MapQuest Blog

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!

MapQuest 4 Mobile Beta is now available on 25 RIM BlackBerry devices. Our popular application is available on select AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Alltel, Bell, Telus, and Rogers devices in the US and Canada.

Check the list below and see if your phone is listed.

In the coming weeks, look for the 8100 (Pearl) and 8700 versions along with a great, new feature of retrieving saved maps and routes from My MapQuest on your MapQuest 4 Mobile application. Learn More

Download the application now: 1) Get your BlackBerry 2) Point your mobile web browser to m.mq4m.com 3) Download!

A "bold" new MapQuest – new device builds keep coming! Thousands of BlackBerry users have taken advantage of the great new mobile application, MapQuest 4 Mobile Beta.

We appreciate all the positive feedback our loyal users are providing. But since its debut, the most common question we get is, "When will it be available for my handset?" Rest assured we're working hard to add new devices on a continuing basis!

This week we're introducing the AT&T BlackBerry Bold; Verizon BlackBerry 8830, 8330; & T-Mobile BlackBerry 8300, 8800, and 8820.

MapQuest 4 Mobile Beta is already available for the BlackBerry 8830 on Sprint, and the 8310, 8800, and 8820 models for AT&T.

If you have a compatible phone, try out the MapQuest 4 Mobile application. It's FREE, easy to use, and offers valuable features such as maps, directions, local business search and more. See more information.

That's all 4 now. Keep checking back 4 updates and great new features in the next few weeks!

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

This morning we updated MapQuest Local with some enhancements and bug fixes to make using Local more useful and make it easier to share information.

AddThis

To anyone familiar with blogs, AddThis buttons on sites at the bottom of posts and online news articles are pretty common. However, if you're not already familiar with AddThis, it's a service which allows you to easily share and bookmark pages to some of your favorite web sites, in this case: MapQuest Local pages. You can even use it to email a MapQuest Local link to a friend or set it as your home page (although you've probably already done that).

To use it, simply click the big plus button on the Location Bar at the top of the page and it will open up a list of sites to publish to. If your favorite site is not on the list, just click the "more" link for more choices.

Name and Number Please?

You may have noticed that MapQuest Local works a bit differently than the rest of MapQuest. Much of the address information is coming from other sites instead of our own internal data. As a result, when you clicked the "Maps" or "Get Directions" links, we weren't able to pass along the business name or phone number into your map results. Well, we've fixed that. So now when you click the "Maps" and "Get Directions" links from any widget, the business name and phone number (if available) get passed along too.

A few simple things we've added that make MapQuest Local easier to share and more convenient to use.

Current users of the MapQuest Widget are seeing something new in the places they've embedded it. We've just upgraded the features and functionality to make it even more useful and easier to use.

• We've improved the Maps and Driving Directions experience
• MapQuest Search functionality has been added, allowing you to quickly pull up that address your looking for
• We've added Traffic information; you can now quickly check the roads before you head out
• Performance and functionality improvements

If you don't have the MapQuest Widget yet, you can click the "Grab & Share" link on the widget in this post, on the MapQuest Widget page in the yourminis gallery, or anywhere you see someone has embedded the widget. From there you can embed the widget on your favorite start pages like myAOL or on your favorite social network pages like Facebook or MySpace.

While we've been making a lot of enhancements on MapQuest.com, our mobile services and products certainly aren't being left out! Today we're announcing our MapQuest Navigator 5.0 service is available on your AT&T mobile phone- and billable directly to your AT&T phone plan. Starting today you can get our popular voice-guided navigation service on select AT&T phones and try it out for a FREE trial period!

We've had great feedback on our navigation service and people enjoy the convenience of not having to buy another device when their GPS-enabled mobile phone can get them where they need to go. With MapQuest Navigator on your phone, your maps and directions data is always current - you don't have to worry about updating the data on your PND or in-car navigation system. What's even better is it doesn't just provide turn-by-turn voice-guided directions, you can also see where you're going with 3D moving maps. And, there's live traffic, walking directions, gas prices, AOL City's Best restaurants/nightlight ratings, and more.

Initially, we're launching with the following phones including: BlackBerry Curve 8210, BlackBerry Pearl 8110, BlackBerry 8820, BlackBerry 8800, MOTO Z9, MOTO Q Global, AT&T Tilt, and Blackjack II – but look for many new devices by the end of the year.

See more information and sign up for the free trial at our MapQuest Navigator AT&T page.

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.

Every day our Traffic feature helps tens of thousands of MapQuest users throughout the US to view up-to-the-minute conditions and plan their routes. We recently added some enhancements:

1) New Markets – Local traffic coverage in over a dozen new cities:




Our coverage of over 100 metro areas now extends to more mid-size towns – including many that some competitors just don't cover. And, we'll be adding more soon!

2) Closed Roads - We now show you when roads have been marked as Closed by our traffic provider. This designation is typically used for long-term construction-related closures along major highways, for example the "New I-65" Project in St. Louis (shown) and for emergency situations that extend for a few days, like the recent flooding along Interstate 80/94 in Chicago:


So remember:

Green = Smooth Sailing
Yellow = Starting to Slow
Red = Stop 'n Go
Black = Use another route!


If you haven't tried out our Road Conditions & Traffic feature, you can find it on the new MapQuest.com Homepage, our new MapQuest Local site, our mobile website, and the new MapQuest 4 Mobile downloadable application. So start using MapQuest to check traffic before heading out on the road!

MapQuest Local now supports the hCard, hCalendar, and draft Geolocation Microformats.

A Micro-what?

Here's a down-to-earth explanation:

With a little help from your web browser, Microformats on MapQuest Local will allow you to save contact information to your address book. For example: the name, address, phone number and web address of a restaurant or movie theater. You can also save event information to your calendar application. So for example: the date and showtimes for a movie, along with the address information. This makes the information more portable and therefore more useful to you.

How do I See and Use Microformat Information?

Many sites have implemented Microformats, but most current web browsers don't have built-in support yet. Future browser releases will; MapQuest Local is ready today. In the meantime, you can take advantage of Microformats through browser plug-ins and bookmarklets.

Here's a quick example on adding a location to an Address Book application using the Operator add-on for Mozilla Firefox on Mac OS X. Your set-up may vary, but the steps will be very similar.

• In #1, I've selected the "Contacts" list in the Operator toolbar. Notice that the locations in the list match locations on the MapQuest Local page
• In #2, I've selected a location
• In #3, I've selected the option to export
• In #4, I now have a new entry in my Address Book application with all of the fields correctly filled in
• In #5, by syncing my address book with my mobile device, I now have the information easily at hand for later reference

Adding Event information to your calendar is pretty much the same process.

This is just another in the many ways we're working on making all of MapQuest more useful.

PS: There are some additional recommendations on the Microformats site for Microformat-enabling your broswer.

Wanted: Classified Information

Earlier this month, we introduced you to MapQuest Local, giving you a customizable dashboard of localized content for cities and towns. We also put out a call for sites with local content, asking if they would like to make that content available. The response has been huge! Our friends at Kaango were one of the first to talk with us and today we're happy to release: Classifieds provided by Kaango.

Car Shopping?

Today we've also added Used Auto Listings from AOL Autos. Search local autos by make and model and scroll through photos in your quest to find a new ride.

What's Next?

We're hard at work on even more content and features. If you've got local content and want display it on MapQuest Local, don't forget to sign-up for more information about our MapQuest Local Program.

Working at MapQuest we strive to stay abreast of road-related problems nationwide. When there's a serious one (a significant safety hazard and/or a situation that impacts many people) we jump on it as soon as we can. Even though we keep a lookout for problems, it's jarring, nonetheless, when a significant emergency occurs.

This was the case on August 1, 2007, when we saw, in real time, the the tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. First there was shock, and then MapQuest teammates familiar with that part of Minneapolis began discussing alternate routes and how disruptive this would be to the area. Looking for some way to help, our Customer Support team reached out to the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) which initiated a rapid series of conversations about Mn/DOT's preferred detour routes. Mn/DOT set up the closures and detours necessary to keep traffic moving safely and to avoid impacting emergency crews and rescue workers.

The MapQuest data and operations specialists quickly dropped other work and adjusted our routing data to reflect those changes. We were the first to reflect the bridge and road closures on our site. Mn/DOT appreciated the effort, and they have kept in touch, periodically sending updates as the work has progressed.

When the word went out last week that the new St. Anthony Falls Bridge would be opening yesterday, MapQuest Customer Support again reached out to our contacts at Mn/DOT and got the scoop. When the opening date and time were decided, our data and ops people again went to work to undo the closures we put in place last year. Those changes went live on MapQuest.com yesterday and again, we were the first to include the reopened bridge on our site.

It was a tragedy for those whose lives were affected by the collapse. They will no doubt feel the pain for the foreseeable future. As a community, however, they can take some solace in knowing Mn/DOT has been able to rebuild a modern, solid, safe bridge significantly ahead of schedule.

We're glad Minneapolis is getting back to normal, and we're glad we could help in this small way.

The launches keep coming this week at MapQuest! We're adding to our announcements with the launch of MapQuest 4 Mobile Beta.

We're excited to show off our new free mobile product that offers maps, directions, local business search and more for BlackBerry devices. One quick look at the interface and you'll see how intuitive it is -- you'll go from a new user to a pro in a single use. Try out the scrolling carousel across the top and you'll see how easy it is to use.


Those that have tried this new mobile app out immediately found it engaging and very practical. Not only does it get you where you need to go with street and hybrid (aerial imagery with street names) map views, we have handy features such as live traffic conditions and MapQuest's database of over 16 million points of interest to search from.



One of the really cool features is the GPS Find Me feature. Your GPS chip helps locate you and you can quickly get directions from your current location and track your progress as you get to your destination.



MapQuest 4 Mobile is currently available for download for the BlackBerry 8830 on Sprint, and the 8310, 8800, and 8820 models for AT&T. Many more devices will be supported in the coming months.

Get more information and download the product at our product page.

That's all 4 now. Keep checking back 4 updates.