Archives - All Points Blog

Monday, February 27. 2006


Maps at Ask.com
Ask Jeeves, now just Ask.com relaunched today and updated its mapping tools to Ask Maps & Directions 2.0. It's worth a look to explore:

- driving and walking directions
- ability to add destinations along the route by pointing (it geocodes for you, then it adds it onto existing route; it doesn't reroute to them, so far as I can tell)
- imagery from GlobeXplorer
- mixed maps (known as Hybrid in Google Local)
- AJAX app
- play movie of the directions
- no advertising and no "local" features
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Posted by Adena Schutzberg at 08:06 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)



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A quick test for my drive from work to home in Toronto revealed map-markers on top of broken-image icons. The drive directions correctly specified the most direct route, but the distances were in miles. (We use kilometres here.)
#1 Gary Wood on 2006-02-27 09:54 (Reply)
A quick check (through a map of my neighborhood, of course) revealed that once you zoom in beyond a certain threshold, the GlobeXplorer imagery gives way to (at least in New Jersey) the more detailed imagery acquired by the state in 2002, which is also used by Google (Google converted the infrared imagery to "natural color.")
#2 Atanas Entchev (Link) on 2006-02-27 14:14 (Reply)
1) There may be driving directions, but I wasn't able to find walking directions anywhere on the site.
2) There is definitely advertising to the right of the page.
3) Tab function is a bit awkward to use when switching fields.
#3 Matthew Shiel (Link) on 2006-02-27 14:19 (Reply)
Matthew,

Driving/walking are tabs on left side, under the start location - you can switch between them once you indicate start/end places on maps.ask.com.

Re: ads - I meant this is not a local search - with ads. I see no ads at all on maps.ask.com Perhaps you mean in the search pages?

I had no issues with tabs - but I use them all the time in forms.
#3.1 Adena Schutzberg (Link) on 2006-02-27 14:46 (Reply)


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