Yahoo! Local & Maps Blog

If you happen to be the proud owner of a shiny new Mercedes-Benz with Tele Aid, then you should be pleased to hear about our new Send to Car feature, which allows addresses and businesses found on Yahoo! Maps to be sent directly to your Mercedes-Benz vehicle through their new Search & Send program.

Starting today, a new ‘Send to Car’ link joins ‘Send to Phone’ and ‘Send by Email’ in the dropdown menu on Yahoo! Maps, and it’s super easy to use in two ways:

1. Just enter an address or get driving directions on Yahoo! Maps as you normally would. Click the “Send to Car” link, and select which (if more than one) address or addresses you’d like to download to your vehicle. Edit the title of the address if you’re so inclined and finally, enter the email address of your car and hit send
2. Or, you can send business information directly from their popup window when you use “Find a Business on the Map.” Search for businesses by keyword or by name, such as “dry cleaners” or “Pizzeria Uno” and click “Send to Car” on the in-map popup and follow the same instructions above.

Once in your vehicle, simply push the i-button, and the address information will be downloaded directly to your navigation system. You will be prompted to begin routing immediately, or save the address for later use.

One of the best uses for this feature is not only to send yourself addresses to use later, but to have friends and family send you addresses while you’re on the road when you need them, so you don’t have to worry about writing down information as you drive, or pull over to enter addresses yourself.

We were pleased to work with Mercedes-Benz as the first automobile manufacturer in our new Send to Car feature, and we think this new bridge between the comfort of your own keyboard and your in-car nav system is the best of both worlds.

Michael Lawless – Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps

As proclaimed yesterday by c|net, “The Webware 100 awards recognize the best Web 2.0 apps.” So, it’s my pleasure to share with you that Yahoo! Maps has been named a winner in the Reference category for 2007.

We’ve made a number of improvements in the last few months, including an improved mapping platform, better design, mobile offerings, and new international streets and satellite imagery. While we’re always excited about the direction our product is headed in, we still count on your feedback to make the product more useful and easier to use. We will continue to improve the technology, interface, and features that matter to you most, particularly focusing on being the most accurate mapping service available.

More details on our award win and the other 99 top Web 2.0 apps can be found here.

We hope you’ll continue to help us make Yahoo! Maps the best mapping system out there. If you haven’t yet used the Yahoo! Maps and Local suggestion board, check it out.

Cheers!

Michael Lawless, Sr Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps

Congratulations to the Yahoo! Real Estate team on their newly updated Home Values center that launched today!  They’ve used the Yahoo! Maps AJAX API as well as the Yahoo! Local search API to create a cool mash-up that provides users with a more comprehensive view of home valuations, community insights, and local connections. 

Searching for a particular home’s value takes you to an expanded results page that features estimated home values from Zillow.com, as well as two newly formed relationships with eppraisal.com and reply.com.  This allows you to get multiple home value estimates from leading providers in order to give users a more complete view on a home’s potential value range.  The real estate team also expanded their Zillow relationship to include home data (such as beds, baths, square feet), sale history and tax info, as well as recently sold comparable homes that are plotted on the map.  Additionally, you can view nearby similar homes for sale from Y! Real Estate to better understand the ‘ask’ side of the valuation process – what are sellers asking for similar homes right now?

To tap into the knowledge of the Yahoo! community, the real estate team joined up with Yahoo! Answers in order to surface home values related questions and answers directly on Yahoo! Real Estate.  You can browse the top home values questions and best answers, view more home values Q&As, search Y! Answers for any question/answer, or ask the community a question of your own.  Using the Yahoo! Local search API, they also surface local valuation professionals to help you connect with top rated real estate appraisers in your area should you choose to get a professional home appraisal. 

Check it out and let us know what you think!
Brian Rothenberg, Product Manager, Yahoo! Real Estate

Today we’re rolling out a brand new Yahoo! Maps that has its own proprietary platform to call home. Bringing the Yahoo! Maps platform in-house gives us numerous advantages, including; global scalability, having more direct control over upgrades, easier integration of new features and user feedback, and a greater ability to improve accuracy.

The advanced functionality introduced with this new platform addresses suggestions, feature requests and bug fixes reported through the yws-maps group. Your ongoing feedback is truly appreciated, as it plays a crucial role in our development cycle.

Some of the front-end improvements you’ll immediately notice when test-driving the improved Yahoo! Maps include:

• Ability to get driving directions within 34 European countries from the U.S. Yahoo! Maps site, including
  • Western Europe - Complete coverage
    Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, France, and Italy
  • Eastern Europe – Comprehensive coverage
    Albania, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, The Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia/Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Turkey
• A fresh new look and feel to our maps design that is distinctively Yahoo!
• Terrain overlays that provide added dimension and information at the medium and higher zoom levels.
• Neighborhood and building footprints for NYC and San Francisco show greater context at the zoom level. Additional cities are planned for rollout in 2007.
• Search for directions using only a point of interest (e.g., Empire State Building, Eiffel Tower).
• Redesigned interactive print page makes it easier to print and read driving directions.
• For users of our dial-up Maps, we have added many of the most popular features from our broadband version (new maps design, multi-point driving direction, one box address entry, integration of Yahoo! Local data), without sacrificing speed or performance.

Stay tuned for related news over the course of 2007, as we start to work with many of our European teams to introduce new in-country Maps sites in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. You can already take a look at Yahoo! Maps India, currently in beta, and up and running on our new platform too.

We hope you enjoy exploring the world on the new Yahoo! Maps, both globally and closer to home.

Jeremy Kreitler, Mike Lawless, Gus Maldonado, Mike Heideman, Rodney Fernandez, Ronny Choie, Jane Jao, and the Yahoo! Maps Team.

UPDATE:

Some people may not realize there are two versions of the site. The Broadband version is more feature rich, the Dialup version is most like our traditional website.

Broadband: http://maps.yahoo.com/broadband/

Dialup: http://maps.yahoo.com/dialup/

Congratulations to the Yahoo! Travel team on their latest update! Big props for the cool new way in which they have used the Yahoo! Maps AJAX API in their new Travel Guides section. This new feature displays more detailed and thematic layers right on the map, a sort of map-on-map. You can use the standard Y! Map tools, such as Pan, Zoom, and view Satellite Imagery, and Y! Travel adds a slider to control the transparency of the new map overlays.

I’ve had a chance to play with it, and think this is a really great way to add context to your trip. The old Roman Forum map is fascinating, especially used with satellite imagery, and details provided for the Grand Canyon and National Mall will certainly help you get around (or decide where to park!). Here is a screen grab from the Roman Forum, but I think you’ll need to check it out for yourself.

Right now this is just a prototype, and they’re working on getting some more maps to put online, but I think the added value of this kind of integration is readily apparent and I’m looking forward to new map overlays as they become available.

Here are some more map overlays in Yahoo! Travel.

Boston Freedom Trail
Yosemite National Park
Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site
Independence Hall
Gettysburg National Military Park
San Diego International Airport
Philadelphia International Airport

Nice work!

Mike Lawless, Sr Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps

PS Yahoo! Travel is hiring! Check out the jobs available.

In response to the I-80 and I-580 freeway connector collapse in the San Francisco Bay Area that occurred on Sunday, April 29, we responded quickly by removing these ramps from our mapping system on Monday. As a result, Yahoo! Maps is now offering alternative routes to Bay Area drivers, which are expected to be in effect for several months until repairs are completed.

Further, on published advice from the City of Oakland, yesterday Yahoo! Maps promoted the West Grand Avenue detour as the primary method of getting from the San Francisco Bay Bridge to points east, along 580. We hope this helps in planning your route. As always, our maps are to be used as a guide, so please be sure to follow relevant signs and indicators as you drive. We will be sure to stay abreast of the routing in this area and return things to normal as changes dictate.

Good luck and happy commuting,

Mike Lawless, Sr. Product Manager, and the Yahoo! Maps Team

Based on a lot of user input, the latest update we’ve made to the Broadband version of Yahoo! Maps is to the Driving Directions print page. The new format of the “Printable Version” allows for an interactive experience that simply put, makes them more useful and easier to read. 

Here are some of the coolest new features of the interactive printable maps:   

• Click on the title of the print page or in the “notes” box to personalize it.  Instead of “Directions to Sunnyvale, CA” you can change it to “Mike’s Surprise Birthday” or add in useful information like a phone number.  
• Change the font size of the driving directions between Small, Medium, or Large — one font size does not always fit all!
• Choose among Map & Directions, Map Only, or Directions only to save space and ink, and you can remove the summary and notes for a more compact set of directions. 
• Remove individual steps in your directions, like how to get from your house to the freeway, if they’re not important to you.
• Clicking “Show Cumulative Distance” will allow you to get a cumulative mile-post for each maneuver, great for people who use their odometer. Just set it at the beginning of your journey.
• Change your included map layout from one to three panels, including total route, the start point, and the end point. 

While we can’t do much to make sure people don’t forget their printed directions before hopping in their car, we can make them more useful to those who do remember!  We hope you like the changes, and your feedback is very important to us.  Please keep it up and don’t forget to use our Yahoo! Local and Maps suggestion board!
 
Mike Lawless, Product Manager, and the Yahoo! Maps Team 

Have a suggestion to make Yahoo! Local or Maps better? Use our new Local Suggestion Board to pitch ideas, vote and comment on others, and get notified if we use your idea.

Voting helps us quickly discover what’s most important to users. In addition to reading feedback from other users, you’ll find responses from Yahoo! employees about the issues. Product teams regularly read and take action on feedback. Though we aren’t always going to be able to act on your input, it’s incredibly helpful to us in making the best sites we can… and we’ve even been known to reward great ideas on occasion with awesome prizes.

New ideas are already starting to flow-in! Perhaps you want to vote for user-enhanced driving directions or GPS Aware mobile search, or maybe you’d like to submit a new idea. Either way, we want to hear from you, so Tell Us What You Think and help us improve Yahoo! Local for you and millions of others.

The Yahoo! Local Team

Have you ever considered moving to a new home and found yourself wondering which neighborhoods would have the best schools for your children? We’ve all asked our real estate agents, friends, or coworkers what they’ve thought about the schools in a particular neighborhood.
Yahoo! Real Estate is happy to announce that you can now search for schools in your area (or the area you plan to move into) and evaluate which schools are the best fit for your kids, based on detailed school information, statistics, and parent reviews. Now that’s useful!
Here’s how to start:
- Go to Yahoo! Real Estate
- Click on the “Research Schools” tab

- Enter the city and state or ZIP code for the area that you’re researching in the search box and click “Search.”
- Now you’ll be able to view this region’s schools on the map and in the list.  You can refine your search by school district, school level (elementary, middle, and high schools), and school type (public, private, and charter schools) on the left bar.

- Click on a school to get parent reviews and information about its enrollment, student/teacher ratio, and contact details.  A neighborhood map shows you the nearest grocery stores, parks, restaurants, or gas stations.

Check it out and let us know what you think!
Brian Rothenberg
Product Manager, Yahoo! Real Estate

The Yahoo! elves have been hard at work in their toy shop for the Holiday season to bring you a nice little integration of Maps, Local, Mail and Search.

Users of Yahoo! Mail (classic version only at this time) can now do more with the content in their email. When mousing over any address or location (including international cities) a quick click on the purple underlined terms will bring up an instant map or satellite image, business information, driving directions and a slew of other options relating to that location. The new Shortcuts lets you do all this without ever having to leave your message or open a new browser window.

It’s a very handy new trick for those that don’t like to do a lot of cutting and pasting.

This not only works for addresses, but there is also additional information available for a variety of other items in the messages (phone numbers, key phrases, email addresses…etc). You can also disable this… but why would you want to?

Happy Holidays

The Yahoo! elves and Jeremy Kreitler