mappoint

Excel Basics to Blackbelt: An Accelerated Guide to Decision Support Designs
$45.00
A novel look at the power of Excel. Great for people new to Excel2007, but also easily transferable to Excel2003. I had no idea it was this easy to develop amazing visual applications in Excel - The seamlessness of integration between Excel and other applications as well as the Internet was a new one for me as well.

I'm a Psychology Professor, and not in any way an "excel geek" and I found this book approachable, useful, and surprising! It's a relief to finally have something like this on my desk. Where have books like this been all this time?"

E. Christine Whitley

Microsoft MapPoint 2009 [OLD VERSION]
$299.00
If you work with geographic data this is an astounding, helpful product that allows you to use that data in interesting ways.

The map program itself, which is Microsofts Streets and Trips, is not nearly as good. After using it for a little while I find myself going back to Google or my garmin software. I have the USB gps to go with this, but even still the tracking is haphazard, and it takes a surprisingly long time for my laptop to recognize the gps. I've increasingly come to the conclusion that this side of this program needs a major overhaul, and would have been really competitive in 2002, but not so much now.

But, if you're buying Mappoint instead of Streets and Trips, this isn't the biggest issue. As a mapping program that works with data this is really unique and useful, able to provide a very helpful tool that not only can assist in necessary tasks but, at least for me, has caused me to think more and more about how I can best use the data at hand in new, creative ways to better understand various projects and research.

Programming MapPoint in .NET
$49.95
Do you want to develop a location-based application? If you do, then this book is for you! Author Chandu Thota, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that provides an integrated set of products, servers, and services that helps enterprises improve their customers' experience by applying mapping and location.

Thota, begins by introducing the MapPoint suite of products and technologies, setting the stage by discussing the basics of each technology and usage scenarios. Then, the author covers programming with the MapPoint 2004 ActiveX control and MapPoint 2004 object model for rendering maps, finding places and addresses, and calculating routes. Next, he covers dealing with business data, rendering data maps, and adding thematic shapes using geographic data. The author then covers integration with GPS for obtaining real-time location and extending MapPoint capabilities by writing add-ins. He continues by introducing the basics of programming with MapPoint Web Service. Then, the author shows you how to create applications using the Find APIs of the MapPoint Web Service, including techniques for finding places, addresses, and nearby points of interest. Next, he covers programming with the Route APIs, such as calculating routes and getting driving directions. The author then covers programming with the Render APIs available with MapPoint Web Service, including rendering maps, routes, LineDrive maps, and polygons. He continues by covering the basics of programming with Microsoft Location Server and deployment scenarios. Finally, he covers programming with the Location Server Web Service to get real-time location using mobile phones.

This most excellent book provides a jump-start for working with the preceding technologies, with in-depth discussions about the core concepts and sample code provided in C#. More importantly, this book covers the most common application development scenarios with the MapPoint platform.

Microsoft MapPoint 2009 with GPS [OLD VERSION]
$349.00
I use the software for work related business data mapping. It's easy to use. It's not a huge upgrade over the previous version.