Perspectives

And you wont even notice it. Well, I guess, that was the idea. It is magical how they all have managed to pull this one through. I mean, everything that worked in Flex works exactly the same way in JS? Makes us wanna think, that they initially used flash for the wrong thing, or they had other feature rich ideas initially which they never managed to roll out.

But, I think this is a good way forward. It takes a lot less time to load for sure. ( Still not very ideal, takes about 8 Secs from a good broadband in India). It will begin to work on those Airport Computers that dont have flash installed. The Yahoo Maps Ajax API will start to get some of these benefits. It will begin to grow faster and cooler.

But having said all of that, It still has some distance to cover before I become it’s fan. Starting from reducing the number of text boxes to removing unnecessary links like “save to my web”.

Kudos to the technical for achieving something close to a marvel. Writing this kind of Javascript and CSS is a painstaking effort for sure.

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 ?

Yahoo India Maps has just released driving directions for destinations inside of India. Ofcourse, locations in NA and EU work as well. There are a lot of easter eggs hiding all over. Read about it at ycoolthing. Go find your favorite directions here.

Go Anywhere!

After huge successes a couple of times at the Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, California and Yahoo, London, Hackday comes over to Bangalore. Hack Days in Yahoo are always a single day love affair with your computer. So, this one happens between October 5th 2007 from about 5 PM to October 6th 5 PM at Taj Residency.

So, If you are one of them who has registered and have an invite, Kindle the hacker head in you and come and show us your genius. You wont be disappointed. Ofcourse, we have lots of stuff happening all through the day to keep you all awake. Food is going to be yum. So are the games and talks. And we also should have some serious music from a sexy band at the end of the day. You should spot me somewhere there with an orange shirt. Pull me over and I will be glad to help you. I will also give a short talk on hacking with, well ofcourse, maps. I may just have a surprise in store for you.

And for those who did not register or did not get an invite..well, hang on here for more updates. You can always hack and post it at Yahoo! Gallery. If it is brilliant enough, someone will take notice.

Someone also managed to make a huge banner (60ft x 20ft) and put it outside our office in inner ring road, Bangalore. Unfortunately, the Wind Gods didnt like it and tore it into pieces in less than 12 hours. I managed to get some bad pics of them here:

I would like YIM to stand for Yahoo! India maps. Unofficially, a couple of us assumed our mission statement to be “Go Anywhere” . So, what is so cool ? Frankly, nothing as of now. Anyways, read on.

Firstly. We cannot find your house. I will be sweetly surprised if we can. We are far away from that. But it will happen.
We dont give you driving directions just as yet. There are a few challenges there.
We do have satellite and hybrid imagery for many popular places.
We are quite comprehensive on mapping data when you consider whole of India. Our search is getting better. You still have to be very explicit and try out a few things before you get a hang of it.
The link of the map you are viewing is always on your browser’s address bar. You dont have to do anything special to get a link to the map. Just copy paste it. so, this is roughly where Yahoo is , in Bangalore.

Oh, by the way, there is no reason you should have to visit another destination to search for a non Indian address. If Yahoo! works for that address anywhere on the planet, you can have a look at it right here in India maps. Check out paris or 10, downing st, london here.

Are you used to searching for India by typing in http://wikipedia.org/wiki/India ? Try http://in.maps.yahoo.com/kolkata

You can search for Airport codes. For instance, IXB is baghdogra’s airport code. You can get to it this way.

Would you prefer Anna salai, nandanam, Chennai ? Or mount road, nandanam, madras? We love both.

There are a lot more cool things in there waiting to be figured out and a lot is in store. I hope you all have a good time finding your places and like it as we move along.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Please welcome the newest member of the Yahoo! India family, Yahoo India Maps.
Even as I would like to write a book on the “making of India maps”, for now, I would just recommend you just get there and check it out for yourself.

Got any comments? Flames? Leave me a note. Leaving you with a picture that hopefully captures the mood amongst us and with you!

It is the 200 and odd product question. Which is the best Yahoo service ? A little while ago, I created this list on Amazon Unspun. Flickr is my personal best. Nothing comes close. I also tend to use gmail more because I got my favourite id shivku with them. I also hate messenger for the simple fact that it is so heavy on my computer for nothing.

Anyways, the rest of the world seems to think otherwise. As it stands, Y! Mail beats them all by far. If you still havent voiced your preference, head over to the list and say what you think.

I came across Amazon’s unspun via Keshava’s entry. Quite an interesting idea. I dont completely understand their ranking algorithm though. Nor do I understand how they get those numbers (in the brackets). But assuming they have some funky way of doing it ( and hopefully better than digg, without the local maxima and not being influenced by a few power users problems):

They have not solved the fundamental problem that plagues the other web2.0 wonder – tags. How do u represent one sort of information in just one way ?

For instance, in this list of best pubs in bangalore, you got styx twice. One with an “M.G.Road” and the other without. I am not sure if there is a styx elsewhere, but irrespective, I can always spell “Anjelina Jolie” instead of “Angelina Jolie” in the woman you would leave your girl for list. They, ofcourse, do some sort of a normalization and also suggest item even as you type. But that doesnt help completely.

Anyways, as purple blood streams through my body, I have created “Best Yahoo service” over there. Go check it out, add and rate them.

update, which is pretty cool, I think:
From unspun’s FAQ:
List items have a computed score based on the number of people who have ranked the item and at what position it was ranked. We’ve indexed the score so that the 3rd item is always 1000. Items that are ranked higher and lower have their scores adjusted accordingly. This allows for general comparison of top items across lists. For example, if George Bush is the top item in a list with a score of 6914 and Angelina Jolie is the top item in another list with a score of 3118, and Verizon is the top item in a third list at 1427, you can deduce that George Bush holds a stronger first ranking, compared to other items on that list, than Angelina Jolie and Verizon in their respective lists.