The Yahoo! Geo Technologies Blog

On Wednesday September 24th, the British Computer Society, North London Branch, in association with the BCS Geospatial Specialist Group, hosted an event on Mobile Location Based Services at BCS headquarters in London.

I was invited to attend this event and presented a talk entitled The Open Location Ecosystem and the Mobile Internet, together with Justin Davies from NinetyTen and Buddyping and Andrew Grill, a mobile advertising evangelist.

Mobile Location-Based Services (LBS) have been ‘the next big thing’ for years now, but have not materialised due to a mixture of technical and business constraints. With increasing numbers of mobile phones being equipped with Wi-Fi and GPS receivers, this looks set to change.

What are the main location technologies and how do they work? What technical, business and social challenges do companies face when developing LBS for mobiles? What LBS can we expect to see on mobiles in the next 2-3 years? How will current favourites such as social networking and online advertising evolve in a location-aware world? This talk will address these questions and more.

Join us at this dynamic free event to learn more and share your views.

Our expert presenters are:

* JUSTIN DAVIES Founder & CTO, NinetyTen/Buddyping,
http://www.ninetyten.com http://www.buddyping.com
* GARY GALE Head of UK Engineering, Yahoo! Geo Technologies,
http://www.ygeoblog.com, http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/
* ANDREW GRILL Mobile Advertising Evangelist
http://www.andrewgrill.com/blog/

Yahoo! received a very warm welcome from the BCS, from the other presenters and from the audience; the hot topics for Yahoo! at the Q&A session afterwards were GeoPlanet, use of WOEIDs and Fire Eagle. The deck I presented is available for download here.

The resources referred to in the Yahoo! presentation are listed below.

• Yahoo! Geo Technologies blog - http://www.ygeoblog.com
• Fire Eagle: http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/
• Fire Eagle Developer APIs: http://developer.yahoo.com/fireeagle/
• Yahoo! GeoPlanet: http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/
• Yahoo! BluePrint: http://mobile.yahoo.com/developers/roadmap

More outreach and talks of this type are being planned and you’ll be able to read about them here on the Yahoo! Geo Technologies blog first.

Gary Gale, Head of UK Engineering, Yahoo! Geo Technologies

Thanks to the good folk of the Yahoo! Developer Network we now have a set of forums dedicated to discussing all things associated with Yahoo! GeoPlanet.

You’ll find forum categories for requesting enhancements, showcasing applications or demos which make use of GeoPlanet, requests for using GeoPlanet in a commercial environment and general discussions, conversations and Geo related chat.

Members of the Yahoo! Geo Technologies group will be on the forums and we look forward to meeting and chatting with you all there.

You can find out more by pointing your browsers to the Yahoo! Developer Network GeoPlanet forums at http://developer.yahoo.net/forum/index.php?showforum=31 now.

Cheers,

Gary Gale, Head of UK Engineering, Yahoo! Geo Technologies

Today we’re proud to introduce a new version of Yahoo! Maps, which includes an update to Yahoo! Local Search integration, usability, and Print Page improvements.

These past few months we’ve focused on improving the usability of Yahoo! Maps, and some of the modifications we encourage you to try include:

• Improved Local Search integration that utilizes the Search/Direct Display Index
• More user-friendly Driving Directions - a more user-friendly left rail that’s both wider and more legible (larger text), for easier reading of driving directions
• A redesigned Print Page
• The ability to minimize multiple driving direction instructions to save vertical space
• The ability to display inline turn-by-turn images for each driving direction segment
• An Interactive Print Page Map
• Users can now select from a variety map views (full route, full route + finish, full route + start + finish)
• Drag/Pan/zoom functionality for print page maps
• Interactivity between Points of Interest (POIs) and Map view; minimized POIs are removed from the map view
• Improved POIs - with ability to minimize/collapse multiple POIS to maximize viewing area

Stay tuned for updates and improvements throughout 2008, as Yahoo! Geo Technologies continues bringing the world to your fingertips!

Cheers,

Gus Maldonado, Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Geo Technologies