Yahoo! Introduces New Mapping Service

The search engine giant Yahoo! Inc. (www.yahoo.com) announced the enhanced Yahoo! Maps service with major focus on improving ease of use and personalization.

The new Yahoo! Maps provides consumers an interactive look and feel with new features such as multi-point driving directions, local content integration, larger main map and dynamic pan, zoom and re-center technology. In response to direct feedback from Yahoo! users, these improvements highlight Yahoo!'s commitment to helping people easily find, use, share and expand knowledge of their local communities and strengthens Yahoo!'s position as the No. 1 online destination for local information.

The new service is available http://maps.yahoo.com/beta.

Underscoring Yahoo!'s commitment to leveraging the power of rich user-generated content, Yahoo! Maps is now more closely integrated with Yahoo! Local, providing consumers access to rich content, ratings and reviews to get "the inside scoop" on regional establishments, all from a single Maps page.

"Our new maps service is the result of extensive research on user preferences and experiences," said Paul Levine, general manager for Local Services at Yahoo!. "We believe the design and rich relevant data have raised the bar for online mapping. The new Yahoo! Maps is focused on innovation to helps users more easily and accurately accomplish their tasks."

Yahoo! has also significantly enhanced its suite of developer tools, providing new application program interfaces (APIs) that will allow developers to use Yahoo! Maps in their Flash and dhtml applications. The new Yahoo! Maps can be integrated into developer websites, allowing them to more easily create their own personalized maps and overlay a variety of data such as weather, jogging trails, real estate rentals and local events.

Developers have already created many interesting applications using the new Yahoo! Maps APIs and they can be viewed at: http://developer.yahoo.net/maps.
The Yahoo! Maps offering is enhanced using Macromedia Flex, part of the Macromedia Flash Platform, and is now available as an opt-in public beta on http://maps.yahoo.com/beta.