Redmond, Washington — The Bing team on Monday in a blog post, declared the availability of the Bing Maps Apps software development kit (SDK), along with three new apps. Bing Maps have some fascinating applications that allow you to see twitter activities, parking places, fuel pricing or Foursquare check-ins near a particular location. “Hopefully, the release of the Bing Map App SDK and these apps will encourage you to get coding and add your application to Bing Maps!” the Bing team wrote in a blog post.
“Bing Maps holds some appealing applications that enables you to see twitter activities, parking places, fuel pricing or Foursquare check-ins near a particular location,” according to Bing team. “The SDK will allow developers to make their own apps over Bing maps and once verified by Microsoft, the apps will be featured in the Bing Maps Apps Gallery.”
One of the best part of Bing Maps is the gallery of Map Apps (Silverlight required) which includes different informational overlays to the maps. There are Twitter maps, Foursquare maps, Worldwide Telescope maps, and event maps. But today Bing is opening up its Map Apps more broadly to outside developers and releasing an SDK for anyone who wants to create their own Bing Map App.
“Bing Map Apps are web services that are being incorporated as an application structure within Bing Maps,” says Bing Maps Tech Evangelist Chris Pendleton. “With the release of the SDK, developers can now create their own map apps built on top of Bing Maps and hosted on bing.com/maps/explore.”
Microsoft is also introducing with a few new apps developed on the SDK, including ones from BestParking.com, Everyscape, and Weatherbug. One of the three just-released apps is a tool to test one’s Bing Maps Apps: The BestParking app displays parking garages and lots on the map along with a rate calculator. Everyscape is adding its collection of 3D photo exploration tools for inside buildings, starting with restaurants in select cities like Boston. And Weatherbug’s app build a Doppler layer along with markers for each weather station, which can be clicked on for detailed info and weather cams from each station.
Microsoft has also released the following new features for Bing Maps:
- Bing Map App Ratings
- Photosynth Panoramas
- Map Overlays
- Action Bar
- Reverse Address Lookup
- Right-Click Menu
- Full Screen Maps
- Breadcrumb
- Brandfinder
More details for each of these features can be found here.