Yahoo is launching a new feature of its Local Maps which lets users interpolate a non-Yahoo maps into an existing Yahoo Maps to come out with a better and more detailed view of a certain location. Yahoo MapMixer, which is set to launch on Thursday, is a product of Yahoo’s Hack Days program. Hack Days is an open forum where developers are free to collaborate on new and innovative applications that can be applied to Yahoo services.
Using Yahoo MapMixer, Yahoo Local Maps users can either combine two different with one of them coming outside of the Yahoo maps or combine two exisiting Yahoo maps to come up with a more detailed and comprehensive hybrid map. Mixing maps is as easy as doing three steps, upload an image map, align it with a Yahoo map using the layering tool, then sit back, relax and wait till Yahoo Maps finished processing the final map.
To get a better view of how the MapMixer works, take a look at a sample map below. Looking at the map at first would not reveal that it is actually a combination of two maps, but just a general map of the Stanford College Campus. Taking a second and closer look however would reveal that a second map is overlaid into the original map, the Parking and Transportation map of the Campus.
In addition to the Yahoo MapMixer, another product of the Yahoo Hack Days that Yahoo is launching is Yahoo Color, which according to Bradley Horowitz, vice president of Yahoo’s advanced development division is “a no-brainer feature and I don’t think anyone has applied this technology at this scale; to 10 million products”.
I’m not really sure whether this product would be of any help or would most likely get a significant attention of Yahoo applications users.
