Virtual Earth Mobile

Navigation

When viewing a map, you can pan the map north, south, east, and west using the directional pad (also known as the D-pad, or the arrow keys). The Action button in the center of the directional pad will zoom in one level. On a Smartphone the * key will zoom out and the # key will zoom in.

Menu items

Zoom In - Zoom in one level. The Action button (the center button of the four-way direction pad) can also be used to zoom in.

Map type - Choose the map type, either "road", "traffic", "aerial", or "road and aerial". "Road and aerial" is a hybrid type that overlays roads on top of an aerial or satellite photograph. "Traffic" overlays colored traffic data on top of roads in sleected metropolitan areas. Green indicates traffic is moving at 45 mph or faster. Yellow means 25 to 45 mph. Red means 0 to 25 mph. Traffic data is provided by Traffic.com. The data expires when you exit the application. (Eventually, I plan to support timed expiration.)

Locate Me

GPS : Global Positioning System - Display a map of your current location, as reported by a GPS device. To specify what COM port your GPS device is on, use the More/GPS Options dialog.

Wi-Fi - Display a map of your current location as determined by Wi-Fi access points that are visible to your device. The location of at least one access point must be known to the Virtual Earth server for it to locate you. If not, the Virtual Earth server will use your IP address to determine your location, which will only give a very approximate location, for example, what city you are in.

Find

Address - Display a map of a particular address, for example, "429 Columbus Ave, Boston MA". You can also enter the name of a place, for example, "North Dakota".

Business - Enter either the name of a business ("Charlie's Sandwich Shoppe") or a category ("Restaurant") to retrieve a list of all such businesses that are located within the area viewed by the current map, or within the city you specify. You can then pick one to display a street-level map of that business. Or choose Menu/Map All to display pushpins at all of the businesses. (Tip: when entering the city and state, capitalization and punctuation are not necessary.)

Contact - Choose a person from your Contacts list, and display a map of that person's address, as listed in your Contacts. Requires Windows Mobile 5.0.

Driving Directions:

Set as Starting Location - Set the map's current pushpin (or center if no pushpin) as the starting location to be used for driving directions. The starting location will be marked with a green flag.

Set as Destination - Set the map's current pushpin (or center if no pushpin) as the destination to be used for driving directions. The destination will be marked with a red flag.

Get Directions - Display driving directions from the starting location to the destination. The route will be higlighted in green on the map. Turns will be indicated by numbered red circles. To display more info about a turn, press the number key corresponding to the number on the turn. You can also use left and right on the directional pad to display the previous or next turn. (In fact, you will have to if there are more than 10 turns, since there are only ten number keys.) To return to the mode where the directional pad pans the map, press up or down on the directional pad. To return to "turn" mode, press a number key.

Get Reverse Directions - Display driving directions from the destination back to the starting location.

View Starting Location - Display a map of the starting location.

View Destination - Display a map of the destination.

Clear Pushpins - Remove all pushpins and driving directions from the map.

Options:

Map Cache - Set the maximum amount of storage space on the device to use for downloaded maps. A larger amount means better performance and the ability to view more maps when not connected to the internet. You can also specify where the downloaded data should be stored: either in the built-in storage of the device, or on a removable storage card (an SD card). If you specify a removable storage card but no card is in the device, the built-in storage will be used instead.

GPS - Set the COM port to which your GPS device is connected, and the baud rate.

Miles/Kilometers - Choose the units used for driving directions.

More:

Help - Show this help information.

About - Show information about Virtual Earth Mobile.

Privacy Policy - Show the privacy policy.

License - Show the license information for Virtual Earth Mobile.

Go to Lat/Long - Display a map of latitude/longitude coordinates you specify.

Exit - Close down Virtual Earth Mobile.

"Find a Business" search results : Menu items

Map It - Display a map of the selected business.

Map All - Display a pushpin at each of the businesses. You can then press a number key to jump to a particular business's pushpin. Or use the left and right arrows on the directional pad to navigate to the previous or next business. To return to the mode where the directional pad pans the map, press up or down on the directional pad.

Set as Starting Location - Set the business as the starting location to be used for driving directions. The starting location will be marked with a green flag.

Set as Destination - Set the business as the destination to be used for driving directions. The destination will be marked with a red flag.

Search for More Info - Search for more information about the business using MSN Search.

Call - Place a phone call to the business. Requires a Windows Mobile 5.0 phone device.

Add to Contacts - Add the business to your Contacts.