Yahoo! Local & Maps Blog

Our Yahoo! Local 4th of July Mashup is a great example of the possibilities you have as a developer, when you use Flash and the Y! Maps Flash API. Here are a few Tips & Tricks that can help you put some “pow” into your mashups:

1. Upon loading the app, you begin to see how rich the experience is. The polished zoom bar and map view buttons (satellite, hybrid, map) are capabilities built right into the Flash API. The very same features are also built into our AJAX API if that’s your fancy.

Making your own map view buttons can be created using a combination of getMapViewTypes() and setMapViewType(). For the unique zoom bar, calling setZoomLevel() will do the trick.

2. We think the customSWFMarker, a class that enables you to create your own swf and attach it as a marker, is the star of this mashup. Rather than the built-in orange markers, customSWFMarker paves the way for the fireworks and sleek icons you see in the 4th of July mashup. Created as separate movie clips and exported as stand alone .swf’s, these custom markers add a new level of engagement and flavor to the map.

Adding customSWFMarkers is almost as simple as adding regular markers. Here’s how it looks: addMarkerByLatLon(CustomSWFMarker, latlon, {url:swfUrl}), where latlon is the latitude longitude point you want to add the marker to and swfUrl is the path to your custom SWF marker.

3. Rounding out the mashup are the interface and design elements that surround the map like the ribbon and the navigation. Flash can really ‘embrace’ the map content, allowing you to implement many eye-catching and intuitive control elements around the maps themselves. While Flash has become predominantly a program authoring tool, it’s still a very powerful visual tool. By laying out the map component on the stage, you can easily lend your design skills to add interface elements around, behind and over the map. Like the case with the patriotic ribbon, it actually wraps around the map. The sights (and let’s not forget about the sounds) are very stimulating and add a fun and entertaining take to map mashups as only developing with the Flash Map API can.

For more about the various methods available for the Flash and Flex API’s, visit:
http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/flash/V3/flashReference.html

To get started with your own mashup, visit:
http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/flash/asGettingStarted.html

-Chuck Freedman, Sr. Flash Developer, Yahoo! Maps.

When we launched the satellite and aerial imagery in the new Maps Beta, we mentioned that we were going to start to publish high-resolution imagery in some international markets. Now the first batch of those is online!

So without further ado, check out some of the areas we’ve just added to the New Yahoo! Maps.

Baghdad, Iraq
Bangkok, Thailand
Beijing, China
Beirut, Lebanon
Berlin, Germany
Black Rock City, NV
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Cambridge, England
Capetown, South Africa
Cozumel, Mexico
Edinburgh, Scotland
Florence, Itlay
Freeport, Bahamas
Geneva, Switzerland
Guadalajara, Mexico
Havana, Cuba
Kabul, Afghanistan
Leon, Mexico
Manchester, England
Mecca, Saudi Arabia
Monterrey, Mexico
Munich, Germany
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Prague, Czech Republic
Puebla, Mexico
Puerta Vallarta, Mexico
San Jose, Costa Rica
San Luis Potosi, Mexico
Sydney, Australia
Torreon, Mexico
Verona, Italy
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

We’re continually updating our imagery, so staty tuned and keep checking us out.

Cheers!

Michael Lawless
Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps

Starting today, we’re happy to announce Yahoo! Local fully supports the hCalendar, hCard, and hReview microformats on almost all business listings, search results, events, and reviews. There are a few reasons behind this change, which for now, will be transparent to almost everyone.

In less-techy terms, “microformats” are an open standard for structuring web page content in a meaningful and reusable way. At Yahoo, we’ve been big microformat fans — Yahoo! Tech uses the hReview microformat for all product reviews, Flickr supports XFN and hCard on all profile pages, and our own Upcoming.org was the first big hCalendar supporter.

We believe in giving you more control over your data and the user experience on Yahoo! Local. With our microformat support, we’ve opened up new data and new possibilities for the developer community to build upon, to make tools that will be genuinely useful to all our users.

For now, most of the tools are pretty geeky, but this will change as adoption grows. Some of our favorites:

• Tails Export for Firefox. This extension will detect and display microformats on any page and let you export them to Outlook, iCal, and more. hCalendar to Yahoo! Calendar.
• Yesterday, Gordon from Upcoming.org modified an open-source Greasemonkey user script to add any hCalendar event to Yahoo! Calendar. If you’re using Greasemonkey and Firefox, try it out.
• The Flocktails Extension for the Flock web browser detects microformats and shows how pretty they can be.
• Many, many more are available on the Microformats wiki.

If you find (or build) any other cool utilities or apps, let us know!

Vince Maniago, Andy Baio, Ronny Choie
and the Yahoo! Local Team

Thanks to everyone who attended the Mashup & Eatup Lunch at Where 2.0 yesterday.  This event had a big response, so if you couldn’t make it, here are the presentations for Flash & AJAX as well as our Introduction.

We had quite an interactive group with many interesting questions and comments. A few questions came up more than once:

• Can I create a mashup and use it (live) outside the browser with the Flash API?
  Yes! Using the AS Flash API, you can publish your mashup as an .exe file. After attaching the map component in the Flash IDE (on the stage or programmatically) and completing your mashup, go into File > Publish Settings. Select the “Windows Projector” box and click “Publish”.
• How many free geocodes per day does Yahoo!’s API provide?
  Currently our AJAX and Flash APIs provide up to 50,000 geocodes per day using built-in methods. Just pass in your addresses and the API does all the work for you.
• Is there a way for me to tell Yahoo! about my Application or Mashup?
  Yes, we recommend that you join our Yahoo! Maps Developer Community and post to that list. Then submit what you’ve built to the Yahoo! Gallery so the world can see it. 
• What kind of content is available to me for my mashup?
  Yahoo! has a variety of content for you to choose from. There’s Local Search, Traffic, Flickr and Upcoming.org to name a few and a whole bunch of RSS feeds for everything from Groups to Shopping.

It was great chatting with everyone at the Mashup & Eatup Lunch.  Thanks again to all who made it.  And for those who didn’t make it, we plan to do this again very soon. Keep on eye on the Yahoo! Maps Developer Community and this blog for updates.

Keep the Mashups coming!

Chuck, Mirek & Vince
Yahoo! Maps

I’m very happy to announce tonight that we have lifted many of the restrictions associated with the Yahoo! Maps APIs. Until today, the APIs were available only for non-commercial use unless you applied for an exception. The concept of commercial and non-commercial has gone away and exceptions are no longer necessary in most cases. We have given you explicit Usage Policies to help guide you.

Whether on your business website, blog or personal site, you no longer have to ask for permission. Feel free to:

• Build Mashups and use our Maps for personal or business use as long as the applications are free of charge and under the rate limit.
• Link to Yahoo! Maps or Driving Directions to your heart’s content.
• Include advertising on the same page or site where you display Yahoo! Maps. 

There is still a Usage Policy so make sure to have a look at that.

Finally, please make sure to register your application because we love to see all the exciting stuff you’re doing with our APIs. Should you ever need an exception for any reason the first step is to register your app with us.

Vince Maniago & The Yahoo! Maps Team

We’ll be hanging out in our own backyard this week at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose. What is the Where 2.0 Conference about? According to O’Reilly “The Where 2.0 Conference brings together the people, projects, and issues leading the charge into the location based technological frontier.” We think it’s also a great opportunity to see what everyone is working on in the Local space. 

Stop by the Yahoo! booth – we’re always interested in talking with more people in this space. For Maps developers we’ll also be hosting a Mashup & Eatup Lunch - if you’d like to join us please RSVP soon, there are just a few spots left. The whole gang from Local, Maps and Upcoming.org will be there. Hope to see you there!

The Yahoo! Local Team 

I am delighted to welcome you to our new Local Blog, brought to you by the Yahoo! Local and Maps team.

Whether you’re a user, merchant, publisher or developer, if you’re interested in Local or Maps, this is the place for you. Big things are happening with Yahoo! Local and Maps, and we’re continually adding items that don’t always get a big announcement. Here, we’ll point out both big and small new features in our product and APIs. We’d also love to make this a place to spotlight you - highlighting activities and gathering input from some of our favorite contributors, merchants & developers.

This blog is for you! We welcome your suggestions so we can continue our mission of enabling people to find, use, share and expand all human knowledge. The Local team and I look forward to sharing what we’re working on, but even more so, the opportunity to hear your ideas and feedback. Don’t be shy! Once again, welcome, and if you can’t wait to find out what’s subscribe to our RSS feed or add our blog to your My Yahoo!

Paul Levine, GM Yahoo! Local and Maps