If you’re following us on Twitter, you’ve probably seen lots of people tell us that they know their own neighborhood and don’t need directions to get out of it. Well, you asked, we delivered. :-)

MapQuest now provides the option to add your home address in your ‘Preferences’ by logging in on the top right corner of the MapQuest.com homepage. It’s easy to set up, just click ‘Sign In’, connect via Facebook and then enter the addresses under ‘Favorite Locations’. Don’t feel shy about using Facebook as a login, we won’t post anything to your Facebook wall without you specifically telling us to. Once you’re set up we’ll hide the steps from your house and start you right on a major road that you’re already familiar with.

In addition to hiding steps out of your neighborhood, your preference section also does a few other very cool things. One of our favorites is that you can enter your car or truck type and MapQuest will calculate your car’s fuel costs for every route you search on MapQuest. We’ll also give you alternate routes so you can pick the cheapest way to get to your destination.

MapQuest is also multi-lingual, sprechen Sie Deutsch anyone? In your Preferences section you can choose which language you’d like MapQuest to be speaking. It’s a great way to practice that rusty German from high school.

One last helpful function is that you can store your and your friends’ email addresses to send maps and directions without having to type them up every time.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up, it’s easy, it’s free and oh, so helpful.  As always, let us know what you think on Facebook or Twitter.

If you can dream it, you can pin it.  Heck, even if you can’t dream it, someone else dreamt it and you can just ‘re-pin’ it.  Unless you have been living on a remote island in the south pacific for past six months, you’ve probably heard about the tremendously popular social platform that enables people to create pin boards of things they love or are inspired by, called Pinterest.  Travel, be it a place you’ve visited or a place you like to go to, is a big part of what people share on Pinterest. We thought we’d make travel ‘pinning’ even better by giving people the option to create maps that work with Pinterest so each trip has context to followers.

Here are some cool examples of how people on Pinterest use MapQuest to make their travel related pins even cooler.

How does it work?  It’s super easy, if you just want a map of a location, simply create your map on MapQuest and then click the Pinterest Button at the top right of the MapQuest page. This will create a map image and link that you can then upload to Pinterst and add to your ‘pin board’.

Careful…it’s addictive!

MapQuest is headquartered in Colorado – so most of us love the great outdoors.  We know you do too, considering it’s one of the most-searched categories on MapQuest.com and has been for years!  This sparked an idea: Why not make it easier for you to get the information you want and need with new videos, photos, and guide content?  MapQuest National Parks, located at parks.mapquest.com, is a great jumping off point for your next adventure to one of the country’s 58 national parks.

The content in MapQuest National Parks not only helps travelers as they plan their upcoming trip, but it’s also inspiration for the excursions on your bucket list.  Take a sec to explore all the incredible vistas, stunning natural features and incredibly preserved history that inspired us as we created this project.

Part of what makes this site unique is the videos featuring park rangers from the actual parks themselves.  No one knows Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon or any of these other amazing destinations better than the rangers that live and breathe it everyday.  The site also features breathtaking outdoor photography by QT Luong, a world-renowned nature and adventure photographer.

Whether you’re checking the parks out for free during National Parks Week (April 21-29) or you’re scheduling a summer full of weekend trips to these great natural features, we hope this new tool helps inspire your national parks journey!

Autumn is a season for pumpkins, colorful leaves, and getting so seriously lost in a corn maze that one has to alert the authorities.

Okay, the last one doesn’t occur with regularity, but it did happen to a couple and their infant child in Massachusetts this week. The couple was so helplessly lost in the Connors Farm corn maze in Danvers that they dialed 911 and had to be rescued. By a police K-9 unit.

My first thought upon hearing this news was, “Wow — that’s quite the corn maze.” My second thought was, “If only that lost-in-a-corn-maze couple had a MapQuest app on their smartphone…”

Which is a good point in the story for me to introduce myself. My name is Lance Gould, and I’m the new editorial director of MapQuest. MapQuest is one of the most recognized and trusted brands on the web, and now we’re going to be bringing our readers editorial that can entertain and inform them while still allowing them to get the excellent navigational experiences that they’ve come to expect from MapQuest.

Our first foray into original content is a fall-foliage package called LeafQuest. In this effort, we’ve selected 150 of the most colorful leaf-peeping spots in the whole country. That’s three per state. (Well, 49 states — sorry, tropical Hawaii! — but with Washington, D.C. as a reliable stand in. It’s complicated.)

Each state gets an article providing information on the three fall-foliage spots therein, including links to the official websites of those places; a navigable map demarcating the three leaf-rich spots with pinpoints; and a video showcasing glorious fall-foliage in that state.

Also in the package are three feature essays on autumn. by such esteemed writers as Joyce Millman, a two-time Pulitzer nominee; James Parker, the entertainment columnist for The Atlantic; and Chuck Pfarrer, an ex-Navy SEAL and best-selling memoirist, who has a new book out now on the inside mission to kill Osama bin-Laden. That’s right — we have a fall-foliage story written by a rough-and-ready Navy Seal — that’s just how we roll.

Stay tuned for other great content from MapQuest. Next up is FrightQuest, our Halloween package. And yes, Hawaii, for that one, we’ve got you covered.

–Lance Gould

MapQuest gets a lot of passionate feedback from our 44+ million users.  Among the most frequent enhancement requests are walking and transit directions on MapQuest.com.  With increasingly walkable cities and the growing popularity of transit as a convenient and eco-friendly travel option, we are happy to announce the launch of…both!

Walking Directions are now available just about everywhere driving directions are on MapQuest.com (we’ve had them for a while on our MQ4Mobile and Mobile Web apps).  Walking directions will guide you down the most efficient paths and through parks, often avoiding vehicle traffic. To use the feature, just click Get Directions, select the “walking man” icon above the Start field, and enter your locations.  It’s as simple as that!

Rail Transit Directions are now available in six major metro areas (NYC, Chicago, D.C., San Fran, Boston and Philly) all of which have large subway, elevated and/or commuter rail networks. Rail transit is integrated with walking directions, allowing travelers in these cities to route between towns, addresses, points of interest, or specific transit stations.

To use the transit feature, just click on the train icon (right next to the walking icon), enter your locations, and select the time and date of your trip. Your route map will show walking and transit segments in different colors, with icons indicating the mode of travel, station locations, and transfers. Timing information will be included in your step-by-step directions in the left column. For more details, please see our Help site.

While extremely helpful for travel planning, MapQuest Transit version 1.0 is just a starting point. We’ll be working to add more cities, transit system maps and station details, mobile support, bus routing, and additional enhancements.

Please try out the new features, and stay tuned for more!

The routing team at MapQuest has always taken pride in providing driving routes which help you get you to your destination quickly and efficiently. Our routing algorithm has been tuned over many years based on user feedback, and incorporates a wide range of factors from speed limits to road class to the impact of left turns. We’ve added flexibility in recent years by expanding customization options like avoiding tolls, highways, and other road types – and by making routes interactive so you can simply drag onto roads you prefer to use.

As we all know from our own travels in familiar areas however, there is often more than one reasonable way to get between points A and B!

With that in mind, we are pleased to announce Alternate Routes on MapQuest.com.

When you generate driving directions, you will now often see one or two additional options in addition to the “main” route – which is produced using the same time-tested MapQuest technology you’ve come to know and trust. Alternate routes are likely to be just a shade longer in terms of timing or distance – and we won’t show any at all if no good options exist.

You don’t need to do anything to generate alternates – simply look for them under the Suggested Routes heading in the left column.  Each option is given a unique descriptive name based on the main roads it uses. When you move your mouse over the alternate, it will turn light green and you’ll see the alternate route displayed in pink on the map (see image). To select an alternate, just click on the highlighted area and we’ll automatically update your driving directions (for more details, please visit our Help Site).

We hope you like the additional options, and we’d like your feedback.  If you know of alternates that you think are better than what we’ve shown, let us know by filling out our feedback form (please be specific!).  We’ll use your input to make MapQuest’s alternate routes even smarter.

Let’s start off with a big bear hug to all of you loyal MapQuest fans—we ♥ you!  We’re listening to your feedback about the new site and appreciate your emails and support!

We figure this is a great time to start sharing tips and tricks, so you can become one of our power users:

Direction Hints

• Direction Hints – (pictured right) Keep an eye out for the new direction hints in our driving directions.  They’ll help you anticipate upcoming turns and recognize if you’ve gone too far.

• Live Traffic – Keep yourself out of a jam with our Live Traffic info. It’s updated every 5 minutes, with great coverage for highways and local roads. Remember, you can click on incident and construction icons for more details.

• Hide Steps in Printed Directions - (pictured below) Want to simplify driving directions in your neighborhood? Now you can hide steps on your printed directions. Once you have a map or directions, click the “Print” button in the upper left corner, then click “Hide Row” to only print out the steps you really need.

Hide Steps in Printed Directions

MapQuest Toolbar

• Mouse Right-Click on Map – Want to pinpoint someplace without an address—like a picnic spot in a large park, or one of those hard-to-find soccer fields? You can mouse right-click on the map and we’ll return an approximate address or latitude/longitude coordinates for that location. Then you can save it to your My Maps and share it with others.

• Map Toolbar - (pictured left) It’s easy to find businesses around you (or along the way) with the Map Toolbar. Try using our suggested categories or enter whatever you’re looking for in the search field.

We’ll share more tips soon. In the meanwhile, consider yourself “in the know” and pass it on!

AOL’s City’s Best, “best of” program unveiled their new site today at www.citysbest.com including the best of food, entertainment and lifestyle venues selected by local editors and writers in 25 metro-markets.  Starting today, City’s Best’s  6,000+ local listings are now searchable on MapQuest through our one-box search, and each listing links to a more in depth page about that location.

AOL’s City’s Best brings another highly relevant source of local content to MapQuest, including places with the best reputation in many popular categories such as Restaurants, Bars, Retail, Movie Theaters,  Hotels, Bakeries, Spas, Pet Shops, Ice Cream Parlors and more. The new City’s Best markets include Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Twin Cities and Washington, DC.

To easily find City’s Best listings on MapQuest, simply type your “City’s Best” search term in the one-box search field and click “Get Map”. Try search terms such as “City’s Best”, “City’s Best, Denver, CO”, and “City’s Best restaurants in Denver”.  Be sure to click on the “More Info” link for a local write-up by City’s Best editors and writers.

City’s Best current lists include the top ten venues by category and market based on the expertise of local editors. Starting today, October 13 through November 30, you can cast your vote for your favorite places at www.citysbest.com. The final “Best of”’ winners based on people’s choice will be announced on December 14. We hope you’ll vote for your favorite places!

Noticed that gas prices are finally going down a bit?  We have too, but it’s still always more expensive than you want it to be when you fill up your full tank.  This is one of the reasons why MapQuest Gas Prices is a tool that will help.

MapQuest Gas Prices shows you the highest and lowest gas prices, helping you find the cheap stations in your area. You can also search for any fuel type like gasoline, diesel or other alternative fuels like biodiesel, CNG, LPG, etc. Once you search, we’ll give you a list of results sorted by cheapest to most expensive. Alternatively, you could sort the results by alphabetical order or by distance (from your search location).

The application also includes a Gas Calculator that lets you compute the cost of your trip given your vehicle mileage, the cost of fuel, and the total trip distance. This tool can be extremely helpful if you want to estimate how much you’ll need to allocate for gas when planning a road trip.

When you use the gas prices site, you’ll notice that it’s tightly linked with the new MapQuest site. So, on your search results, click on any gas station icon on the map and you’ll see links to:

• Get directions to the gas station
• Search for any point of interest near the station

We hope you find this tool to be helpful in managing your fuel expenditure! Stay tuned to the blog for more improvements to MapQuest Gas Prices.