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.

You can help MapQuest and AOL reach the goal of spreading the One Day Without Shoes message to 1,000,000 people by taking one (or more) of the following actions:

• Tweet your support (#withoutshoes)
• Visit http://impact.aol.com/toms to take the pledge and take ‘em off today

To thank those who are getting footloose, AOL will be awarding 100 $50 TOMS gift cards to random winners.  See official rules here.

We hope by taking off our own, you’ll do the same!

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!

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!

We even used our big data and what we know about where people like to go to create our latest local discovery product, MapQuest Vibe.   If you haven’t had a chance to download one of the top free travel apps in the iPhone store, go to www.mqvibe.com or search for mqvibe in the iPhone store to help you find cool neighborhoods and the best restaurants, bars, and shopping wherever you are traveling.

We hope you enjoy this look at what’s happening on MapQuest!  If you have any questions or would like additional about the infographic, please contact Anke Corbin at anke.corbin@mapquest.com.

*comScore January 2012

Given the scale of MapQuest, we were able to provide profiles of more than 50,000 neighborhoods, 27,000 cities, and 50,000 hotspots, essentially covering the entire U.S.  Each neighborhood page showcases local restaurants, stores and businesses in ranked order by the most popular, which saves you from having to comb through thousands of not-helpful reviews to find the best.

Over the weekend, we added a new batch of functionality to mqVibe making it more useful for giving you the local expert opinion of where to go and what to do.

As you may have seen, mqVibe is at SXSW showcasing all of these great new functionalities.  If you are, too, download the mqVibe iPhone app to find the details on our flash mobs, street-corner giveaways and other cool stuff we’re doing in Austin!

New Contextual Search
Today, when you search on most sites, the most you can do is look for a business name (“Rio Grande”) or category like (“Mexican food”).  But sometimes you want to be more specific, like when you’d ask a friend, “Where’s a good place to get margaritas that has a patio?”

mqVibe now supports this.  So you can search for terms like “rooftop patio,” “kid friendly,” “enchiladas,” “soup dumplings,” and even “live music” to find a place to eat.  We’re just starting to roll this out, so for now we just support using Contextual Search for restaurants in major cities in New York, California, Texas and Colorado.

Local Influence and Expertise
Initially VibeRank balanced out the aggregate behavior of the crowd with the discreet engagement of Vibe users.  We now tweak the algorithm so that the more active the user is, the more he influences the system.  After all, the more active you are in a community, the more expertise you have.

In addition to factoring in community engagement, we also look for the social mavens.  These are the people who, not only know where all the best places are, but are actively sought out for their expertise.  After we  identify them, these folks get the weight of their vote boosted behind the scenes and we also boost the vote weight of anyone who shares his opinions via Facebook, Twitter or FourSquare.

You can see your influence broken down by neighborhood and category in the leader boards in the “What’s Happening” section of mqVibe.

“What’s Happening”
We added a “What’s Happening” tab on the mqVibe website (or in slide-out menu in the mobile app).  This tab gives you a quick glance at what’s happening in neighborhoods you care about, see what your friends are up to, the rise and fall of local businesses, badges you’ve won, and your local influence and rank.

Achievement
Until today, there wasn’t much of a reward for exploring, voting and commenting.  With the latest version of mqVibe, you’ll not only get increasing influence – which fosters friendly competition between friends — you now also win badges for your achievements.  These include a Pioneer badge for being one of the first to vote in an area, loyalty badges for frequent visits to local businesses, and VIP badges for having the most social influence in a local business.

New badges will be coming online all the time, and range from achievement-style awards, such as a specialist badge for being the first to comment on 10 pizza restaurants in a city, to personality-style badges that help to begin to express your personality based on where you go and what you do.

Checkins
At times people are scared to vote down a business in Vibe, because traditionally reviews are permanent and have a lasting effect.  mqVibe’s system is different: A vote is simply a point in an ongoing game.  You’ll get to vote again and the influence of your vote diminishes over time.

So if you have a bad experience somewhere, you should vote them down, knowing that they will have a chance to make it up to you.

Still, there are times where you’re just not sure how to vote or you don’t have any comment to add.  For those times, we added a new neutral “check in” action.  And if you’re a FourSquare user, you can register your account so that we’ll automatically check you in when you vote or check-in on mqVibe.

These new features set the stage for the next wave of functionality for mqVibe.  Please try them out and let us know what you think.

This is available now as part of MapQuest for Android Version 1.3.0, which offers a trio of useful features that will help save time and keep you tethered to important places while out-and-about.

Add Favorites

One of our intrepid mobile engineers recently lamented having to re-find and re-enter locations that he visits frequently, yet not so frequently that directions are unnecessary. In his case, his kids play sports, and the games are held at a variety of participating schools. Over a weekend, he built the ability to identify and save the names and locations to favorite places from the place detail page. Naturally, the icon he chose to identify this feature was a heart icon. Any location can be added as a ‘Favorite’ and the list is easily accessed via the menu key on your android device.

Voice Activation

Not satisfied with merely selecting the locations from a list, he further added the ability to navigate to a favorite place by voice command. Getting to one of the schools was now as easy as tapping the mic button in the search box and saying, ‘navigate’  then the name of the ‘favorite’ destination.

So now, after you add ‘home’ to your teenager’s phone, all he has to do is tell his phone “Navigate home!”

After visiting my family in Oklahoma over the holidays, I took these screenshots on my flight back to Denver. This screen was taken shortly after the flight departed OKC and the attendant announced it was safe to use approved portable electronic devices.

As you fly, the flight tracker updates with your current location, ground speed and altitude as well as your estimated arrival time, distance remaining and time remaining.

The flight tracker allows you to zoom and pan to explore the map and discover more about cities and destinations Southwest Airlines serves.  You can also view the current weather conditions and forecast for your destination city.

Beautiful weather expected for Denver for the rest of the week

Clicking a pin on the map brings up the travel guide for that location

Cruising at 434mph at 35,996 feet with 157 miles to go

For more information about Southwest Airlines In-Flight Broadband Entertainment Portal, visit http://www.southwest.com/wifi/.

Happy flying and safe travels!