Yahoo! has rolled out a major update to Yahoo! Maps, with expanded worldwide coverage, new and more focused neighborhood data, and many stylistic improvements.
The new neighborhood data allows you to get more specific information for any given location, with lower zoom levels and more localized data, including schools, rest areas, resorts, restaurants, and so on.
300 cities have been updated in all, from Palo Alto to Chicago, and 12,000 new neighborhoods have been added, from "Lower East Side" (New York, Milwaukee, Bridgeport) to "Lower Collegetown" (Ithaca). The expanded worldwide coverage adds or improves on a good portion of Eastern Europe.
Style improvements include adjusted label colors for better legibility and lighter map tiles.
While we appreciate the improvements made to Yahoo! Maps, we're still put off by the noisy advertisements in the bottom left corner which is flashier than anything you'll see at Google Maps or Microsoft Live Maps.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-06-2008 @ 10:20PM
michael said...
Yuck. Y! Maps still seems to rank bottom on my list of mapping sites.
The road map UI still seems akin to the 90's.
There's no way to make personal maps, or any advanced tools to customize with.
The graphical ads, like you guys said are annoying.
And when you zoom in too close, you lose site of any business listings, even if Y! did show it a few zooms higher.
Live Maps is far better. It does all the good stuff that Y! Maps does (if there's any) and has other extra features.
And Live Maps also does a lot of mapping updates, as they say on their blog a lot. Though DS doesn't mention it much.
I only like Y!'s marked points icon. That's it.
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3-07-2008 @ 6:29AM
komodo said...
Yahoo maps, Google maps, all with the same thing. We need something new.
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3-09-2008 @ 9:06AM
kilrathi said...
Noisy advertisements? Have you looked at your own site lately? Download Squad has far more bright animated advertisements than Yahoo Maps.
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3-09-2008 @ 12:59PM
Diddle said...
@kilrathi - just add one of those ad-blocking plugins for Firefox and you're set.
As for the mapping thing, I've been using Google since I abandoned MapQuest eons ago. I can't be arsed to use Microsoft's maps, even if some think they're better than Google. Everyone keeps improving, I'd rather see colaboration for the end-users to win with more accurate and informative systems.
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