Thursday, May 3, 2007

Yahoo!'s India Our City & India Maps

Yahoo! India has launched two new exciting products for the Indian market, including Yahoo! India Our City, and Yahoo! India Maps.

The company said the Yahoo! India Our City beta is an innovative, next generation Web 2.0 mash-up application from Yahoo!.


According to company sources, this is the direct outcome of the internal Hack Day event organized at Yahoo! India R&D, where the idea was first conceived.

David Filo, Co-Founder of Yahoo!, said, "Yahoo! India Our City provides an interesting, rich, and dynamically updated perspective of a city as seen and experienced by people at large. Users can use 'Our City' to explore photos, videos, events, news, weather, blogs, and share events, photos, videos, and trip plans with others.

The product aggregates both editorial and user generated content, and is currently available for 20 cities across India. These include: Tier 1 cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, for which Yahoo! has a differentiated offering; and Tier 2 cities such as Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Madurai, Chandigarh, Jaipur, and many more that do not have any noteworthy city portals.

Meanwhile, the Yahoo! India Maps beta boasts unique features, providing street level search functionality along with street maps, satellite maps, and an additional feature of hybrid maps. Users can search over 170 cities, 4,785 towns, and over 220,000 villages across India. Detailed search as per street name, locality, city, and district is also possible.

Filo said, "Yahoo! India Maps enables you search by street name, locality, city, district, and state. It searches by airport code (BLR, BOM), businesses and services like hotels, ATMs, petrol pumps in cities, etc. It also helps you view satellite maps of these places, take a print out, and carry the map with you."

Yahoo! India Maps uses AJAX Map APIs of Yahoo!. The map data is provided by CE Infosystems (Map My India), and is compliant with the guidelines as provided by the Government of India.

In a separate development, Yahoo! has inaugurated its new R&D facility in Bangalore that boasts 2.2 lakh square feet floor space with a seating capacity of 1,600.

techtree.com

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