Michael Arrington breaks the embargo on the all-new Yahoo! Maps service tonight. Unlike Google or MSN, Yahoo! is using Flash, rather than AJAX, to generate the maps and there are some very cool capabilities in the service including a small navigator window that shows the main map you're looking at in context of a larger geographical area and the ability to overlay traffic information onto the map. Maps can be added to your MyYahoo! page, e-mailed, or sent to a mobile phone.
This will definitley be fun to play with. Read Michael's post - he's obviously had some time to get familiar with many of the excellent features Yahoo has integrated including:
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Multiple ways to scroll and zoom (including your mouse scroll wheel)
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Multi-point driving directions (set a number of destinations you want to stop at and Yahoo! will calculate the entire set of directions for you)
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Connection with Yahoo Local - zoom into an area and search for "sushi"and all of the local sushi bars are displayed on the map for you
1. There is also an AJAX version of yahoo maps that is available for use thru the maps api! Combined with the already way better directions than google maps, I think Yahoo has done an amazing job and is ready to get the maps market share back!
Posted at 5:16AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Nimit