Virtual Earth for Windows Mobile

I’ve been using the mobile version of Virtual Earth for a couple of weeks now and have found it to be very handy. This appears to Microsoft’s response to Google’s mobile mapping application. The main limitation that I’ve found with Google’s software is the fact that it cannot determine my current location. Virtual Earth Mobile tries to solve this problem in one of two ways. The first (less accurate) approach is to do an IP lookup when connected to a WiFi access point. Based on the IP of the access point, the location (generally the ISP location) can be looked up. This is somewhat accurate, but not all of the time. The other approach is using GPS, which can be accurate up to a few meters. The problem I’ve found with Virtual Earth Mobile is that it can’t find my Bluetooth GPS receiver. I’ve tried all sorts of configurations, but have fallen short.

I believe Virtual Earth Mobile is compatible with devices that have internal GPS units. At least that’s what I’m assuming. In the meantime I’m planning on experimenting with the Virtual Earth source code and hooking it up to some code I got working over the weekend.  This means I should be able to pass these location coordinates off to the Virtual Earth API and have some sort of real-time positioning and routing. It will be an interesting experiment and I’ll post what I find out. If anyone has successfully configured their Bluetooth GPS to work with Virtual Earth Mobile, then I would love to hear about it.

3 Responses to “Virtual Earth for Windows Mobile”

1. BRIAN HARTMAN says:

   June 28, 2006 at 9:13 pm

   Hi Lotus,

   I am a product manager for TDS, the company that make the Recon, an ultra-rugged, submergeable WM5 device. I have tried Virtual Earth Mobile with an external CF card (Holux) and it appears to work without a flaw. I would love to try out any CABs that alow routes or tracks from the GPS — a missing piece. The other thing that was frustrating was the lack of a GPS status interface. I fired up another program that uses GPS to get the status, and then switched to VEM. Keep up the good work — this is a great program to work on.

   Brian
2. dennis says:

   June 28, 2006 at 11:04 pm

   Brian,

   I wrote an app a few months ago with basic GPS functionality. It grabs the data from the receiver and displays it on screen. I’m working on the piece to upload the data to a remote server and it’s pretty much done….just need to test some more.

   The Recon device looks very cool and what type of market are you targeting with it? Just out of curiousity.

   Take care,
   Dennis
3. dennis says:

   June 28, 2006 at 11:04 pm

   You can download the BlueGPS CAB here: http://www.db75.com/bluegps/