I want to do, you give me the starting point and I'll take it from there. (and while i'm sure there are some code jockeys out there who believe that Intellisense is the single worst idea in the world - I'm sure most beg to differ)

The Virtual Earth Interactive SDK

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .

From Writing to AI: the pattern repeats itself

When I was ten years old, my dad bought a computer and, thanks to an advertising supplement in a Superman comic I read, it was a TRS-80. A month later, he dragged the entire family (my mom and brother were not the most enthusiastic) to a class at Radio Shack teaching how to use microcomputers. At the time, I understood why my mom wasn’t that excited: the computer was yet another gadget in the house. But today I find it fascinating. My mother went to Vassar in the 50s. She learned how to type — not a common skill at the time — but it opened doors. Her ability to communicate effectively led her to a career in adult education and later communications work with the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). This isn’t a nostalgia post. Today, the ability to use artificial intelligence, be it through Copilot or simply writing the right prompt, is becoming a critical skill. But is it really that novel? In the 1500s and 1600s, the printing press gradually made reading accessible beyond cler...

Programmers vs. Developers vs. Architects

I received an email this morning from Brandon Savage 's newsletter. Brandon's a PHP guru (works at Mozilla) but his newsletter and books have some great overall perspectives for developers of all languages. However, this last one (What's the difference between developers and architects?) kind of rubs me the wrong way. Either that, or I've just missed the natural inflation of job descriptions. (maybe, it's like the change in terminology between Garbage man and Waste Engineer or Secretary and Office Administrator) So maybe it's just me - but I think there's still a big difference between Programmer, Developer and then of course, architect. The key thing here is that every role has a different perspective and every one of those perspectives has value. The original MSF create roles like Product Manager, Program Manager, Developer, Tester, etc - so every concept may pigeon hole people into different roles. But the statements Brandon makes are often distinction...