Yahoo! Local & Maps Blog

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

It’s time to announce a new feature on Yahoo! Local which empowers you to add your favorite new local business, alert others when an old favorite has closed, and add or change business info quickly. Now you can truly be our eyes and ears in your community!
To quickly add a new favorite business, please fill out this short form:

• In 24 hours it’ll be up on Local for everyone to see. Here’s an example of a recently added business in Redwood City, CA:

If you run across a business which has closed, needs a correction, or which is missing some important info like its web site, please click the “Edit This Business” link beneath the rating to tell us about it.

We’ll add an alert to the listing ASAP and show your proposed changes to other Locals in a pop-up window like this:

That’s it! Quick and easy. And of course, if you happen to know about a business that has been edited by someone in your community, you’ll be able to confirm that the changes are valid by clicking on ‘Yes’ in the pop-up window above.

As always, let us know what you think!

Brian, Ganesh, & The Local Team

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

Yahoo! Maps is coming out of Beta today. This means that if you have a broadband internet connection, and if you have Flash 7 (or greater), the Broadband Maps (new) will be the default, and otherwise you’ll get the Dial-Up Maps (original). You can always switch between the two by using a link at the top of the page.

Since we released the beta version, we’ve spent our time optimizing the product and responding to user feedback to make it ready for mainstream use. We added the functionality and features our users want most, and the response we’ve received to-date has been very positive. The new Yahoo! Maps gives our users a more expedient method of finding locations and getting driving directions, and is an even more powerful tool within Yahoo! Local.

In addition to releasing the new Yahoo! Maps, we’re also rolling out street-level maps for Europe and many cities of new satellite imagery. These are available almost anywhere Yahoo! Maps can be found, whether on Flickr in their photo mapping feature, Yahoo! Travel’s Trip Planner product, and of course to our external developer community using Yahoo! Maps APIs. Getting more maps and imagery outside the US is a feature enhancement that has been in high demand.

Just a quick re-cap of what’s in the new Yahoo! Maps.

• The award winning, most interactive, easy to use interface for the new generation of mapping.
• Multi-point routing, (from A to B to C), which is a great way to plan your day, do your errands, visit garage sales or hunt for a house.
• A new mini-map which gives you an overview of what you’re looking at.
• Satellite and Aerial imagery, wall to wall in the USA, and for over 100 cities internationally.
• Full integration with Yahoo! Local, including search and SmartView.
• Saved locations and auto-complete against your saved locations, recent locations and Yahoo! Address Book.
• The ability to return to the old-style Yahoo! Maps for when you’re on a Dial-Up connection.
• Quick access to maps from within Yahoo! Mail using Yahoo! Shortcuts.

We certainly hope you enjoy using the new Yahoo! Maps, and the Maps team will continue to work to make it faster, more enjoyable, and more useful. Please Take a Tour of our new features, or jump right in!
Thank you!

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

In addition to announcing that Yahoo! Maps is coming out of beta, we’ve just published a whole new set of maps that cover most of Europe. These maps are available in the new Yahoo! Maps, as well as places where Yahoo! Maps are used most, such as Yahoo! Travel, Flickr, and in our developer API’s. Stay tuned for more International Maps updates in the coming months, but below is a list of the countries we’ve updated. Note: although the maps are now available, the geocoder and driving directions are not yet ready.

Below is a list of the countries we’ve updated.

Cheers,

Mark Law & Mike Lawless, Product Managers, Yahoo! Maps

Countries with Comprehensive Coverage:

Andorra
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Finland
France (including Corsica)
Germany
Ireland
Italy (including Sicily and Sardinia)
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Monaco
Netherlands
Norway
Portugal
San Marino
Spain (include Ceuta, Canary Islands, Mallorca, Menorca)
Switzerland
Sweden
United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Gibraltar)
Vatican City

Countries with Major Coverage:

Czech Republic
Poland

Capitol City Coverage:

Bulgaria
Croatia
Estonia
Greece
Hungary
Latvia
Lithuania
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia

PS. In addition, we have a pretty extensive set of major Metro and Railway stations within the countries we’ve added.

The latest version of the Yahoo! AJAX Maps API includes performance improvements, numerous new features, bug fixes and a smaller footprint.

• Polyline support allows you to draw lines on a Yahoo! Map.
• Polylines with GeoRSS can be drawn on the map using the coordinates of your choice.
• Local Search is now built-in to the API so that results from local.yahoo.com can be plotted on your map.
• Traffic overlay information is built-in allowing you to display traffic information from maps.yahoo.com on your map.
• GeoRSS export functionality let’s you export your map application into the portable GeoRSS standard.
• An additional 20+ methods, like auto-fitting zoom level when specifying radius.

There’s more information in the getting started guide. Make sure to join the yws-maps group to find the answers to your questions when building mashups or implementing Yahoo! Maps.

Mirek Grymuza, Vince Maniago
and the Yahoo! Maps Team