MapQuest Blog

Monsters, Maidens & Madoffs are sure to make appearances all over the country this Halloween. We love Halloween at MapQuest. In fact, it's not unusual if someone Trick or Treats as our very own "Mark The Star".



If you're a Halloween fanatic like we are, or the kids are bugging you to get them to a local Haunted House, make sure you check out your local Halloween House locations on MapQuest by clicking on the ghost icon within our On Map Search Tool (located on the right hand side the map). For hours and other information about the spooky haunt, click on the specific location bubble on the map and go to the location's website. NOTE: If you don't at first see Haunted Houses in your area, zoom-out to span a wider search area.




We teamed up with our friends at HauntWorld to bring you these haunting locations. Make sure to check them out to find local hay rides, corn mazes, and other ghostly events near you.



Happy Haunting!

There are so many ways these days to connect online and show the world your passions, collections, favorite restaurants and whereabouts (to name a few). However, getting those items on a map and posted to your blog or website has always been a bit of a challenge.

Thankfully, MapQuest just introduced their GeoRSS Embeddable Map feature that allows you to easily share location referenced content on a MapQuest map within your blog or website. The feature requires access to an online service that provides a feed with location data (Flikr, Brightkite, Yelp or When.com are examples) and places icons of your content and their location on an embedded MapQuest map.

The example below depicts our very own "Mark The Star" in various points of interest around the city of Denver. We have utilized our Geo-tagged images on Flickr and brought them into the MapQuest map via Flickr's "geoFeed" feature.

So get ready to try out our new easy-to-use GeoRSS feature for Embeddable Maps. And, if you don't need the GeoRSS ability, we encourage you to still look at how simple it is to add a map to your blog or website with our embeddable map feature!

A few months ago we added the ability to search for local Easter Egg Hunts throughout the country and display their locations on a MapQuest map-all via our single-click search tool on MapQuest.com. Continuing the trend, we have added the ability for anyone to easily search for local Fourth of July Fireworks Celebrations and parades in the same manner.

We've captured 350 Fireworks Celebrations and Parades from across the country and loaded their locations, websites (if available) and address details behind a single click icon (see illustration below). Clicking on the fireworks icon in my neighborhood revealed a show that has apparently existed forever and somehow slipped my attention (and auditory senses) all these years!

They say that knowledge is power, right? Well, I plan on taking my new knowledge on the road and visiting a fireworks show in the western part of the state. What about you? Are you planning on hitting the road for the 4th this year? Let us know!. In the meantime, visit MapQuest.com and click on the fireworks icon in the right-hand search tool to find local fireworks celebrations.

As a kid, I have fond memories racing around my grandparent's backyard with my Easter basket in tow-searching those hard-to-find places I knew Grandpa had stashed a few "bogeys". Occasionally we would find an egg that had been lost in time...hidden away from the animals and elements, for gosh...who knows how long.

My Grandfather has long since passed, but his legacy of the "hidden bogey" still lives on with my two boys. For the past few years we have organized an impromptu Easter Egg Hunt with friends and neighbors, but we miss the "polish" a more formal hunt provides. Unfortunately, finding a "formal" hunt can be a challenge. Yes, they exist, but we have yet to find a source that lists and maps all of the Easter Egg Hunt's for a specific area.

Fortunately, my wishes have been granted. MapQuest just added the ability for you to search local Easter Egg Hunt's and have them displayed on a MapQuest map! For those of you that haven't used our new On Map Search Tool for quick-visual listings of Hotels, Parking Garages, Coffee Shops, and Movie Theatre's, now is your chance. Simply find your desired location on a MapQuest Map, then click the little "Easter Egg" icon (within the scrolling search tool on the right side of the map) to display the Easter Egg Hunt's in your area. NOTE: My default MapQuest map location was set to my neighborhood, which did not return a set of results. I zoomed out and instantly found a number of Easter Egg Hunt's within a few miles of our house.

Once you find a Easter Egg Hunt that fits your needs, simply click the specific, on-map "egg icon" to see the event's address, website, and phone number to call for event times and details.



With over 233 listings in over 80 cities across the country, finding that perfect compliment to your Easter Sunday is merely a click away. Just make sure to tell your kids to watch out for Grandpa's Bogey!
Happy hunting everyone!

For the seasoned Midwesterner, traveling to Boston during the winter is a daunting challenge to say the least. I have done my time in the city since I lived there in the early 90's and have a comfortable ignorance when it comes to driving and parking downtown.

While the Back-Bay represents a modern side to Boston, the Financial District is full of twists, turns, and one-way's with hard to maneuver, narrow side streets. If you have been there, then you know what I am talking about. Great city to walk in, but a nightmare to drive and park.

As most parking garages fill-up before 8am on a typical weekday, I have spent many a time driving to the top of a garage only to find that the last spot has just been filled. Without some type of easy to find parking garage map at my ready, I have had to blindly drive around looking for my next target.

So here is where MapQuest fits in. With the recent introduction of the new On-Map Search Tool, I can bring up a map of my intended destination, and then click the handy little [P] icon to display all the parking garages within that map's view. Since I will be driving, I print the map to visually see my options and have at-the-ready.


Printing my map of Parking Garage locations is one thing, but the cool thing is the ability to save this customized map to my My Places account for future use. While I know Summer will see me back in Boston, it is highly likely that I will forget where I parked and the various options available. A quick login into My Places displays my custom map entitled "Boston Parking Garage, spots downtown".

Now, I can blindly file away my troubles finding a parking garage in Beantown and know that in a few months I can return to My Places and once again easily print my map for this Summer's return visit.

Ok, it's been a flurry of product launches here at MapQuest the last few weeks and I finally had the chance to stretch my legs a bit while traveling to Chicago this weekend.

I have been to Chicago several times, but never to see downtown...and it is safe to say that I was a fish out of water. With little time and so many choices of restaurants, I was a completely overwhelmed at where to start my search. It 's like that in any new city right? You know there are fantastic places hiding in the bowels of concrete and glass, but where do they exist from your current location?

As fate would have it, I had my laptop and was near a coffee shop with WIFI. Once settled, I opened MapQuest.com, downloading and installing the new MapQuest Toolbar into my browser. The new toolbar not only allows you to easily search Maps, Directions, Gas Prices, and Traffic from your browser anytime, it has a new "Find Me" feature that I was going to put to good use. Using the Skyhook Wireless Loki plugin, "Find Me" was able to approximate my location on my MapQuest map of Chicago.



Knowing my location in this monster of a city was half the battle, now I needed to see what restaurants were close to me (my flight was leaving in 3 hours). Using the new MapQuest On-Map Search Tool, I was able to click on the restaurant icon (see below) to instantly see tons of restaurants displayed on the map (you can also see gas stations, hotels, and much more). Wow! Just as I suspected, the huge city of concrete and glass was hiding many fantastic restaurants---all within a "stones throw" from my current location.



After stuffing my face with a Chicago style, deep-dish pizza, I fired-up my laptop once again and checked traffic on MapQuest.com. I was able to hop a cab and make my flight with time to spare...wondering if I should have enjoyed another slice!

Thanks MapQuest for making it all so easy.

If you already have the current MapQuest toolbar, be sure to upgrade to this newer version and enjoy all the great new features of this enhanced version. Or, if you're new to the Toolbar, try it out and see how helpful it is to have MapQuest with you wherever you surf the web!

See more details on the toolbar.

Everyone knows MapQuest has always provided directions, but did you know that we also help people find hotels, stores, movie theaters, and other useful points of interest? With this in mind, we've added an On-Map Search Tool to our maps to make it even easier to get you where you want to go and find what you need along the way.

So what's our On-Map Search Tool all about? It's an easy-to-use, scrollable toolbar that displays both trustworthy brands as well as top-searched categories such as Restaurants or Hotels right on your map.

Just click on any of the icons in the toolbar to see the locations for that brand or category on your map or route. You can then find the location that works best for you and easily add it to your directions or to your map.

How could this tool help you? Here's an example: You and your family are taking a summer road trip and you're hoping the drive will go as smoothly as possible. Wouldn't it be great to plan these stops in advance? With the On-Map Search Tool, you can find a hotel or other services along the way, making it easy to determine how to manage the road, time, and your passengers.

Check out MapQuest On-Map Search Tool to see how it can help you find everything you need while you're on the road!

Last August, we launched a new MapQuest.com Beta that upgraded our classic home page. We added a map with traffic, gas prices and weather data as well as upgraded our forms to include a copy and paste option that let you paste an entire address into one field for maps and directions.

This morning, that Beta home page became the new home page at MapQuest.com.

We took several suggestions from you, our users, to make further improvements. For example, we added tabs to the form area that allows you to quickly switch between the map and directions forms. We also went "fullscreen" and made the map bigger-making it easier to view and utilize.



Keep your eye on our new scrolling "ticker" at the top of the page and the "What's New" tab on the home page for announcements of more new and improved features from MapQuest in 2009!

If you would like to learn more, read our feature page discussing the latest round of updates. As always, we welcome your feedback!

For many, the end of the year presents an opportunity to reflect on everything that the year has brought. Let's take a moment to see some of our key accomplishments in 2008.

We completed an amazing amount of work behind the scenes, but it's the services we provide to our users that matter most in the end. So, in expedient fashion in order to move straight to planning for 2009, here's our Top 8 in 2008 review:

#8 – Fuel Cost for Trip Calculation

With gas prices spiking over the summer, many people were forced to evaluate just how much a trip might cost them. By entering your vehicle information in the settings for My MapQuest, we can help you estimate the cost of gas for a trip based on your vehicle's miles per gallon and the local gas prices along your route.

#7 – MapQuest on iPhone

No doubt the iPhone is a popular gadget. You've always been able to access MapQuest.com from your iPhone but, we launched an iPhone-optimized site which automatically loads when you visit MapQuest.com from your iPhone. The site offers the iPhone flick and pinch gestures that so many love.

#6 – Real-Time Traffic

In March, we launched our real-time traffic feature. With coverage now in over 100 metro areas, you can view traffic flow, road closures, incidents, and construction to plan your drive. Traffic is even available on MapQuest for mobile web and our iPhone web version.

#5 – Draggable Routes

Our Draggable Routes feature launched in November and lets you drag your route to get you to your destination the way you want. Draggable routes lets you create directions around that stretch of highway you know is under construction, drive that scenic route along the highway, and drive through other parts of the city/state/country on your trip.

#4 – MapQuest 4 Mobile

Getting maps and directions is easy from your computer. But,often times, you need to find places and get directions when you are out and about. MapQuest 4 Mobile, our new, free mobile application, makes that a snap on many BlackBerry devices and carriers.

#3 – Saving Your Maps and Routes with My MapQuest

How often do you plan your trip or route in advance? With the introduction of My MapQuest this November, you can now save your maps and directions and retrieve them anytime. You can even save the directions you've customized with draggable routes (see feature #5) for later use.

#2 – MapQuest Local

MapQuest Local released with accolades in September. With loads of locally relevant content including news, movies, reviews, and much more bundled into a single page for a single location, Local is a great new online destination for finding what's going on in your destination location.

#1 – Brand Refresh

Last but not least, we refreshed the MapQuest identity as a reflection of our site's evolution. The logo was redrawn from scratch, to make it fresh & modern, yet familiar and instantly recognizable. The colors are sharper, the layout of MapQuest.com is cleaner and the brand is more vibrant and proud. It's a design that stays true to what you said MapQuest means to you.

We also re-introduced "Mark the Star," a fun and friendly character who marks the locations you find on MapQuest. He's been with us from the beginning, but he finally got a little polish, personality and an elevated status across the site.

And of course, we can't forget you. You've sent us your stories, your suggestions, your questions and corrections. A small group of you even worked closely with us weekly-sometimes daily- to provide your feedback and direction on our projects and concepts. Your feedback was crucial to the successful launch of all 8 products listed above. A heartfelt "thank you" from all of us at MapQuest.

And now, onward to 2009!

My MapQuest, expanded MQ 4 Mobile, Draggable Routes, MapQuest Local...with so many great new products and features launching lately, we almost forgot to mention one of our coolest new additions.

Showing specific business locations on a map is of course an important capability. But since many MapQuest users come to us mainly for driving directions, we thought showing locations along your route would be helpful too!

Scenario 1:
You live in Colorado Springs and are planning a snowboarding trip to Telluride, but want to spend a day exploring Mesa Verde National Park first. You like staying at Holiday Inns and want to know what options are convenient to the Park.



Scenario 2:
You are a Titans fan planning a trip from Nashville to Indy to the see the season finale vs. Peyton Manning and the Colts. You need to find Walmart along the way to stock up on tailgating supplies.


You can change your view using the "Show on Map" legend which appears in the lower right corner of your map. Alternate display options include showing business locations near a route stop or within the visible map area (enabled only at certain zoom levels).

Our thanks to Walmart and Holiday Inn for their charter sponsorship of this new feature. We will be extending the Locations Along Route capability to other types of searches in the near future, so stay tuned!

For more information about MapQuest Business Locator and other advertising programs, click here.

You've probably noticed all the great new features that MapQuest has been recently rolling out including the ability to drag your route to follow the path you want. With all the time you invest in personalizing your travel plans, wouldn't it be great if you could save your results? Well, now you can create and save custom maps as well as personalize your MapQuest experience.

Introducing My MapQuest.
Get your very own place on MapQuest to store all your favorite maps, access your recently mapped locations, and edit your own settings that make MapQuest a more personal experience. The best part is that once you sign up, you take this with you on any computer and, soon, on your mobile device.

Sign Up today and benefit from My MapQuest features such as:

• My Maps - Save your mapped locations, custom routes with driving directions, and favorite business searches.
• My Settings – Save your personal settings for use wherever you access MapQuest, at home, work or on the road.
• Route Fuel Cost Calculator – Using your saved vehicle information, get estimated fuel cost for any routes you create on MapQuest.
• Recent Locations - Access the last 10 locations you found on MapQuest wherever you are signed into My MapQuest.

More Soon...
In this release we're putting together the foundation of a personalized MapQuest experience but you can be sure that we will be adding great new features to make your journey more seamless in the coming months. Here at MapQuest we're focusing on creating features that make your life on the road easier.

Find out more about the great new feature of My MapQuest and sign up today!

Ever wish you could modify your MapQuest route simply by dragging it around on the map? Well, your wish is coming true.

As part of our ongoing effort to allow MapQuest users more flexibility in tailoring driving directions to their preferences, we are introducing a new draggable route feature. This is a great way to quickly modify your route to avoid traffic or construction, explore a scenic route, or simply use roads you know you prefer. Please give draggable routes a try and let us know what you think as we test and fine-tune it.

The feature is easy to use. The basics:

1. Generate a route
2. Click on the blue route highlight and hold your mouse down
3. Drag the route onto your preferred path. As the mouse is dragged, you will see the "potential" route displayed if the mouse were released at that point
4. When the mouse is released a small red circle (called a "via" point) will be placed at that point.

Your route will then be modified to pass through that via point, and your directions will be updated (note that you may need to add more than one via point to get exactly the route you want). You can interact with the via by dragging it to another new location or hovering over it to see more options.

These include:

• Remove (simply removes the point from consideration in route calculation)
• Search for places nearby
• Add as a Route Stop (this makes it appear as a lettered stop on your map and directions)

Helpful hints:

1. Zoom In. Generally only roads shown at any specific zoom level will be used in route recalculation. Zooming in allows you to more precisely place via points where you want them and avoid unwanted "detours"
2. Patience is a Virtue. It may take a couple seconds to process your request and update your route
3. Watch those "potential" routes. Look carefully at the possible routes shown as you drag the mouse (careful, this gets addictive). Let go of the mouse only after you see your preferred route path

We are pretty excited about this feature, but then (having pioneered online driving directions) we're geeks for this sort of thing. We hope you like it too - give it a try today.

Please send any feedback to: http://help.mapquest.com/jive/mqfeedback.jspa

MapQuest users have come to rely on the quality and accuracy of MapQuest results no matter where they are -- which is why we are delighted to introduce MapQuest optimized for the iPhone. We have served millions of requests for MapQuest from iPhone and iPod browsers and now those results will be presented in a fast, easy-to-use way specifically for the iPhone.



Now you can pinch, flick, and tap your way to your destination on MapQuest.com! Our new iPhone interface includes the same features that MapQuest provides on the full-browser experience. Driving Directions, Maps, Local Search, Traffic, Recent Locations, and Cheapest Gas Prices, with more enhancements showing up automatically in the near future. No downloads needed!

How do I get there?

Easy. Just type mapquest.com into your iPhone or iPod Touch Safari Browser. We'll detect that you are coming from an iPhone and know to send you directly to our iPhone web interface.

Once there, you can tap the "+" at the bottom of your screen and select "Add to Home Screen" to place a shortcut icon on your iPhone's main menu screen. You'll then see the MapQuest Star icon on your screen for easy access back to MapQuest.

We hope you enjoy the user experience of MapQuest for iPhone. Remember to look for more features coming soon!

One month ago we launched MapQuest Local, bringing you an easy-to-use dashboard of local activities, events, and other information to give you some "what" and "when" to go with your "where."

Two weeks ago we released a Classifieds widget from Kaango, Used Auto Listings from AOL Autos and added support for Microformats. We also continued to tweak and optimize the page to improve performance and your experience.

Today we're happy to announce even more additions:

Yelp

Yelp provides review information and city guides to help you find out the good, great, and as they put it "not so great" around you. There are reviews for car washes, wineries, pet stores, and much more. I think I've even seen a review for a parking garage. The reviewers are locals and visitors telling Yelp what they thought. Now on MapQuest Local, you can quickly see the best of what Yelp users have found and liked near you.

Sports

Our friends at Topix are providing MapQuest Local with sports news for baseball, hockey, and pro and college football and basketball. Sports is also the first widget you can customize beyond the local city or town. Like other widgets, we try to find the closest relevant content to where you're looking, however we also know that your team isn't necessarily the closest team. Trust us, at our PA office, the our closest NFL team is the Eagles, but a good chunk of our colleagues root for the Steelers. So now you can choose between getting sports news from the local team or from your team for each sport. Just click the little gear icon to flip around the widget and customize.

Links and Tooltips

We wanted to make it easier for you to bookmark MapQuest Local for different cities, so we're introducing bookmark links which are easier-to-read. For instance, if you want to see what's going on locally in Lancaster, PA, your bookmarked link will look like this: http://local.mapquest.com/lancaster-pa.

We've also added additional information to some of our local content by using tooltips. Now when you hover over certain content like photos or used car images, additional information will appear. See below for some examples.

We're Just Getting Started

Our team loves working on MapQuest Local and we have so many cool features yet to bring you. If you have a site with local content and want to show it on MapQuest Local, don't forget to sign-up for notifications about our MapQuest Local Program. True story: A month ago Yelp was the third organization to sign-up, they were great to work with and today they went live on MapQuest Local. Who's next? You?

We hope you like all the new changes lately at MapQuest. We recently updated the home, Maps, & Directions entry pages with a map and copy/paste forms, added a great new Local feature, and released a free beta version of MapQuest 4 Mobile...and believe it or not, that's just the beginning.

With all that's brewing in our products, it only makes sense that we would update the MapQuest visual identity too!

You may have noticed some brighter colors, cleaner icons, larger buttons, a more efficient layout, and now, an updated logo. Or, maybe you haven't -- and that's OK. The visual changes aren't meant to distract, they're intended to make your experience simpler and more efficient as we experiment with new innovations.

Our Research & New Focus

We spent a lot of time planning, researching and talking to you about how you wanted MapQuest to evolve. We sought input from some of the best in the branding business and put the results of those efforts in front of hundreds of users like you.

We learned that our brand means a great deal to you. Many users have been with us from the beginning – over 12 years ago. But, as we evolved our product and service offerings so should our logo evolve.

The New Logo & Design

The visual updates we're making reflect this new focus. We explored countless logo options ranging from just the removal of the (in)famous "sparks", to a complete brand reinvention.

Because you've come to know and recognize our brand and the value it exemplifies (MapQuest is the #11 web domain), we landed on a design that stays true to what you said MapQuest means to you. The colors are sharper, the layout is cleaner and the logo is more vibrant and proud. This logo was redrawn from scratch, to make it fresh while staying familiar and instantly recognizable.

We have also given the MapQuest star a more prominent role in our products, representing not only the locations we find for you, but MapQuest's accuracy and friendly personality. We affectionately refer to it (him) as "Mark the Star," as in 'it marks the spot.'

So, although you'll see more changes, announcements and features in the coming months, we're still the MapQuest you have come to know and trust. We'll continue to innovate and deliver on the promises our brand makes: accurate, trusted, friendly, and easy to use.

As always, we welcome your suggestions and feedback.