Yahoo! Local Events Browser Demo: a Maps, Events, and Search Mashup

Hey Jeremy,

Nice mashup for Local, cool stuff. On a seperate note, how much of your Ad rev. comes from blogsearch.google.com. Seems to be a major advantage for Google in reaching your blog.

Brad

blogsearch.google.com appears to have a very, very small audience.

Is that geocoding api public?

If so, that's cooooooool. That would be THE killer api from yahoo. So far, yahoo maps and google local have been hiding that info from users.

Nice!

Did you not try the link?

http://developer.yahoo.net/maps/rest/V1/geocode.html

Of course it's a public API! :-)

This is really impressive stuff here. Wow.

BTW, one of your links above - to the "Maps AJAX API" doesn't work, sends me to a forbidden page.

Ahh, link works now... it was 403 forbidden the first few times I clicked it!

Oh, hrmm, it was going to http://ws2.inf.scd.yahoo.com/maps/rest/V1/geocode.html before.... weird.

That is AWESOME... very cool... yahoo is opening up WAY more of the local search stuff than google. Very impressive.

Link fixed. I managed to cut-n-paste the staging URL rather than the public ones. Whoops.

I got this clicking on some events (probably supposed to be the date and time):

undefined, undefined NaN at NaN:NaN

I also didn't see DNA lounge :P

I am really digging the Geocoding API! Since the only other free option out there is geocoding.us this is a welcome relief.

I did not check Yahoo! Geocoding API yet but looks like it will surely beat all existing Geocoders.*. It will great to use one good API which will work for number of countries instead of aggregating number of different APIs with different interfaces.

"With Jeremy Zawodny’s mention that Yahoo!’s new AJAXeriffic Maps Interface is in beta, I decided to give it a try. It’s quite nice and shows a lot of improvement over Google’s Maps with only a few places where Google clearly wins."

More:
http://revjim.dreamhosters.com/articles/2005/11/03/the-new-yahoo-maps

Wow. You guys are really rolling. There are some other free geocoders out there - ontok.com is one.

BTW, Dave Winer has a post on how Yahoo should clone Google's search API. I heartily disagree here:

http://gotads.blogspot.com/2005/11/google-should-clone-yahoo-apis.html

You're right. Dave is on crack.

Glad you like the new Maps stuff. :-)

the events demo is a neat toy, but do you really browse events by geographical proximity? i would like to attend events i am *interested* in, not just the nearest one. so i would say throw the mindshare into better categorization of events by topic matter.

the mashups are getting stale, and so far appear to have zero impact on the mass market or the bottom line. seems to be the web2 crowd chasing their own tails and believing their own bs.

Well, it *IS* a demo. It's not a pointless startup looking for funding. :-)

But, yeah, knowing what you're interested in would help a lot. Are you willing to tell us so we can recommend events nearby?

Stunning stuff. Incredibly frustrating though - any word on when those of us in the other 192 countries on earth will get Yahoo! Maps?

>> But, yeah, knowing what you're interested in would help a lot. Are you willing to tell us so we can recommend events nearby?

jeremy, from my yahoo profile, yahoo already knows i am male, in zip code 94089, aged 35. repeat: YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS. from JUST THAT you can at least begin to narrow down my events, totally separate from my search history, other yahoo profile info, purchases in yahoo shopping etc etc etc

so you know that i have ski reports in my.yahoo. so you can make ski clinics (if any are being offered) prominent. if i played yahoo chess, you can make local chess club meetings prominent. once again, yahoo ALREADY knows this, so stop asking me to make your job easier by explicitly filling out a form where yahoo should be mining data i have already given you permission to use.

Would you be that open to it if you didn't work at Yahoo all day?

Dave is right in part: a standard base search API would be a good thing. Value add, like vendor-specific SQL extensions in a database, is also of value, of course... :)

Wikipedia did search via URL links to both Google and Yahoo but it would have been far neater if it had been integrated and that would have been far easier if there was a uniform, if basic, interface to use for both. Wikipedia search today sucks, IMO, and is going to until someone does some serious work on it. For market neutrality reasons (so Wikipedia is not a pawn or tool in market power competition), that would have to work with BOTH Yahoo and Google, at a minimum, ideally based on user preference.

As a developer of one of the mashups on the application page, Upcoming.org Events:

http://www.androidtech.com/upcoming-events-map/upcoming-maps-2.php

I'd like to make a few comments:

1) The new Yahoo! Maps API is an absolute treasure. I've used Web service API's from a ton of different companies and the new Yahoo! Maps is my favorite. It's the first API I've seen where they didn't force me as a developer to wrap my application around there API. Instead, it slips seamlessly into the areas of my application that I want map functionality and stays out of the way where I don't.

In addition, they didn't skimp anywhere in a belated attempt to maintain ultimate creative control over my application. They literally dropped the keys off to the ferrari and said "hey, go have fun"!.

Tech stuff: the API uses a well-crafted Javascript class structure with event stubs (closures) in all the important places, so you can react to map events in a dynamic and truly integrated manner. I used the Flash/JS API and Flash developers should be sending thank you cards by the bushel to Yahoo!, due to the open flexibility of the new API's architecture and the ability to integrate SWF files in every critical location.

2) When you have a technical problem, Yahoo! staff answers the questions themselves instead of running away or going MIA while hoping some other helpful member of the developer community picks up the question.

3) Regarding the comment about Yahoo! not taking the Local Events Browser further into the area of advanced user customization and the like.

I can't speak for the rest of the API developer community but I feel that's our job. If the Upcoming.org events mashup I created seems to be a tired repeat of other applications out there, it's not Yahoo!'s fault. They delivered on their end to create a superb and robust API suite, it's up to me and my fellow developers to make interesting and fresh apps for it.

A big "Thank You" to Yahoo! for this clear cut gift to the developer community.

Thanks,
Robert

P.S. - I am not affiliated with Yahoo! in any way nor am I married or related to any of their employees.

>> 3) Regarding the comment about Yahoo! not taking the Local
>> Events Browser further into the area of advanced user
>> customization and the like.
>> I can't speak for the rest of the API developer community
>> but I feel that's our job.

how do you intend to mine data that is locked up in yahoo's user database? the whole point of creating this profile at yahoo is so i wouldn't have to create it in twenty different places on the web.

Posted a review of the new Yahoo Maps.

http://thelaggard.blogs.com/mashups/2005/11/review_yahoo_ma.html

From developers point of view I like Yahoo Geocoding Service but have some concerns regards Yahoo!Maps.
Yahoo world is limited to North America only :( I know this is temporary issue.
But here's the deal. though about a feature for my www.mapbuilder.net users to be able to chose Map provider for rendering their's maps - Yahoo or Google. But right now I have doubts about that feature because a lot of MapBuilder's users have locations mapped for Japan, Australia, Great Britain and EU.

Hi Jeremey,

Any explaination for the listing of "the dude's fish store" on the address of Google? Who is the guy on the (Google) phone number 650-6235633 and what does Yahoo have against him?
http://www.siliconvalleysleuth.com/2005/11/yahoo_maps_pran.html

At the bottom of one of the pages it says this is only for non-commercial use. Is there an explanation of exactly what that means? Are there fixed prices for commercial use, or how is that determined?

We are looking for developers and I am looking for sites where we can post the details of our need for developers experienced w/ various map APIs and am not having a lot of luck.

Any recommendations?

This is one of the blogs for geocoding, you can get the latitide and longitude values for free.

Free geocoders

Hi Jeremy, Can you please contact me off of this forum? I'd like to talk to you about a couple of things I'm working on.

Thanks
Emanuel
emanuel@realradius.com