What is Yahoo! Brewing in its Lab? - What’s Next at Yahoo!?
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I’m going to focus here on what appears to be the most recent beta. Yahoo! Maps is one of the many services in beta you can find at Yahoo! Next. It gives you a place to put in two addresses to the right, and (by default) a map of the United States to your left. Putting in two addresses gives you text directions and marks your route on the map.
You can manipulate the map, but it is not quite as intuitive as Google Earth. Yahoo! shows you a small box. This box includes a smaller version of the map that is showing in the larger screen, plus a significant part of the surrounding area that is not in the screen. This box contains a grey rectangle, which you can move over any portion of that smaller map. Moving the rectangle changes what is showing in the larger screen (indeed, the area covered by the grey rectangle is the exact area that is shown in the screen).
You need to really watch where the grey rectangle is when you zoom in and out. Fortunately, this is not difficult. There is a slider control on the right side of the box, with a plus sign at one end and a minus sign at the other end. Zooming in and out is done by dragging the slider in the appropriate direction. Needless to say, these are maps; there is no satellite photography involved.
One thing that is nice is that you can click on a “Live Traffic” link, and the map will show you where all the incidents are. It will tell you what time the map was last updated, and if you run your mouse over any particular incident, it will give you the time of the incident, exact location, whether there are any injuries, whether any lanes are blocked…in this particular case, the same information that the Florida Department of Transportation has.
I didn’t like the fact that you apparently couldn’t move the box to other parts of the screen, though keeping it on the upper left did seem to keep it out of the way. Fortunately, there was an easy way to tell Yahoo! about it; a good-sized, clearly labeled button on the bottom right takes you to a feedback form. It asks for your name and your email address, but the latter, at least, is optional.
In short, Yahoo! may approach things a little differently from Google, but it should not be underestimated. The company has some really bright ideas. It will be interesting to see what it gives us in beta next.
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