want a free copy of visual studio?

check out at least three of the webcasts from series directly made for you.

http://www.learn2asp.net/Campaign.aspx

well, after doing a round of demos on atlas and having to work with the virtual earth map stuff (argh), i decided that geocoding sucked and i’m surprised it isn’t a base offering in more apis.  i guess i don’t understand why, when maps, etc. are being handed out like candy, but a simple method/api/whatever to provide the address and get the lat/long back isn’t — after all, the maps are doing it anyway.

at any rate, i found a few providers, the free one of which seems to be running off of a sixth graders pda…and can only handle about 1/2 simultaneous request.  i started using it though with my demos for being short on time (easy interface to use).  i then rethought that idea and decided a pluggable model would be better.

alas, GeoCodeProvider is born.  in crude form right now, it seemed to work on my known tests ;-).  i’ve created a space for it on gotdotnet to give my man korby some props.

i’ve also included a YahooGeoCodeProvider as an initial provider.  the zip is an asp.net 2.0 application using atlas to demonstrate mapping the northwind (US) customers to a virtual earth map.

check it out: download GeoCodeProvider sample.  i’ll soon be adding a mappoint/msn provider when i get around to it.

basically, all you need to do is add the the binaries as references:

then in your web.config, add the config section:

    1 <sectionGroup name="system.web">
    2       <section name="geoCodeService" type="SmilingGoat.Providers.GeoCodeProviderConfigSection, GeoCodeProvider" 
allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" restartOnExternalChanges="true"/>
    3     </sectionGroup>

then in web.config, set the provider:

    1   <system.web>
    2     <geoCodeService defaultProvider="YahooGeoCodeProvider">
    3       <providers>
    4         <add name="YahooGeoCodeProvider" type="SmilingGoat.Providers.YahooGeoCodeProvider" 
providerUrl="http://api.local.yahoo.com/MapsService/V1/geocode?appid={0}&amp;street={1}&amp;city={2}&amp;state={3}&amp;zip={4}" 
applicationId="YahooDemo"/>
    5       </providers>
    6     </geoCodeService>

once you do that, you are good to go, simply pass the provider service api a street address, city, state, zip (sorry us only) and get back coordinates.  the sample site maps them on an atlas ve map:

take a look at how RubyCLR is shaping up: RubyCLR

ever have the need to have disabled controls on your user interface, but actually need the data to be posted?

well in asp.net 2.0 you can now do that, check it out:

<form id="form1" runat="server" submitdisabledcontrols="true">

team system mvp/guru richard Hundhausen has put up a list of team system widgets.

take a look at them: team system widgets