Hacking MSN Virtual Earth

Link: MAKE: Blog: MSN Virtual Earth is out...(early).

It has a feature called "locate me" You can install Location Finder to display your current location on a Virtual Earth map by using Wi-Fi technology.

MSN Virtual Earth beta is now out. It allows you to locate your machine with a client software called "Microsoft Location Finder" that uses Wi-Fi to find address. Quick grep through their JavaScript file shows me that it has a simple-to-use API to lookup your location with Wi-Fi or IP address.

So here's a demo: Hacking MSN VE to Locate Me. It uses MSN VE's IP-to-geo API to find your location, then map it with Google Maps API. Pretty cool. They also have an Wi-Fi based Location Fider API, which can be used as (JScript):

var wifi = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.MapPoint.WiFiScanner.1");
var code = wifi.GetLocation();

but it seems to have a domain restriction so that it only works with MSN Virtual Earth site, which makes sense. However, I tested it on Windows Scripting Host environment and it turns out that it can be called from any local scripts. That means, you can now geocode your photos when you upload them to Flickr or TypePad, without GPS stuff, which is cool.

They also launched API site and their interview on Channel 9 is pretty interesting.