Wednesday, March 8th, 2006
Ask.com Maps: A new Ajax mapping service
Ask.com has released their own Ajax Maps solution, that looks a lot like Google Maps again. They have added a couple of small features such as driving direction playback and saved/recent locations which is nice, but not a huge amount of innovation here.
What I have found interesting in the maps space is how much the platform, and the API matter. Although a ton of people are doing Google Maps mashups, we are starting to see more and more people use Yahoo! Maps for their mashing pleasure. The reason isn’t that they prefer the mapping engine, but much simpler., Yahoo! Maps doesn’t force you to have a domain api key. This may not be a big deal for your pet project (get the API key once), but if it a big deal if you are selling a product that uses mashups, as it means that you need your users to install a domain key as part of their installation step. +1 Yahoo.
I’ve found some really useful features: directions for multiple locations and adding new locations from right click on the map (both features also available in local.live.com), and draggable pushpins (a unique feature, AFAIK)
This mapping service is already much better than Google and Yahoo!, atleast for europeans, there is much more detail than on the other mapping services
Multiple locations on the same set of directions! I have been asking for this. :) I’m surprised a Google Maps mashup with this functionality hasn’t already appeared. It is exceptionally useful when planning a day trip to more than one location, or, as in my current predicament, aggregating all of my mileage from work for my taxes.
I was asking for this on SitePoint (to no avail) a month ago: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=345896
I’m overjoyed it is here. :)
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What set apart from the Ask Map to the Google Map is when you Right Click on the map. It is where that Google ends and the Ask Maps begins. It is so intuitively useful when you can add multiple locations without typing. When you try to build a map guidance from point A to point B, you usually get a shortest distance guide from other Maps which may not be the desirable route you want to show your guests. You can build one with Ask Maps to guide your guests to take a most convenient route rather than the shortest route. After playing with Ask Map a little while, I don’t thnk that I can live without it now.
Ask.com Maps have much much higher res photography than Google. For example, do a search for “Wilmore, KY”