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G E O W O R L D / J U L Y 2 O O 9 8 Virtual Earth Becomes Bing Maps Microsoft is launching a new consumer brand, Bing, that's specifically designed to build on the benefits of today's search engines. Bing offers a new approach to the user experience and tools to help customers make bet-ter decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business. The result of this new approach is the beginning of a new type of search service, which Microsoft is call-ing a Decision Engine. As part of the launch, both Live Search Maps and Virtual Earth have been rebranded and placed under the Bing umbrella. Live Search now is called Bing Maps, and Virtual Earth now is Bing Maps for Enterprise. Microsoft has always regarded Virtual Earth as an enterprise-mapping platform, and the rebranding is designed to reflect that this is indeed an offering aimed at enterprise customers. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called current search one-dimensional and said Bing will help people find information quickly and use the information they've found to accomplish tasks. Bing is designed to understand what users are searching for on the Internet and display more than just the traditional 10 blue links pointing to Web sites. The company plans to categorize results accord-ing to best match (and not popularity) as well as by pulling related searches and information buried in a site onto the results page. Microsoft vows to display more information on the page in a more organized way than the competition. The service will be avail-able at bing.com. Nearly every month, Microsoft adds terabytes of new content to Bing Maps for Enterprise. Using Silverlight and Windows Azure technology, the World Tour application pro-vides a guided tour of everything new. Alternatively, users can explore for themselves at their own pace, stopping off at any location. To take a tour of the latest updates, visit the Web at bingmapsupdates.cloudapp.net. SAIT Students Go Global with GIS Technology Three Southern Alberta Institute of Technology Polytechnic (SAIT) students are using satellite imagery, GIS and Web tools as well as compiled data related to the habitat range and foraging behavior of four Costa Rican animals: the jaguar, spider monkey, Baird's tapir and white-lipped peccary. They've performed the work from a lab on SAIT's Calgary campus. The research is part of an applied research project, a requirement to complete the Bachelor of Applied Technology Geographic Information Systems program, and the client is the Canadian Organization for Tropical Education and Rainforest Conservation (COTERC), a non-profit charity based in Pickering, Ontario. This is a worldwide integration of technology, working from Calgary for an organization in Ontario on operations happening in Costa Rica, noted Matt Band, a student on the team. The area of study is a 40-square-hectare plot of rainforest in the Barra del Colorado Wildlife Refuge on Costa Rica's northeastern coast, where COTERC has a biological research station. COTERC's goal is to establish a second habitat zone for these species that mirrors the ecosystems of the current one. The project will give COTERC new resources, including land-cover details, a database for recording wildlife sitings, and a Web site to access and manage the information. The data and tools created by our students will provide a spatial analysis of the most probable area for these species to flourish, said instructor Colin Lynch. A key part of the project was creating ecosys-tem classification maps showing land cover such as grassland, forest and mangrove. Team member David Spry developed these maps using satellite NEWS LINK Microsoft is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, a name Microsoft selected because it wanted something short and catchy.