http://www.freshlogicstudios.com/Products/Atlas/

Developers: Shawn Miller and Jacob DuBray

Company: Fresh Logic Studios

The Mashup 

Built on Microsoft Virtual Earth and Windows LiveTM API’s and web services, Atlas is a free, web-based showcase for mapping and searching technologies. With more than one  million hits per day, Fresh Logic Studios serves over 250,000 pages and a gigabyte of data to site visitors daily.

Why Windows Live?

“We really like Live.com--I visit the site at least three times a day," reports Miller. "Compared to other platforms, it's more developer-friendly, has better APIs, and gets us to our vision faster.

Programming Environment

Programming Environment Fresh Logic Studios uses ASP.NET and C# 2.0 for the backend. “We use lots of XML andAJAX,” says Miller. “We have been huge supporters of web standards (XHTML/CSS/ECMAScript) for years.”

Putting It All Together

Miller and co-founder Jacob DuBray developed a platform that could easily combine several data sources on one map in a consistent and attractive user interface. Current data sources include: Eventful.com (Events); Flickr.com (Photos); Yahoo.com (Traffic) and a locally hosted GPS tracking service.

Code

The following code shows how a GPS view can be created.

// Build URI for updating GPS device location using HTTP GET
StringBuilder uri = new StringBuilder
("https://atlas.freshlogicstudios.com/Services/Gps/Gps.asmx/UpdateGpsDeviceLocation");
uri.AppendFormat("?email={0}", "user@domain.com");
uri.AppendFormat("&password={0}", "bigboy");
uri.AppendFormat("&gpsDeviceId={0}", "12345678-90ab-cdef-ghij-klmnopqrstuv");
uri.AppendFormat("&latitude={0}", "43.75"); 
uri.AppendFormat("&longitude={0}", "-99.71");
uri.AppendFormat("&altitude={0}", "1000.0");
uri.AppendFormat("&heading={0}", "360.0");
uri.AppendFormat("&speed={0}", "55.0");
uri.AppendFormat("¬es={0}", "User defined data (i.e. Temperature is 67 F)");
// Update GPS device location using HTTP GET
System.Net.WebClient myWebClient = new System.Net.WebClient();
myWebClient.DownloadString(uri);