scattered technology news

Yahoo Gets Satellite Imagery - April 12, 2006

Since Google and Yahoo have added satellite imagery into their mapping services, Yahoo has implemented similar features into Yahoo Maps BETA. Although Yahoo Maps’s new flash-based beta interface looks much better than Google’s and Microsoft’s products, Yahoo still doesn’t have any quality satellite imagery. (Google and Microsoft use Ajax) While Google and Microsoft are working on getting closer to offering complete coverage of the United States in 1-meter/pixel, Yahoo has only now started to offer 15-meters/pixel in some areas.

“Yahoo! has acquired global map data and medium resolution images, which lets users find and see cities, towns, and major land feature in the world, [...] It’s a logical extension of Yahoo!’s recent product enhancements that included multi-point driving directions and improved zooming technology.” - Yahoo Spokesman.

Although they may lag behind in imagery, one feature Yahoo offers that others do not is multi-point directions. With multi-point directions a user can set not only point A and B, a start and end, but instead as many destinations as they’d like (C, D, E, etc.). Yahoo also offers a feature called “round-trip,” which is quiet different from reverse directions. With reverse directions, if the user has set the first, second and third locations, the standard application will only flip the exact same directions. However, the new innovative “round-trip” feature, Yahoo Maps will find new and closer directions if possible to get the driver back to the origin from their final destination without needing to go through mid-destinations again.

Links: Yahoo Maps Beta | Yahoo Maps
Related: Google Maps | MSN Maps