MapPoint

Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze!: Go East Young Man

2007-01-23T06:05:00.000-08:00

Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze!: Go East Young Man

2007-01-21T09:14:00.001-08:00

The 6th International Semantic Web Conference

2007-01-21T08:58:00.000-08:00

---------------------------------------------------------------

##### Call for Workshop Proposals #####
The 6th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2007)
combined with the 2nd Asian Semantic Web Conference (ASWC 2007)
November 11-15, 2007 BEXCO (Busan Exhibition and Convention Center), Busan, KOREA
http://iswc2007.semanticweb.org
---------------------------------------------------------------

ISWC WORKSHOPS
==============
The ISWC 2007 Program Committee invites proposals for the WorkshopProgram of ISWC 2007, the Sixth International Semantic Web Conference,to be held November 11-15, 2007, in Busan, Korea. Workshops will be heldon 11-12 November.

GOALS
=====

The purpose of the workshops is to provide an informal setting forworkshop participants to discuss technical issues, to exchange research ideas, and to develop a community in the quickly emerging field of theSemantic Web.

We are looking for workshops that encourage discussions on social andbusiness requirements and how semantic web technologies can be made easier to deploy and operationalize in real world scenarios. Theseworkshops are expected to complement those that focus on fundamentalresearch issues and multi-disciplinary topics. Workshop proposals shouldaddress current issues related to the Semantic Web that will benefitfrom small-group information exchange and discussion. Workshops areintended to be genuine interactive events and not mini-conferences. Wewelcome workshops with creative structures and organizations thatattract various types of contributions and ensure rich interactions.

We expect to have a wide range of workshops, including those that
- focus on a specific domain of activity, e.g., finance, telecom, lifescience, digital government, etc.
- investigate social and collaborative issues and best practices withrespect to constructing and publishing Semantic Web knowledge structures,
- focus on fundamental research issues,
- discuss multi-disciplinary topics that bring together researchers fromdifferent disciplines,
- support the interaction of research and industry for the deploymentand operationalization of Semantic Web applications.

SCHEDULE
========
March 12, 2007: Workshop proposals due
April 12, 2007: Notification of proposal acceptance
May 1, 2007: URL for the workshop web page due
October 11, 2007: Electronic version of working notes for the workshop due
November 11-12, 2007: Workshop days
November 13-15, 2007: ISWC 2007 Technical Program.

SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL
=====================
Workshop proposals should be no more than 3 pages in length and shouldcontain the following information:

- The title and brief technical description of the workshop, specifyingthe goals and the technical issues that it will focus on.
- A brief discussion of why the topic is of particular interest at thistime.
- A brief description of why and to whom the workshop is of interest,the workshop audience.
- A brief description of the proposed workshop format, discussing themix of events such as paper presentations, invited talks, panels, andgeneral discussion.
- An indication of whether the workshop should be considered for ahalf-day or full-day meeting.
- A list of related workshops or similar events held in the last 3years, or to be held in 2007.
- The names and contact information (web page, email address) of theproposed organizing committee and short description of their relevantexperience.

We strongly advise having more than one organizer, preferably fromdifferent institutions, bringing different perspectives to the workshoptopic.

Workshop attendees must pay the ISWC 2007 workshop registration fee, aswell as the conference registration fee.

The ISWC2007 Workshop Co-chairs are Geert-Jan Houben (Vrije UniversiteitBrussel, Belgium) and Harith Alani (University of Southampton, UK).

Please send your proposals by March 12, 2007 and any inquiries by emailto iswc2007-workshops@few.vu.nl. Workshop proposals may be submitted inany format; Word, text or PDF.
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2006-12-19T06:48:00.000-08:00

======================================================================

Workshop on Social and Collaborative Construction of Structured Knowledge

at 16th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2007)

Banff, Canada
May 8, 2007

http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/ws/ckc2007
======================================================================

Paper submission deadline: 2 February 2007
Demo submission deadline: 12 February 2007

======================================================================

Have you ever tried developing a schema or ontology, or creating other
structured knowledge? Have you tried doing this task collaboratively with
your colleagues? How about with many of your colleagues as well as people
you've never met? Or anyone else in the world? http://www.rainbowseeker.com
Have you found the tools that
support these tasks? Do you have a list of requirements for such tools or
has your group developed tools to support collaborative acquisition of
structured knowledge in general and ontologies and schemas in particular?

We are soliciting contributions to the workshop on Social and Collaborative
Construction of Structured Knowledge. The great success of Web 2.0 is mainly
fuelled by an infrastructure that allows web users to easily create, share,
tag, and connect content and knowledge. Although the general topic of
integrating Web 2.0 with the Semantic Web has been and will be the focus of
high profile conference panels, we are still far from understanding how the
two topics relate to each other. In this workshop, we would like to explore
how the power of creating web content in a social environment can be used to
acquire, formalize and structure knowledge. The workshop will address the
topic of web-based collaborative construction of structured knowledge in
general, and ontology development in particular. So far, most of the tools
for ontology development and knowledge acquisition are stand-alone tools, or
tools designed to support work of small well-coordinated teams. This
workshop will investigate how best to use the "wisdom of the crowd" to
reduce time and cost of constructing and maintaining knowledge structures in
any language and level of complexity. We will discuss tools that support
various steps of the life cycle in the "open" collaborative development of
ontologies, from collective "brainstorming" to evaluation, maintenance and
extension of existing ontologies.

We solicit three types of contributions:

1. Research papers analyzing the process of collaborative knowledge
acquisition, requirements for tool support, and case studies of
collaborative ontology-development projects. The topics relevant to this
discussion include issues related to collaborative construction of
structured knowledge and ontologies:
* collaborative creation and editing of structured knowledge
* requirements for collaborative tools
* user-specific views of ontologies
* extracting structure and ontologies from tags and annotations
* evaluation of collaborative tools
* collaborative evaluation of ontologies
* user interfaces for collaborative tools for creating structured
knowledge
* trust in collaborative construction of knowledge
* case studies of collaborative ontology-development project.

2. Demos and working prototypes of systems that support social
collaborative construction of structured knowledge. The systems should fall
under the general description above. Furthermore, participants in the demo
session must commit to supporting the evaluation (see the next item). This
support will include working with the workshop organizers to develop a set
of tasks for the evaluation, instrumenting their tools to log basic usage
and contribution information. Please contact workshop co-chairs for more
information.

3. Evaluation of system demos submitted to the workshop. We expect that
all workshop participants (and, in particular paper and demo authors) to
participate in a formative evaluation of the http://mp2kmag.com
demos submitted to the
workshop. The developers of the demo systems will make their systems
available to the workshop participants. The workshop organizers, together
with the demo developers, will create a list of tasks to use for the demo
evaluation and other details. The evaluation will run for 2 or 3 weeks
before the workshop and a good part of the workshop will be devoted to the
discussion of the evaluation, and a prize will be handed out to the most
informative review.

Accepted papers and demo descriptions will http://www.mapforums.com appear in the workshop
proceedings and will be included in the WWW2007 conference CD.

IMPORTANT DATES

==================

Paper submission: 2 February 2007
Notification of paper acceptance: 9 March 2007
Camera-ready papers: 26 March 2007
Demo submission: 12 February 2007
Notification of demo acceptance: 9 March 2007
Camera-ready demo description: 26 March 2007
Evaluation: 30 April 2007
Workshop: 8 May 2007

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

=========================

Research papers: up to 10 pages. Deadline is 2 February 2007.

Demos: descriptions of up to 4 pages, in the WWW2007 format; PDF submissions
only. Deadline is 12 February 2007. http://softwarewire.blogspot.com
If you are planning to submit a demo,
then please email the workshop chairs as soon as possible and let them know
of your demo.

All submissions need to be in PDF, and follows the WWW2007 format.
Submissions are to be made via the workshops submission web site:
http://www2007.org/submission-workshops.php.

Organizing committee

=========================

Natasha Noy (co-chair) Stanford University

Harith Alani (co-chair) University of Southampton

Gerd Stumme University of Kassel

Peter Mika Free University, Amsterdam

York Sure University of Karlsruhe

Denny Vrandecic University of Karlsruhe

REAL SOFTWARE

2006-12-12T06:30:00.000-08:00

VIRTUAL PRINTER FOR YOUR REAL SOFTWARE

Two Pilots Development Service offers a http://news.mapvisitors.com developer a customized Virtual Printer Driver to be included in his/her own software product.

In the time of fast information technology evolution, people more and more often deal with the virtual papers. So if you are an actual developer, your software is certainly due to work on-the-fly with various virtual documents.
Equip your software product with Custom Virtual Printers and you will be able to:
- generate an output in the form of standard raster or http://www.mp2kmag.com/rss/articles.php vector formats from your program or from any other software application meant to produce printing forms;
- modify a virtually-printed document before sending it for actual printing;
- import documents from other applications. Imported documents can be converted to your format with the use of EMF images provided by the printer.

Virtual printer supports the custom paper sizes, various resolutions, and multilanguage interface.

You will get a printer with desired name, installation and uninstallation modules, and integration instructions with the samples.

The fee that you pay when you purchase a http://www.mapforums.com printer is your only expense. You can distribute them with your applications without any additional fees. Two Pilots Development Service will make all additional customization to make sure that the printer fully conforms to your requirements.

A source code is also available for purchasing. Its license allows the code modifications. Please see the Virtual Printer Drivers Custom Development Service home page for more details:
http://www.colorpilot.com/emfprinterpilot.html

2006-11-24T07:52:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to point out a few new blogs that I set up recently.

http://news.mapvisitors.com - This is for news and information about the http://www.mapvisitors.com service for creating a map of your web site visitors.

http://www.rainbowseeker.com/journal - This recounts my parents trip around the Great Loop!

http://www.mapforums.com - While not technically a blog, this is a vBulletin forum for MapPoint and Virtual Earth discussion.

http://blog.new-eastside.com - This web site discusses news and information about the New Eastside neighborhood in Chicago, IL.

S&T 2007

2006-09-24T18:12:00.000-07:00

It appears Streets & Trips 2007 will be released soon. Before Christmas! AutoRoute 2007 is expected to follow a week later.

More information can be found on here -- Street & Trips.

WIKI-BASED KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING

2006-07-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

Apologies for cross-posting #####################
--- ###############
# International Workshop on #########
# ######
# WIKI-BASED KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING ####
# (WIBKE2006) ###
## ##
## http://wibke2006.semwiki.org ##
### August 21-23, 2006, #
### Odense, Denmark #
###### #
########### -> CALL FOR POSTERS / DEMOS <-
#################

IMPORTANT DATES

* Poster/Demo submission deadline: 10th August 2006

* Workshop date: 23th August 2006

* Second Int. Symposium on Wikis 21-23th August 2006
(www.wikisym.org)
** TALKS FROM: Ward Cunningham,
Doug Engelbart, Angela Beesley,
and many more!

* The ACM Hypertext Conference 23-25th August 2006
(http://www.ht06.org/)

* Camera ready due: 4th September 2006
(yes, after the workshop)

TOPCIS OF INTEREST
* Methods employing the Wiki Way in knowledge engineering,
* Concepts and strategies for integrating domain experts
and end users into the knowledge engineering process,
* Methods for automatic, Wiki-based knowledge elicitation
from collaborative environments,
* Methods for supporting the creation of structured and
(partially) formalised personal knowledge bases
* Policies, Lancaster authentication and trust within agile collaborative
knowledge engineering scenarios,
* Strategies and methods joining Web 2.0, Wiki and Semantic
Web technologies for knowledge management purposes
* Semantic Wiki tools supporting semantic collaboration
* Semantic Wiki tools supporting personal knowledge management
* Wiki-driven applications enabling massively distributed
knowledge elicitation,
* Requirements and use-cases for Web-scaled collaborative
knowledge engineering in relation to Wiki technologies
* Applications of Semantic Wikis, e.g. in Bio-Medicine,
Business, Software-Engineering
* Experience reports, best practices and guidelines in the
aforementioned areas

WORKSHOP FORMAT
* 1) Introduction to Semantic Wikis by organisers
* 2) Poster/Demo session
* 3) Moderated, focused discussion
** Interoperability
** The Future
** ... further topics
* Workshop proceedings will appear at CEUR Workshop Proceedings,
ISSN 1613-0073

TOPICS TO DISCUSS
* If you have a particular topic you would like to discuss in the
third session, please contact the workshop chairs.

Kind regards,

Max Völkel,
Elena Paslaru,
Sebastian Schaffert,
Sören Auer

wibke2006@semwiki.org

Most profitable location-based services

2006-06-26T05:01:00.000-07:00

Personal navigation and tracking are the most profitable location-based services in Europe

Gothenburg, Sweden June 22, 2006: Berg Insight has recently done a survey among 200 location-based services (LBS) professionals in order to take the temperature of this important mobile value added service category. Berg Insight made the survey among LBS professionals at mobile operators, vendors and consultancies. There were two sets of questions asked to the 200 respondents, one to operators and another set to vendors and consultancies. We asked the operators which LBS applications they already have deployed and got not surprisingly the reply that the most common services today are information services such as yellow pages near you and local weather information. On second and third place came navigation services and tracking. We also asked the operators which positioning technology they think will be the most important the coming years. The majority, 65 percent, replied a combination of two or more technologies, while 35 percent said A-GPS. It is obvious that satellite positioning is coming up as a preferred technology among operators in Europe and preferably in combination with other technologies such as enhanced-cell id and terminal-based positioning technologies. We also asked the operators what they think are the most important factors to get the LBS market to boom. Built in GPS/Galileo-chips was the most common reply, coming from 75 percent of the respondents. About 50 percent replied that more visibility and marketing of LBS is important to make the end-users aware of the services. The operators are also looking for more innovative LBS that really can catch the needs of the end-users, which 35 percent of the respondents answered.

The vendors and consultancies answered that the most important issue to get the LBS market to boom is built in GPS/Galileo chips in the phones (55 percent of respondents), which is the same opinion as the operators expressed. About 48 percent also answered that more innovative LBS that catch the needs of the end-users is important to make the market take off. The third most common issue to be resolved was more collaboration between operators, vendors and application developers.

Today Berg Insight also launched its news site www.lbsinsight.com with daily LBS news. You will find the survey results attached including graphs that can be used for illustrations.

About Berg Insight

Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

MapPoint 2006 Released

2006-05-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

MapPoint 2006 North America was released on May 1st. The new version includes all updated street and demographic data. The word on the street is that the streets are Navteq 2005 Q3 data. Note that for some reason the Canadian demographics were left out of this release somehow according to the MapPoint B2B blog.

Latitude Longitude are now exposed as properties of the Location object.

Other new features include a lot of GPS and Navigation features including a Night time driving map.

For more information see www.mp2kmag.com and look for an upcoming newsletter.

Eric

MP2Kmag Newsletter published

2006-04-06T06:17:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another edition of the MP2Kmag Update. Since the last issue, quite a lot has happened. The MapPoint Business Unit was renamed to the Microsoft Virtual Earth Business Unit and just yesterday the team launched a new web site at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth. Microsoft is reportedly in the process of acquiring Vexcel, a remote sensing company that supplies cameras, software, and services. Windows Live Local has started to show a preview of "Street-side" photos. MWS 4.1 was released, and more.

MP2K Magazine is your source for independent news and information about MapPoint technologies and products and is home to the popular web forum for MapPoint users and developers. In this issue we feature new articles from Wilfried Mestdagh and Richard Marsden. We also have an interview with Fresh Logic Studios regarding their Atlas application. There are several screenshots from the latest Global Gaming Almanac which produces a MapPoint .ptm file to accompany the report. We also have a photo of Marvin Hlavac's new Maltese puppy with the Large MapPoint mug.

There are a LOT of news items and links, you could spend some hours reading all the articles to catch up with things. I would especially encourage you to check out the Virtual Earth news section.

This Issue's Contents at a Glance
- features: Interview with Fresh Logic Studios, Global Gaming Almanac Screenshots
- articles: Snap to a Road, Using MapPoint with Python, Part I
- news: Virtual Earth Business Unit, TourSolver, Vexcel Acquisition, New Bird's Eye Imagery, Geoweb 2006, Where 2.0, Pushpin Tool Author Solicits Feature Requests
- forum: Forum Highlights, Over 13,000 posts and more than 2,600 Registered Users

Happy Mapping and please forward this newsletter to anyone who would be interested!

Eric Frost, Editor

Continue reading newsletter on MP2Kmag --
http://www.mp2kmag.com/update/mappoint.newsletter/2006-04-04/

MapPoint Buzz

2006-02-27T05:06:00.000-08:00

The Press Releases and Annoucements section of MP2Kmag contains a lot of news and information for MapPoint Technologies including Virtual Earth and Windows Live Local.

http://www.mp2kmag.com/mappoint/discussion/viewforum.asp?f=10

2006-02-12T08:34:00.000-08:00

Now Accepting Orders for MapPoint 2006

MP2K Magazine is now taking pre-orders for MapPoint 2006 in tandem with our new Routing and Programming Tools spreadsheet.

The suite of spreadsheet tools will be included for free with all orders.

For more information and to order go to their secure MapPoint 2006 ordering form.

2004-09-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

MapPoint Location Server FAQ

This document aims to answer frequently asked questions regarding the MapPoint Location Server such as system requirements, privacy issues, and the licensing model.

What is MapPoint Location Server?

Microsoft® MapPoint® Location Server (MLS) is a component of MapPoint Web Service (MWS) that allows the integration of real-time location into business and consumer applications. It supports access to real-time location from multiple sources, such as mobile network operators, and acts as a proxy between applications and services and MapPoint Web Service.
What kind of applications can benefit from MLS?

There are multiple types of applications that benefit from the integration of real-time location information such as asset tracking, sales-force automation or mobile location-based services. MLS is based on SOAP and XML Web services standards and can be easily integrated into business applications.

Why should I use MapPoint Location Server?

MLS provides a cost-effective integration of real-time location information into applications.
Using such standards as SOAP and XML, MLS puts real-time location solutions within the grasp of virtually any developer, without the need to develop specific geographic information systems (GIS) or mapping knowledge.

Enforcement of user privacy preferences takes place within the enterprise’s networks, and the enterprise has control of default privacy settings.

MLS offers seamless integration with Microsoft infrastructures such as Windows Server™, Microsoft SQL Server™ and the Microsoft .NET Framework.

MLS acts as a proxy to MapPoint Web Service, leveraging powerful mapping capabilities, cost effectiveness, service-level commitment, .NET connectivity and integration with other Web services.

What if I need a specific application? Where can I find a solution/application partner for MLS?
MapPoint provides you with a list of MapPoint solution partners, which can be found on the MapPoint Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/partners/find.aspx, for MLS.
What are the system requirements for MLS?

MapPoint Location Server: Windows® 2000 Server with Service Pack 4, or Windows Server 2003, SQL Server 2000 with Service Pack 3, Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) 2.8, .NET Framework 1.1 and Active Directory®. Microsoft Management Console also runs on Windows XP with Service Pack 1.

Mobile Locator — Desktop: Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 or Windows XP and Service Pack 1 with .NET Framework 1.1

Mobile Locator — Pocket PC: Windows Mobile™ 2002 software or Windows Mobile 2003 software and .NET Compact Framework 1.0 Service Pack 2

What about privacy in MLS?

Enforcement of user privacy preferences takes place within the enterprise’s networks, and the enterprise has control of default privacy settings. With the Mobile Locator application running on a computer or Pocket PC Phone Edition, users control their privacy preferences and can choose to be informed when they are being located. Privacy preferences include, for example, the ability to appear offline (by turning visibility off) and block individual users or all users from obtaining location. All location information or personal information (such as a mobile phone number) is encrypted when passed from MLS to MapPoint Web Service or to the mobile operator. Only information needed to perform the service requested by a user is exchanged between the enterprise and MapPoint Web Service (e.g., latitude/longitude) or mobile operator (e.g., mobile phone number).

With which mobile operator do you currently work?

Microsoft has launched MLS with Bell Canada as the first operator to provide location data. More information on Bell Canada is available at its Web site, http://www.bell.ca/.
Which other mobile operators will you be working with?

Microsoft has already announced a business relationship with Sprint, and has several operators that are currently trialing MLS. Microsoft plans to announce them after trials are completed.
What is the licensing model for MLS?

MapPoint Location Server requires two different agreements: one agreement with Microsoft for MapPoint Web Service and one agreement with Bell Mobility for the location information.
Agreement for MapPoint Web Service. MapPoint Location Server is a component of MapPoint Web Service. In order for a company to use MLS, it must have an MWS agreement with Microsoft MapPoint that includes the license for MLS.

In combination with MapPoint Location Server, MWS is licensed on an annual subscription basis:
A platform access fee including the required transaction capacity
A per-user fee for "Known" users (such as for a customer call center or fleet management application)
Agreement with Mobile Operator. In order to access the real-time location information provided by Bell Mobility, an agreement for a location information data plan with Bell Mobility is required.
Can I use MapPoint Location Server without MapPoint Web Service?
MLS can only be used with a valid agreement for MWS. An evaluation account for MWS is needed for evaluating MLS and can be requested from http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/enterprise/webservice/eval.aspx.

Do MLS customers need a separate contract with the network service providers that provide the location information?

Yes. Customers will need an additional contract with their mobile network operator. More information is available from the mobile operator’s Web site.

What prices are charged by the mobile network operators?

Please contact your mobile network operator for information about pricing.
Do I need a global positioning system device for MLS?

No. Enterprises can leverage their existing investments in mobile phones or upgrade to mobile phones that support their mobile operator’s location-based services platform.
How can I order MLS? Where can I buy it?

MLS, the portion not containing the mobile operator location provider, will be provided at launch for download on the Microsoft MapPoint Web site. The download will be available to everyone and can be used upon signing the accompanying End User License Agreement. In addition, Microsoft will provide upon request the MLS software on a CD for which reasonable handling fees will be charged.

Where can I download the mobile operator location provider?

If you want to deploy MLS and request your mobile operator-specific location provider, you can download the Location Provider via the MapPoint Customer Services Site (CSS). In order to access CSS, you must either have a MWS agreement or a 45-Day MWS Evaluation Agreement at http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/enterprise/webservice/eval.aspx for MapPoint Web Service.

Will you provide an SDK for MLS?

MLS will include an SDK that can also be downloaded from the MSDN® developer program at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=25132.

What’s the difference between MLS and MWS?

MapPoint Location Server is a component of MapPoint Web Service that allows the integration of real-time location into business applications. It supports access to real-time location from multiple sources, such as mobile network operators, and acts as a proxy between applications and the MapPoint Web Service. MapPoint Location Server can only be used with a valid agreement for MapPoint Web Service.

MapPoint Web Service is a programmable XML Web service that integrates mapping capabilities into business or consumer applications. MapPoint Web Service is a location and mapping platform that allows developers to easily build location-based services into their applications.

MapPoint Web Service supports industry-standard SOAP and XML interfaces, allowing developers to easily build location-based services into their applications. Solutions that integrate the MapPoint Web Service can be developed with Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET, which provides a powerful and optimized environment for developers.

MapPoint Technology is the core technology behind Microsoft’s mapping and location services platforms and applications. It is the basis for MapPoint’s powerful business and consumer desktop applications and the application developer XML Web service platform.

MapPoint Resources

2004-09-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

A sample of resources for MapPoint users.

The Magazine for MapPoint

MapPoint Kung Fu - This site mainly contains a mirror of many of the forum titles

MapPoint Online

MapPoint Ninja

ELF Mapping - Your source for MapPoint gurus.