I spent a few days this week at the CalGIS user conference which was held this year in Huntington Beach, CA. I had a great time and it was a definite eye opener to the new world of GIS and social networking. I always knew there would be a mix of the two, but after seeing a presentation from Stamen Design, I was blown away. If you check out their site you can see examples of the amazing work they do. I could only dream of being on that level myself. Beyond that the rest of the conference gave me small ideas here and there about new GIS work I'd like to meddle with.

Then on Wednesday while listening to one of the closing keynote speakers, Eric Waldman, I got excited. Eric works for Microsoft as a GeoSpatial Specialist for Bing Maps and he was there giving a presentation about the new Bing Maps and the new features coming with Silverlight technology. I have always been a huge Google Maps/Earth fan but after the presentation I saw, I drove home and jumped onto the new Bing Maps (be sure to check the bottom left for "EXPLORE THE NEW BING MAPS") myself and began playing around. I wanted to share a few things that I think will be great for the automotive community:

1. Map Apps - In the bottom left of the screen you will find applications that have been built for Bing Maps. Right now the services are few, but they are powerful. Twitter, Foursquare and Trafficland are all brought in automatically to provide a wealth of information. With the possibility to design new apps, many automotive friendly applications will definitely begin to surface in the future.

2. Street view - The Bing Maps street view is better. How? Well if you ever have the chance to see one of those vehicles running around photographing the streets, you'll see an extra piece of equipment on the ones harvesting data for Microsoft. That extra piece of equipment is LIDAR and it gives Bing Maps street view a full 3D perspective. This gives the user a more realistic view of buildings, the ability to remove people from scenes without harming photo quality and also a more interactive experience. I wish I had the words to explain it better but trying it out yourself will show you just how great it is.

3. Photosynth - Photosynth is a Microsoft program that lets you stitch photographs together in a 3D environment. The best way to describe it I feel would be to think about the movie Star Wars, when they would be looking at those 3D holographs of the Death Star. Its kind of like that. I spent some time building a few of my own for this blog. None of them are a full 3D experience because I didnt intend to use the picture for this type of program, but I will be heading out to a few auto events and taking the pictures required to take advantage of the full experience. Check out my photosynth of the Nurburgring! I would suggest also browsing around a bit too. You'll find cool examples where you can look at things from all directions or tour a house from the inside and out! Awesome stuff. Photosynth is also available as a Map App in Bing Maps. Turning it on will show any geotagged synths all over the world. You can find another one I have built by looking at Long Beach Harbor.

So those are the three big ones that will provide some great content in the near future. Currently I am working on the site more and learning the Bing Maps API so that I can bring in the Spatial Stage twitter feed, photosynths and other media to the site. But in the mean time I will be providing direct links to anything I throw together using these tools. And make sure to try it out yourself!