Oh yeah, this new Yahoo Maps beta has lots of developer plugin goodness.

The Ysearch blog lays out the major differences:

1. Multi-point driving directions. Get yourself from point A to B and on to C all in one map.
2. Integrated Yahoo! Local. Includes our local search, a browseable interface, easy access to business ratings, reviews, and events.
3. The new overview map (in the upper-right hand corner) helps you get your bearings. The little grey box representing your big map is even drag-able. Use it to move around rapidly without losing context.

You bet there is a simple API and then the other APIs:

• geocoding API
• Maps AJAX API

Thanks for the links Jeremy!

I entered the Seattle Mind Camp directions and clicked on the traffic checkbox (right now on KIRO710 they are describing as “really messy drive”) … notice the commute to Seattle this morning pictured above. Fortunately, Saturday will be better unless they have a bunch of construction happening.

This was released last night at 9pm and predictably lots of bloggers are talking about it:

Software Only Jeff Clavier: “I have just started playing with this new version and find it quite remarkable.”
Simon Willison, who works at Yahoo: “I think you’ll agree that this is all extremely exciting stuff.”
Search Engine Journal: “Journalists typically ask what part of this mapping craze is novelty and what part is utility. I say that novelty becomes utility as maps get better and consumers discover they can use them for more things.”
Scoble thinks Virtual Earth and Yahoo’s new maps are doomed because of Google’s advertising platform and points out Yahoo’s API rate limits: “What is there? Here, I’ll copy and paste the text for you. “The Yahoo! Maps Embeddedable APIs (the Flash and AJAX APIs are limited to 50,000 queries per IP per day and to non-commercial use.””

Scoble makes some controversial points (I thought he was “taking the week off” until Mind Camp? LOL), although YPN in beta is something we’ve been testing and have been pretty happy with the payouts compared to Adsense. I don’t think Scoble knows anything about payout levels and comparative analysis between affiliate programs because he doesn’t use any of them.

If Yahoo (or Microsoft with their upcoming Adcenter) allow their affiliates to put their ads (YPN for Yahoo Maps, Adcenter for Virtual Earth)– or at least share revenue in the ads displayed — beside the maps then that is a service that could have some serious disruptive action. In the meantime this could be leaning more to eye candy and toys than a whole lot of dedicated commercial development. Webmasters want and like simple to use tools to put on their website and like to get paid for their efforts … or at least to share in the revenue.

My thoughts
I’m not a big fan of Flash. It’s often overused in the wrong places (particularly movie websites and some business websites). IMO, it should be used for simple website enhancements but there are exceptions. Flickr was one of those rare Flash apps that I liked. Too soon for me to say if I like Yahoo Maps, but I like how open they are with the APIs and encouraging developers to build into and out of it. They do offer commercial licenses but I haven’t checked into the pricing.

A bigger and/or more obvious button/link is needed so folks can share location maps URLs with others. In the YSearch Blog they specifically talked about how the links to the maps aren’t obscured but … where are these links? In the address bar it’s simply maps.yahoo.com/beta. I emailed the map to myself to get the link and even that didn’t have the link inside it. Uh, hello, what am I missing here? Instructions to find link here. I wanted to be able to save this map but where are the links? Anybody know?

On the developer side, can’t wait to get some time to play around with this stuff. Probably won’t be today or tomorrow, but maybe there will be some time at Mind Camp.

• Google and Yahoo maps APIs
• MSN Virtual Earth vs. Google Maps
• Think Big for 10 million free Yahoo ads
• Ad supported online mind mapping
• Yahoo may remove non-commercial only clause from developer API TOS
• Real time flight data via Google Earth