Yahoo! Maps

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Yahoo! Maps web site

Yahoo! Maps is a free online mapping portal provided by the Yahoo! network, based out of Sunnyvale, California.

1 Available Services
2 Yahoo! Local Maps Rich Internet Application
3 Yahoo! Map Web Services
4 Map Data
5 Other Mapping Portals
6 External links

[edit] Available Services

The main Yahoo! Maps site offers street maps and driving directions for the United States and Canada. It has the following notable features:

Address Book: Registered Yahoo! users can store a list of commonly used street addresses, making it unnecessary to type them in again. A recently entered address can be quickly recalled by selecting one from a drop-down list.
Live Traffic: Traffic incidents and current highway conditions can be viewed on the map.
Point of Interest Finder: SmartView (tm) can be used to find businesses and other points of interest near the current location, with clickable icons that supply an address, a telephone number, and links for more information.
Driving Directions: Driving directions can be displayed in printable form, with optional turn-by-turn maps, or as simple text. Links to driving directions can be e-mailed, and text directions sent to mobile phones.

[edit] Yahoo! Local Maps Rich Internet Application

A new and improved Yahoo! Local Maps has been recently made available. It offers maps with significantly more interactivity for broadband users. It is written using Adobe Flex leveraging Rich Internet Application techniques and the Adobe Flash platform (formerly Macromedia Flash). Some features:

Draggable maps: The current map view can be manipulated by dragging it with the mouse or tapping the arrow keys. Zoom level can be controlled via the mouse scroll wheel, "Page Up"/"Page Down" keys, or the map's zoom bar.
Multi-point driving directions: Multiple addresses can be entered and manually reordered for complex driving directions.
Find On The Map: A business name or category can be typed into the "Find On The Map" box to locate it in the current map view. A list of clickable point of interest categories is also available. The results can be further refined by user rating, or related category.
Satellite Imagery: Labelled (hybrid) and unlabelled satellite imagery is available world-wide.
Overview map: Collapsible overview map provides context, with draggable grey area controlling the main map view.
International Coverage: Outside the US and Canada, Yahoo! Maps Beta can recognize city, province, and country names, and provide a small-scale map or satellite views.
Right click to set waypoint: an origin, destination, or midpoint can be set by right-clicking on the desired location on the map.

Live traffic, address book, and send to phone features are also available.

[edit] Yahoo! Map Web Services

Developers can embed Yahoo! Maps into their own web pages (to create a mashup) through the Yahoo! Maps Developer APIs. Many exciting new web pages have come about recently by displaying content from other sources on top of maps provided by the various mapping portals (the Google Maps API getting the most publicity). The Yahoo! Maps APIs come in three basic flavors:

The Flash APIs, that use the Adobe Flash platform. Three variations, allowing the developer to write in JavaScript, ActionScript, or Adobe Flex, are available.

The Ajax API, for interactive maps that use capabilities inherent in web browsers, without using the Flash plug-in. Ajax applications are written in JavaScript.

The "Simple" API. The Simple API is basically a XML data format, an extension of GeoRSS, for displaying point of interest data on top of Yahoo!'s main map site. The Flash and Ajax APIs also support display of GeoRSS formatted data.

Yahoo! offers a number of low-level APIs to support maps, for geocoding, getting a map image, searching for a local business, or retrieving traffic information. Some other Yahoo! services, such as Flickr and Upcoming.org, have their content available through web services, with interesting potential for mashups.

[edit] Map Data

The street network and other vector data Yahoo! maps uses is from Navteq, Tele Atlas, and public domain sources. Detailed street network data is currently available for the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Country borders, cities, and water bodies are mapped for the rest of the world.

Moderate resolution satellite imagery is available world-wide. 1-2 meter resolution is available for most of the contiguous United States, and select cities worldwide.