MapQuest has finally gotten around to adding a feature that Google Maps has had for over a year: real-time traffic info. When you search for a location or driving directions on MapQuest, all you have to do is click the traffic button in the upper left corner of the screen and all of the major roads will be highlighted with color codes showing the traffic conditions.
One thing that MapQuest has added that Google Maps lacks is construction and incident alerts. If you hover your mouse over the exclamation points or construction icons you can find about traffic accidents and other conditions that could affect your travel time. Clicking on the icons brings up more detailed information.
SXSW is a junction of film, music and interactive folks with the iF! trade show floor reflecting that eclectic mix. We found a healthy smattering of music booths, some film schools and lots of web app companies. Big booths included Sony, Mapquest, Opera, Yahoo and O'Reilly while smaller booths from Axiom, Kyte and AIM provided a smorgasbord of interactive wares. You can see the full list on the SXSW site or just peep our gallery for a virtual tour.
Trade show floors often take on a circus-like atmosphere, with booths doing what they can to lure you to their wares. At iF! the "cool thing" was Guitar Hero. We counted no less than four booths with the ubiquitous guitar controllers and LCD screens (even if they were often unmanned). One booth broke with tradition and had Rock Band. Brave, no?
Our money for Most Fun Demo is on Bitstrips, a killer app for making your own comic strips online. Imagine mixing Mii-creation tools with Comic Life and you get the idea. Lots of fun, diverse and powerful, and stupid simple to use. Most boring? Well, hard to say because by the time we hit the floor a few booth attendees had left, leaving their booths sitting there, dejected and stickerless.
Google has been promoting Google Maps on search results pages, and according to Hitwise, their promotion is paying off. As a result, Google Maps has seen a sizeable increase in their traffic in the last year. If you were to search for an address on Google before last January, you would have seen map links for Yahoo, MapQuest, and Google Maps. Now, you only see a link for Google Maps.
Additionally, if you search for "map quest" or "mapquests", you'll see a Google Maps advertisement next to the search result. The number of searches resulting in a visit to Google Maps recently tripled. According to hitwise, on the week ending January 6, 2007, 0.22% of searches resulted in traffic going to Google Maps, versus 0.67% during the same week this year.
In our non-scientific observation, most younger people are using Google Maps and MapQuest is utilized by old timers who've been using it for years.
Which online mapping system do you use? We look forward to seeing opinions in the comments from yougin's and geriatrics alike.
Mapquest has added a few features to its gas prices page, including a calculator that will let you figure out how much your next road trip will cost you. Mapquest has allowed users to look up gas prices at nearby filling stations since last year, but now you can take the number, plug it into a calculator, enter you car's mileage and get a decent estimate. We know you could do the same calculation in your head, but why waste the brain cells when you don't have to?
Mapquest has also added alternative fuel stations to its listing, making it easy to find a place to fill up with biodiesel, ethanol, compressed natural gas, hydrogen, propane, or liquefied natural gas.
AOL is revamping its mobile phone services. That means a new customizable MyAOL service for phones, and a new version of AOL.com that's optimized for viewing on WAP-enabled handsets.
AOL (which happens to be this blog's parent company) started upgrading its mobile offerings a few months ago. But today the company is pulling of the beta label.
The new AOL Mobile doesn't just fit better on small screens. It also understands that you're using a mobile device. So if you're searching for things like music, ringtones might get more prominent placement than on the desktop version of AOL Search. You'll also start to see paid listings in the mobile search engine.
Other mobile updates include:
A new mobile version of AOL Shopping
Expanded AIM functionality or mobile devices with text message service and a GPS Buddy Finder feature
Redesigned AOL Mail for mobile
AOL.com WAP portal includes access to AOL services like Moviefone, CityGuide, and MapQuest
AOL's also planning to release a downloadable client called AOL MyMobile soon. The application will bundle services like Mail, CityGuide, MapQuest, Local Search, News, Weather, Sports, and Pictures.
AOL is also launching a downloadable Windows Mobile client called MyMobile. Initially available only on Windows Mobile devices, MyMobile is designed to offer an easy way for users to download and use AOL services of their choice, such as mail, MapQuest, and CityGuide, within a single application on the phone. Users will be able to download MyMobile by clicking the "Get MyMobile" link on AOL's WAP portal.
The other day Goog 411 graduated from Google Labs. So while Gmail is still in beta, the much younger service that lets you get phone numbers and directions on your phone is 100% officially launched. So what does Microsoft do? They announce Live Search 411.
Right now if you dial 1-800-CALL-411 you get a "coming soon" message. But if history teaches us anything, when Live Search 411 launches it will work almost exactly the same way as Goog 411.
Microsoft is also announcing/confirming a small boatload (perhaps a kayak or a canoe) of new features for the desktop versions of Live Search:
Improved driving directions with dynamic rerouting based on traffic, and landmark clues to let you know if you've gone too far
User generated content is incorporated into Live Search local results
Virtual Earth updates including multipoint trip routing, enhanced geocoding, and map control support for Safari 2.0
An updated version of Live Search for Windows Mobile 5.0/6 will be available today with support for voice input and GPS
Live Search for Blackberry beta
Honestly, at this point we have no idea whether we prefer Microsoft or Google's mapping service. Maybe we'll just start using Mapquest again. No, we probably won't.
When you need a word for tissue, you probably say Kleenex. Xerox and copy machine are almost synonymous. And for many people, Mapquest means online maps. A huge number of people still use Mapquest as their primary online direction service, even though Google Maps and other services have long had features missing from Mapquest.
It looks like AOL (the company that owns both Mapquest and this blog) has no plans to let Mapquest rest on its laurels. The company pushed out a new version of Mapquest beta today, and an accompanying Mapquest beta blog. TechCrunch reports that today's beta is tomorrow's default interface. Mapquest plans to roll out the changes to its main site by the end of the year.
So what's new? First up, you get a map on the front page, not just text entry boxes. Second, you no longer have to enter a street, city, and state all in separate boxes. There's a unified Google Maps-like box at the top. The default view is the directions view. But you can also search for businesses and places, for example, "coffee shops" in "New York." You still have to remember to type the place name in one box and the location name in the other or you'll be less than satisfied with your results.
Here are a few other features we like:
Print a map showing whatever level of detail you'd like
Move icons out of the way if they're blocking a street name or other important features
Adjust your default settings, including map or aerial view, set home and work locations, etc
Get directions for trips with multiple stops
Minimize the text sidebar and maximize the map
We've put together a little video showing some of the features. You can check it out after the jump.
Google has added public transit info for some cities, although it looks like we'll have to wait a little while before Google Transit expands beyond a limited number of cities. And HopStop gives you transit and walking directions in a limited number of US cities.
But so far most services that provide directions online assume you're driving a car. Mapquest, Google Maps, and pretty much everybody else calculates time based on driving time, and distance based on streets. If you try to follow those directions on foot, you could end up on the highway, or at the very least going unnecessarily out of your way to follow one-way streets.
Walk It is aimed squarely at people on foot. It only covers a few British cities right now (Edinburgh, Birmingham and central London). It'd be nice to see someone develop one service that can provide driving, walking, and public transit directions fro a whole country. But until then, it's nice to see services like Walk It pop up to fill the gap.
One thing that's a bit odd about Walk It's map is that you pull the scrollbar on the left down to zoom in, and up to zoom out, which is the opposite of Google Maps, Mapquest and other services.
General Motor's OnStar service and AOL's MapQuest have reached a deal to let drivers plan their trip on a PC and then send the information to their vehicle's navigation system.
About 3,000 customers will participate in a pilot of the OnStar Web Destination Entry program starting this summer with a full release expected later this year.
OnStar customers will be able to login to Mapquest and select up to five destinations. In the car, the OnStar system will calculate the best route from the driver's current location and provide directions by voice.
But wait, can't you already get directions through OnStar? Umm yeah. But now you can add another (probably unnecessary) step to the process by starting your trip planning before you even get into the car.
A lot flew beneath my radar last week, including, unfortunately, a great
post by TechCrunch's Frank Gruber called Comparing the Mapping Services, in
which he compares, with some nice screenshots and tables, the big five online map services: Ask.com, Google, Yahoo!,
Windows Live, and MapQuest. Gruber praises all of the services, but in the end he says (spoiler alert!), "Overall,
Yahoo Maps was by far the best application tested. Its fast Flash interface, multipoint directions, live traffic
information, and easy send-to-mobile feature make it the hands down winner. It also features the most robust API
options." What's the best online map service for your money?
Following in Google and Yahoo!'s wake,
venerable mapping site (and fellow AOL company) MapQuest has released an open API that third-party
developers can use to integrate mappingservices into their own web sites. The new "OpenAPI" supports most of
what Google and Yahoo!'s APIs do, like push-pin markers and pop-up info boxes, with the addition of route-planning that
competing APIs lack. For free users, OpenAPI has a limit of 50,000 maps and geocodes (combined) and 5,000 routes per day (compare to Google's
50,000 and Yahoo!'s no limit). To get an idea of what can be done with the API take a look at the sample mash-up, Mapzierge. You can also check out the OpenAPI
developers' blog, and if you come up with something cool you should enter their Developers Challenge.
Though I'm always glad to see a new open API, and even though MapQuest has improved some in the last year, I must say
it still feels remarkably clunky. Baby steps, I guess.
AOL is revamping its mobile phone services. That means a new customizable MyAOL service for phones, and a new version of AOL.com that's optimized for viewing on WAP-enabled handsets.
Google has added public transit info for some cities, although it looks like we'll have to wait a little while before Google Transit expands beyond a limited number of cities. And HopStop gives you transit and walking directions in a limited number of US cities.
General Motor's OnStar service and AOL's MapQuest have reached a deal to let drivers plan their trip on a PC and then send the information to their vehicle's navigation system.
A lot flew beneath my radar last week, including, unfortunately, a great
post by TechCrunch's Frank Gruber called Comparing the Mapping Services, in
which he compares, with some nice screenshots and tables, the big five online map services: Ask.com, Google, Yahoo!,
Windows Live, and MapQuest. Gruber praises all of the services, but in the end he says (spoiler alert!), "Overall,
Yahoo Maps was by far the best application tested. Its fast Flash interface, multipoint directions, live traffic
information, and easy send-to-mobile feature make it the hands down winner. It also features the most robust API
options." What's the best online map service for your money?
Following in Google and Yahoo!'s wake,
venerable mapping site (and fellow AOL company) MapQuest has released an open API that third-party
developers can use to integrate mappingservices into their own web sites. The new "OpenAPI" supports most of
what Google and Yahoo!'s APIs do, like push-pin markers and pop-up info boxes, with the addition of route-planning that
competing APIs lack. For free users, OpenAPI has a limit of 50,000 maps and geocodes (combined) and 5,000 routes per day (compare to Google's
50,000 and Yahoo!'s no limit). To get an idea of what can be done with the API take a look at the sample mash-up, Mapzierge. You can also check out the OpenAPI
developers' blog, and if you come up with something cool you should enter their Developers Challenge.
Though I'm always glad to see a new open API, and even though MapQuest has improved some in the last year, I must say
it still feels remarkably clunky. Baby steps, I guess.
