Finally a New MapPoint — Better Features

Tuesday – October 2, 2009
MapPoint 2010 Released, MapPoint 2010 New Features and Articles, and More

Welcome to another issue of the MP2Kmag Update. Microsoft recently released MapPoint 2010 with significant new features such as the Map Setting pane. This new pane allows users to control the amount of detail displayed for 17 separate mapping layers and the ability to add more or remove labels from the map. Click on the thumbnail to the right to see examples of the new Map Settings options in action.
Several other very useful enhancements include the ability to Hide a pushpin set, import / export to .gpx files, a lot more Pushpin Symbols to choose from (basically everything from MapPoint 2006 and MapPoint 2009 combined), and of course updated mapping and place data. See Richard Marsden’s article below which talks about and gives an overview of MapPoint 2010’s new features. Also in this newsletter, we have provided a list of the MapPoint 2010 API changes for developers to take a quick glance at all the very welcome additions to the Object Model.
We have also assembled a number of links and resources for MapPoint 2010 on this page on MapForums – MapPoint 2010 Information.

MP2K Magazine is your source for independent news and information about MapPoint and Virtual Earth technologies and we also host the popular web forum for MapPoint users and developers (www.mapforums.com). 
This Issue’s Contents at a Glance

- Automating MapPoint with Excel VBA – Tutorial 7
- List of MapPoint 2010 API Changes – New Methods, Objects, and Properties
- MapPoint Consultants and Products Directories
- MP2K Magazine / MapForums Twitter Channel
- Get Published in MP2K Magazine
- An Overview of the New Features in Microsoft MapPoint 2010
- Using the New MapFeatures Collection and MapFeature Objects in MapPoint 2010

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

Eric Frost, Editor

Popularity: 33% [?]

What Is an Air Mile?

Many of our clients ask for “Air Miles Maps” because they found us through a search on keywords like “Radius maps” or “Circle maps”.  But normally only the folks working on FMCSA compliance issues really want “Air Miles”.   There are a lot of definitions for “mile” as you can see in the extract from Wikipedia.  read the full article there if you really want to know your miles from a hole in the ground

Types of mile

In modern usage, various distances are referred to as miles.

International and statute miles

The international mile (and before 1959, the statute mile) is the distance typically meant when the word mile is used without other qualifying words (e.g. nautical mile, see below). The international and statute miles are both equal to 5,280 feet, but the international mile is defined in terms of the international foot (0.3048 m), while the statute miles of the various English-speaking countries were based on the national foot of each country. The (mostly obsolete) U.S. statute mile is based on the U.S. survey foot (which is exactly 1200/3937 m) and differs from the international mile by about 3 mm. ^[8]

The name statute mile originates from a statute of the Parliament of England in 1592 during the reign of Elizabeth I. This defined the statute mile as 5,280 ft or 1,760 yards; or 63,360 inches. Both statute and international miles are divided into eight furlongs (the length generally that a furrow was ploughed before the horses were turned, furlong = furrow-long). In turn a furlong is ten chains (a surveyor’s chain, used as such until laser range finders took over); a chain is 22 yards and a yard is three feet, making up 5,280 ft.

Other miles in Britain and Ireland

Before the statute of the English parliament, there was confusion on the length of the "mile". The Irish mile was 6,721 feet and the Scottish mile was 5,951 feet.^[9] Perhaps the earliest tables of English linear measures, Arnold’s Customs of London (c. 1500) indicates a mile consisted of 8 furlongs, each of 625 feet, for a total of 5,000 feet.^[10] For other "miles" see the list below.

Nautical miles

On the utility of the nautical mile
Each circle shown is a great circle – the analog of a line in spherical trigonometry – and hence the shortest path connecting two points on the globular surface. Meridians are great circles that pass through the poles.

Main article: Nautical mile

The nautical mile was originally defined as one minute of arc along a meridian of the Earth.^[11] It is a convenient reference since it is fairly constant at all latitudes, in contrast with degrees of longitude which vary from from 1 NM at the equator to zero at the poles.

Navigators use dividers to step off the distance between two points on the navigational chart, then place the open dividers against the minutes-of-latitude scale at the edge of the chart, and read off the distance in nautical miles.^[12] Since it is now known that the Earth is not perfectly spherical but an oblate spheroid, the length derived from this method varies slightly from the equator to the poles. For instance, using the WGS84 Ellipsoid, the commonly accepted Earth model for many purposes today, one minute of latitude at the WGS84 equator is 6,087 feet and at the poles is 6,067 feet. On average it is about 6,076 feet (about 1852 meters or 1.15 statute miles).

In the United States of America, the nautical mile was defined in the nineteenth century as 6,080.2 feet (1,853.249 m), whereas in the United Kingdom the Admiralty nautical mile was defined as 6,080 feet (1,853.184 m) and was approximately one minute of latitude in the latitudes of the south of the UK. Other nations had different definitions of the nautical mile, but it is now internationally defined to be exactly 1,852 meters.

The nautical mile per hour is known as the knot. Nautical miles and knots are almost universally used for aeronautical and maritime navigation because of their relationship with degrees and minutes of latitude and the convenience of using the latitude scale on a map for distance measuring…

So we’ll be happy to make you a map in almost any unit you wish (see our Air Miles map order page here).  but if you ask for Air Miles, be sure that’s what you really want … or your map will be “correct” but in “error” at the same time.

Popularity: 56% [?]

Even Better Maps Are Coming!

I started this site because I was getting tons of traffic to my GPS Tracking News and Commentary site regarding Air Mile Maps and various related issues.  I am pretty much a one-trick pony in this area, although I worked for years I\on projects in the GIS (Geographic Information Systems field, I am not a GIS practitioner by any stretch of the imagination.  I am pretty conversant with Microsoft MapPoint software though and I really feel it is one of Microsoft’s hidden gems … like many other applications MSFT has picked up over the years, they have virtually no clue about marketing it.

They sometimes make it look like an over-priced /next step’ for the Street Maps crowd, and this is wrong placement for sure.  They sometimes try to act as if it is a full-fledged replacement for a "real" GIS product such as ESRI’s ArcView, and certainly it is not that.  But as a tool that nearly every business or government organization can afford, and that normal bushiness people can use, it’s a great bargain and a very much untapped resource.

The latest version of MapPoint  (2009) is getting ready to ship … you can buy it from the convenient link right there in the right-hand column, and you can join a really useful and interesting online resource for MapPoint users.

MP2K — The Magazine for MapPoint Users … all the news that’s fit to print about MapPoint and how to use it in your business, free.  Recommended.

Popularity: 27% [?]

You Can Make Your Own Radius map

I’ve mentioned the 100 and 150 air mile radius rules for “local” commercial vehicle operations a number of times … here, here, and here for a few of the more interesting entries. The basics are that commercial, goods carrying vehicles that do not require their drivers to have CDL’s (Commercial Driver Licenses) are still subject to many FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) rules regarding hours of service (HOS) and record-keeping requirements. Depending on several provisions of the law, businesses whose vehicles operate within 100 Air miles of the location where the vehicles regularly return, or 150 Air miles have rules different than the rules for all other commercial vehicles and drivers. These regulations are not road miles, read from vehicle odometers (thank goodness, more on that fallacy here) but should be measured by a radius drawn on a map. How does the average business get a map like this? Well, they can ask me, and I’ll furnish an electronic version  (order pager is coming soon, meantime just use the Contact option) … or they can buy Microsoft’s MapPoint, a tool I feel a business shouldn’t be without … 100 mile rule or no 100 mile rule.

How To Make a Radius Map With MapPoint

MapPoint is not a normal part of the Microsoft Offices suite, but it resembles the programs in Office and installs and integrates with them. Open your copy of MapPoint … Your screen should look like this:

Now type the address of the center point of the radius in the “find” box, the upper left corner of the map:

Now click and confirm and you should have a little “push Pin” at the point you want to center on. You can right click on that pin, edit the name, color, and other properties as you desire.

Now all that is left is to draw the radius. Make sure you “Drawing” tool bar is open down at the bottom of the map. If it isn’t, select it from the “Views/Toolbars” main menu. The click on the “circle” tool … see the big yellow highlight pointer in this screen shot:

Click on your “Home Plate” map pin and zoom the map out until you make the radius label (bottom right of the circle you are drawing) read “115″ for a “100 Air Mile Map” or “172.6″ for a “150 Air Mile Map”.

Save the map with a file name of your choice, and your’s done?

This isn’t all that MapPoint can do quickly and easily for your business. If you want to know more about how any business can profit from using MapPoint (this is not a sales offer … it’s a no obligation help you learn offer … I like MapPoint that much) just give me a shout.

Now, enjoy your weekend and resolve that next week you are going to do something to make you business more profitable.

As always, I welcome comments, disagreement is encouraged, and you can also contact me via our dedicated, secure, spam-free Contact Page

Popularity: 15% [?]