Perspectives

So, You all have heard about this wonderful little company called Mapunity trying to take on the daring problem of Traffic information services which nobody thought was possible to solve in India? If you havent, visit, their Bangalore, Hyderabad and recently, Chennai Traffic information services. Chennai traffic is still in Beta and was released sometime last week. If you are from Chennai and if you find something glaringly wrong (with respect to traffic, that is), make sure you let the guys know.

BTIS has also put out a little mashup with Yahoo India Maps, for Bangalore. If you ever thought the basic maps of BTIS wasnt enough, then you know where to go.

TWO BILLIONTH
Originally uploaded by yukesmooks.

The two billionth photo on Flickr. I am sure someone is asking about this in some quiz somewhere.

So, the online maps battle is not being fought just between Google and Mapquest. We also have Ask Maps on the hood. (along with MSN and yahoo! and a bunch of others). It surely does not win over the other map services yet, but they seem to be the only ones so far to have “Walking directions“. Although (what they have implemented is) no “rocket science” technology wise, We still have to cheer them for first to market.

Walking directions are significantly different from (GMaps’s) “Avoid highways”, when properly implemented.

• Walking doesn’t (Infact, shouldnt) need to take care of One ways.
• Walking should strictly be the shortest. It needs to avoid every other consideration, how wide the road is, speed limits, How many lanes etc.
• It needs to take care of which side of the road to walk and Zebra/pedestrian crossings and subways. I dont think zebra crossings is an easily available information and don’t think Ask considers it. For instance, that is not how I cross over from Yahoo’s one building to another.
• What about (underground) subways? What if the subways have many exits? What about stairs along bridges and ramps? I can just climb up the stairs right? Again, Lack of data.
• How can you possibly walk 115 miles? I mean, not unless you are Forrest Gump mindlessly running around. Features need to make (human) sense.

This is a spectacular feature that has been in my mind for a long time. It is nice to see Ask making it happen, but needs to improve. This along with “Cycling” and “public transportation” and a combination of the three should be fantastic.

What do you think?

Reached like six hours ago. Beautiful place. Awesome weather ( a little chilly, but I like it that way). Amazing people, lovely babes. My only problem, Just no food for me. All the Maggi and Ready to eats that I got is of no use. No microwave in my hotel.

Anyways, As time progresses, I will get introduced the online space of the country with the largest internet penetration. I will try to give a desi view of what is happening on the web in this part of the world. For now, Naver is a very popular search engine and portal. Barring a few services, Neither Google nor Yahoo is all that big here.

The pictures that I take will be here.

I am not exactly sure when they released this new looking Yahoo India Movies, but finally , they are thinking about movies and what people do with movies.

The older version used to be service with no real value add to anyone. It had a bunch of images, videos and links and stopped at reviews and comments. With the world talking about web3.0 and mobile2.0 , it was time the site had an overhaul with layout, content and everything.

Yahoo India Movies now tries to give movie showtimes close to about twenty three cities. The show times are apparently from bookmyshow ( which is a pretty good service, btw) with ticketing option coming soon. Now, we are talking business.

The “A-Z index” was pretty interesting. It gives a list of all the movies releasing this year and in the past. I discovered a few movies that I ve never heard of before. “Coming soon” should be pretty handy too, considering Imdb does not do a very good job for Indian movies. Not sure if you are the kinds that sits and reads interviews of random celebrities. If you are, there is a section for you as well. I guess, they will also have some downloadable stuff like ringtones and wallpapers and what not. Not for me. Oh, you can watch trailers too.

Dont expect to see a radical layout change. It is a very usual Yahoo look with a banner ad on top and left with links that says “replay ad”! (Give me a break guys. ).

No feeds either. Wish I could subscribe for “coming soon” movies. Or maybe subscribe to a search criteria (say action movies) in a few theatres.

But there is still one reason why I would never go back to this site. No Search. How am I supposed to see “No smoking” trailer now? Keep clicking the links and hope that I will find it ?

Considering most of my posts are related to GIS, internet mapping and local anyway, Why not talk about a new entrant in the Indian internet mapping space? Called SadakMap

Sadak Map has “Mark your place” , and then another “ask a question/post a message with a location relevance”. I guess it really is about a discussion forum with location specific topics. Mark a point? Well, I can do that on G Maps.

Was just trying to see where Opus Bangalore where, apparently, this gorgeous subject constantly performs. And found out that Google has integrated results from local.google.co.in. They have also managed to crawl reviews from Burrp. The data set itself hasnt improved much though.

A couple of my friends already asked me about it. Although it is a shameful thing, Big deal, I tried!
Had to give it up on the fourth day for that eighth milestone Tailor I mentioned in the first of this series of posts.

But, that does not mean I have given up on Cycling. She is still my baby and I am still coming to office on her. She also goes with me for all the corner shop related activities.

Anyways, Thanks all for cheering. Maybe it is time you took it over from me!