Monday - July 18, 2011

MapPoint 2011 Europe

Welcome to another issue of the MP2Kmag Update. Hope you are having a good summer! In MapPoint news, MapPoint 2011 Europe was recently released and the English, French, and German versions are now available through volume licensing. The Italian and Spanish versions are scheduled to be available August 1st.

In this issue, Doug Popken of Systems View Software, LLC finishes up his series on Using MapPoint in a Routing Application with Part 3 - Lesson Learned, including discussion on a work-around to obtain time zone data, warnings about the triangle inequality, and programmatically toggling the NA and EU versions of MapPoint.

MP2K Magazine is your source for independent news and information about MapPoint and other Microsoft mapping technologies and we also host the popular web forum for MapPoint users and developers (www.mapforums.com).

This Issue's Contents at a Glance
- TIP: POI Megafile Downloads from the Streets & Trips Team Blog
- MapPoint Consultants and Products Directories
- Get Published in MP2K Magazine
- Using MapPoint in a Routing Application Part 3 - Lessons Learned
- Using MPMileCharter to create Mileage Charts with Microsoft MapPoint

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

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Features

TIP: POI Megafile Downloads from the Streets & Trips Team Blog

The Streets & Trips Team Blog at http://msstreets.com has been compiling points of interest (POI) for Streets & Trips that can also be easily imported into MapPoint. The POI "Mega Files" which contain the collections below and many other datasets can be downloaded from LaptopGPSWorld here. To save our readers some steps we've converted the most recent Mega File for North America to MapPoint 2011. Let us know if you have any trouble importing the European POI Mega File from AutoRoute to MapPoint 2011 and we'd be glad to help.

National Parks

Truck Stops

Casinos

Cracker Barrel

Click on the screenshots above to download and view more information about each dataset. Discuss this topic and share tips on other datasets and free data sources for MapPoint in the forums.

MapPoint Consultants and Products Directories

Find developers and experienced MapPoint consultants who can help you with your next project or program costum solutions helping to integrate MapPoint with your business processes.

If you are a consultant who know MapPoint or Bing Maps, this is a terrific way to read our audience and share information about your capabilities, services, describe past projects, and communicate your availability. You are welcome to post your resume and keep your thread or profile updated periodically with references, new offerings, and contant information. Get started today by posting "New Thread" in the MapPoint Consultant Directory. Listings are free, but there is also an opportunity to become a sponsor for a more prominent listing and a link from the home page.


Similarly, we also have a Products Directory for MapPoint Add-ins, Bing Maps tools, and related products. If you have a MapPoint/Bing Maps Add-in or tool, list it in here to get some great visibility and exposure for your product. To keep your product near the front of the directory, you can post periodically updates, tutorials, case studies, or other new information about your product.

Get Published in MP2K Magazine

If you have a MapPoint presentation, neat programming technique, or would simply like to share the ways in which you are using MapPoint technology or any other ideas, contact us to discuss how we can turn your knowledge into an article and share your experience with the rest of the MapPoint community of users and developers.

Thanks to Marvin Hlavac for allowing us to use the picture on the right of his Maltese puppy eating from the MapPoint mug.

"To compute correct ETA information for route stops, Route Factory Spreadsheet needs to determine the correct time zone for each location because a route may cross time zones. The time zone information is not directly available programmatically in MapPoint. In the book by Chandu Thota, “MapPoint in .NET”, a time zone determination algorithm is provided that searches the MapPoint FindResults objects at a given location for the string, “GMT” to derive the information. Frankly, we could never get this algorithm to work in MapPoint 2010. In addition, for the purposes of getting the correct ETA, we also wanted to know whether or not a given location observes Daylight Savings Time."

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Using MPMileCharter to create Mileage Charts with Microsoft MapPoint

"This article describes our popular MPMileCharter product. After being on the market for over six years, Winwaed Software Technology LLC recently released a major new version "MPMileCharter 3.0". This represents a major rewrite for the .NET platform, allowing a smoother and more responsive user interface, and enabling support for future versions of Windows. MPMileCharter 3 includes a number of new features. The most significant is the support for text file outputs. Microsoft Excel continues to be supported, but MPMileCharter can also write mileage charts to text files separated by commas, semi-colons, or tabs."

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