On Local & Maps in India
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Drive, walk, motorbike or Cycle to your destination.
Have you ever noticed the amount of homogeneity that exists in the roads of the western world? I am pretty familiar with California and spotting a motorbike is as rare as spotting a mosquito. It seems like vast majority of them are, infact, on the same type of vehicle ( a car) and hence are most likely to take the same route/direction given two places. And so Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and all of these guys have just one type of route. Fair enough.
Bring India in and the equation changes quite phenomenally. Just like our people, vehicles on our roads are of various types. Between two and six wheels, we have all the kind of Vehicles known to man kind running on our roads and each one of them is as important as the other.
Now, let me build a hypothesis on top of that previous statement. Arguably, The same person travelling between the same two given places may take a different route depending on the kind of vehicle he is on.
I, for one, prefer the side roads (gallis) and small roads that are less polluted and less crowded over main roads when I am on a motorbike. I am willing to ride a few hundred meters extra if I can skip a few junctions/signals which are a big bottleneck on traffic speeds. But when I am in a car, I would rather stick to the main roads because the condition of side roads are unpredictable. Plus, you never know if that big gravel truck is parked blocking the entire street. But, whenever I take the cycle, I really want to avoid main roads completely if possible, because, they are simply not safe.
There are very many ways to get to a place. Sometimes, you want to take the fastest route, Sometimes the shortest. But the kind of vehicle never used to play a part. But, now it does. At Yahoo! India maps. Search for a route and watch out for buttons on the right pane. Choose the one that fits you well and drive safe and with a smile.
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Have you ever noticed the amount of homogeneity that exists in the roads of the western world? I am pretty familiar with California and spotting a motorbike is as rare as spotting a mosquito. It seems like vast majority of them are, infact, on the same type of vehicle ( a car) and hence are most likely to take the same route/direction given two places. And so Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and all of these guys have just one type of route. Fair enough.
Bring India in and the equation changes quite phenomenally. Just like our people, vehicles on our roads are of various types. Between two and six wheels, we have all the kind of Vehicles known to man kind running on our roads and each one of them is as important as the other.
Now, let me build a hypothesis on top of that previous statement. Arguably, The same person travelling between the same two given places may take a different route depending on the kind of vehicle he is on.
I, for one, prefer the side roads (gallis) and small roads that are less polluted and less crowded over main roads when I am on a motorbike. I am willing to ride a few hundred meters extra if I can skip a few junctions/signals which are a big bottleneck on traffic speeds. But when I am in a car, I would rather stick to the main roads because the condition of side roads are unpredictable. Plus, you never know if that big gravel truck is parked blocking the entire street. But, whenever I take the cycle, I really want to avoid main roads completely if possible, because, they are simply not safe.
There are very many ways to get to a place. Sometimes, you want to take the fastest route, Sometimes the shortest. But the kind of vehicle never used to play a part. But, now it does. At Yahoo! India maps. Search for a route and watch out for buttons on the right pane. Choose the one that fits you well and drive safe and with a smile.
Labels: bikingdirections, cyclingdirections, directions, routing, walkingdirections, yahoomaps yahooindiamaps
¶ 2:25 PM 2 comments links to this post
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Ladies & Gentlemen, Please welcome Yahoo! India Local
Yahoo! India has now introduced Local/Business search in India starting with a few cities (Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi ). It is the usual, Find "what" in "where" local search destination except there are a few cheeky cool things.
Locality pages: for Koramangala, Indiranagar, Bandra West and Andheri West.
Essentialist: On the Koramangala Locality page, I found a couple of interesting questions such as "Are you getting married?" , "Moving to Koramangala?" being asked at me. And on click, it gives an essential list of all businesses you may ever need in the process of getting married (Assuming you already have a girl) or moving. Pretty cool.
Footprints: Assuming you have visited that business, then you could click on a "foot" looking icon and it will bump up a number. Something like digging a web page, I guess. I guess higher the footprint, more the listing will feature in your search, frontpage etc.
If you are business owner of if you know a business, you could add details of it using the "Add a Business". I did'nt quite find a page/link to do that. But Y! Local did ask me about it when my search query did not yield a result. Such as this
There is a fair amount of Maps integration as well, but is not useful practically yet. You can do stuff like move around the marker of a business to it's correct location, vote on it, save it etc.
You can also send the listing on SMS, email etc. I also like the UI and the layout, but I also wish the frontpage was a little light and plain. Right now, it has one too many links.
Cheers! to Yahoo! India.
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Yahoo! India has now introduced Local/Business search in India starting with a few cities (Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi ). It is the usual, Find "what" in "where" local search destination except there are a few cheeky cool things.
Locality pages: for Koramangala, Indiranagar, Bandra West and Andheri West.
Essentialist: On the Koramangala Locality page, I found a couple of interesting questions such as "Are you getting married?" , "Moving to Koramangala?" being asked at me. And on click, it gives an essential list of all businesses you may ever need in the process of getting married (Assuming you already have a girl) or moving. Pretty cool.
Footprints: Assuming you have visited that business, then you could click on a "foot" looking icon and it will bump up a number. Something like digging a web page, I guess. I guess higher the footprint, more the listing will feature in your search, frontpage etc.
If you are business owner of if you know a business, you could add details of it using the "Add a Business". I did'nt quite find a page/link to do that. But Y! Local did ask me about it when my search query did not yield a result. Such as this
There is a fair amount of Maps integration as well, but is not useful practically yet. You can do stuff like move around the marker of a business to it's correct location, vote on it, save it etc.
You can also send the listing on SMS, email etc. I also like the UI and the layout, but I also wish the frontpage was a little light and plain. Right now, it has one too many links.
Cheers! to Yahoo! India.
Labels: business, indialocal, local, localsearch, maps, search, yahooindialocal
¶ 2:44 AM 0 comments links to this post
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Monday, April 14, 2008
Local Touch to Yahoo! Maps
Just showing off a bit because The Hindu still remains my favorite newspaper.
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Just showing off a bit because The Hindu still remains my favorite newspaper.
Labels: india, indiamaps, maps, newspaper, thehindu, yahooindiamaps, yahoomaps
¶ 2:25 PM 6 comments links to this post
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Thursday, April 10, 2008
The Yahoo! + MS 300 parody
I throughly enjoyed the 300 parody on the Yahoo-Microsoft deal. All credits to Amr. Get set to rotfl.
¶ 4:36 PM 0 comments links to this post
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¶ 4:36 PM 0 comments links to this post
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Friday, April 04, 2008
Mapquest & OnStar deal
I haven't heard of Onstar before, but nevertheless, the voice commands part impressed me. Mapquest, ofcourse, is spot on when it comes to giving right directions.
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Labels: gps, mapquest, navigational devices, onstar, voice
¶ 3:48 AM 0 comments links to this post
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Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Yahoo! India Maps TV commericial
I haven't seen this on TV myself. A bunch of my friends say they saw in on Sony TV.
Did you see it sometime? Do you like it?
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Did you see it sometime? Do you like it?
Labels: advertisement, commericial, indiamaps, tv, tv commericial yahooindiamaps indiamaps yahoomaps sonytv, tvcommericial, yahooindiamaps, yahoomaps
¶ 5:35 PM 2 comments links to this post
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Monday, March 31, 2008
The Yahoo! India Maps compass
Although we sit and write code to make sure that You don't even need a compass, we still like it the old way.
Sridhar got us these Keychains a little while ago.
¶ 11:34 AM 1 comments links to this post
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Sridhar got us these Keychains a little while ago.
¶ 11:34 AM 1 comments links to this post
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Thursday, March 27, 2008
Megadeth in Bangalore...
... Was Awesome. Throughly loved listening to heavy metal after a long time. Some videos I captured. The Holy wars intro was as good as it can ever get.
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Labels: megadeth heavymetal holywars concert palacegrounds bangalore
¶ 5:04 PM 0 comments links to this post
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Thursday, March 20, 2008
Did you spot Yahoo India Maps on Radio?
If you haven't, then you can listen to a few of them right here. I think they played in all the major metros in Radio Mirchi. Not sure about it. They have turned out to be pretty cool. Do you like any of them? Which one?
Bewafaa: Sonam told me that meant Disloyal. One more Hindi word under my kitty. The guy gets lost and by the time he turns up, his girl friend is already married to someone else. My personal favorite.
Directions: This dude wanted to go to Goa and ends up being in Nashik. And then gets a good bashing from his beloved.
Trekking:
A couple of guys get lost in a trekking trail at night. Sure, they could have sent themselves an SMS of the directions they need. Now, don't ask me which trail it was.
¶ 3:18 PM 0 comments links to this post
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Bewafaa: Sonam told me that meant Disloyal. One more Hindi word under my kitty. The guy gets lost and by the time he turns up, his girl friend is already married to someone else. My personal favorite.
Directions: This dude wanted to go to Goa and ends up being in Nashik. And then gets a good bashing from his beloved.
Trekking:
A couple of guys get lost in a trekking trail at night. Sure, they could have sent themselves an SMS of the directions they need. Now, don't ask me which trail it was.
¶ 3:18 PM 0 comments links to this post
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Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Your Maps, Your Language
Here in India, we speak several hundred languages amongst the billion of us. Even the Government officially recognizes 23 of them. No single person can possibly learn all Indian Languages in his lifetime and so, most of us make do with a few. Yahoo! India Maps ( http://in.maps.yahoo.com ) is no exception. After sitting through a lot of language courses, Yahoo! India Maps has now learnt to speak nine languages (Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Kannada & Malayalam) apart from English. Watch out for the "Vernacular" button along with "Map", "Satellite" and "Hybrid" buttons to see an area in it's primary language. We have covered the major cities and towns and will expand the "Language Map view" to other regions in the time to come.
Personally, Maps in vernacular languages is magical for me. Because for once, my Grand-moms and Grand-dads will get to see and understand what I do all day long sitting at Yahoo!.
We have also released "Walking directions" along with this push. If you are the one who walks, You could simply type a query like "Walk from Yahoo! egl bangalore to Yahoo! MG road, bangalore". Alternatively, You could also choose the "Walk this Route" link on the right pane when you have driving directions.
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Personally, Maps in vernacular languages is magical for me. Because for once, my Grand-moms and Grand-dads will get to see and understand what I do all day long sitting at Yahoo!.
We have also released "Walking directions" along with this push. If you are the one who walks, You could simply type a query like "Walk from Yahoo! egl bangalore to Yahoo! MG road, bangalore". Alternatively, You could also choose the "Walk this Route" link on the right pane when you have driving directions.
Labels: bengali, gujarati, hindi, indiamaps, kannada, languagemaps, malayalam, punjabi, tamil, telugu, vernacularmaps, yahooindiamaps, yahoomaps
¶ 4:47 PM 0 comments links to this post
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