Anything Geospatial

GIS, Maps, Geo and Location Technology by @gletham

yahoo

Marissa Mayer and Yahoo! design team kill a week-end creating a “new” logo

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I’m not sure if you Yahoo! or not (honestly I can’t recall the last time I hit the site) but apparently a few of you do and apparently Marissa Mayer has been doing some “great” stuff there also  – beyond getting tons of recognition via social media I honestly am unsure what she’s done since taking over the helm but she has created some buzz there and apparently, according to stats Yahoo! traffic is swelling. Something she has done recently is she created a new logo with a design team (Actually they simply picked a new color it seems – actually, a color they used by in 1995)  and she also created a video about the process (think more buzz)… oh, and she also penned a lengthy blog on the process as well… If you aren’t familiar with Yahoo! then I suggest you Google them ;0)


Home and Remote Office Workers… A Good Idea or Just Yahoo!-ing Around?

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It seems that Marissa Mayer and Yahoo! have stirred the pot a little here with this topic, although honestly, given Yahoo!’s track record I don’t really take much to heart that is coming out of the fledgling Internet company (when was the last time you used yahoo! email or did a Yahoo! search??) It seems Yahoo1 is dead set against home-based workers and has taken a firm stance that all employees will work from the campus. Remote office workers provide many options to companies, particularly small or growing firms. Workers from home can be flexible in their hours, can provide economic savings, reduce needless commutes, and offer a variety of potential benefits. However, there are drawbacks, like lack of face-to-face engagement, declining productivity, and more. So, what are your thoughts on this for the tech professional? Have you or do you work remotely? What’s your company’s take on this? Drop a comment in the form to share… See also this feature on the Yahoo! position and the Marissa Mayer memo to Yahoo! employees

I can’t help but think that this is really a step backwards for the web, for the start-up economy, for the Internet, for women, for young tech workers, and for Yahoo! No huge surprise though given Yahoo!’s track record and as I’ve long suspected, Mayer will likely be sitting on a beach and sucking back a sweet severance package within a year or so and folks that have 401Ks that are heavily depending on Yahoo! may be sifting over their portfolios and looking for more sound investments, like maybe Nokia! ;0)


BOSS Geo Added to Yahoo! Search API

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Something new from Yahoo! (you remember them right?)… seems the Yahoo! team is beefing up their API a little with addition of some new geospatial capabilities. Via their dev blog, Yahoo! describes BOSS Geo as being comprised of two popular services – PlaceFinder – a geocoder and reverse geocoder service – and PlaceSpotter (was PlaceMaker) which helps to pull rich information about the locations mentioned in an article or content – now offers powerful, new geo services to BOSS developers. Read more on the Yahoo! blog HERE

A news article is no longer just text but has rich, meaningful geographical information associated with it. For instance, the next time your users are reading a review of a cool new coffee shop in the Mission neighborhood in San Francisco, they can discover another article about a hip new bakery in the same neighborhood

See more http://developer.yahoo.com/boss/geo/#placefinder

Yahoo! looks back at search trends – BP tops search and Germans interested in maps

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Today Yahoo! Inc. has  announced its 2010 Year in Review (http://yearinreview.yahoo.com), the annual Yahoo! look back that identifies the top trends of the year from billions of consumer searches, and the top stories and topics of the year from the Yahoo! network. Some interesting trends this year although the not so surprising results do show what you would expect; Bieber, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears yadayada are in the top 10 searches whereas the BP Oils Spill was the #1 search, however, the regional differences are what I find of interest. For example, in Canada the Olympics was the top story searched by users, in France it was reality TV that made the top search, Italians were interested in facebook, Spain it was all about Big Brother 12, and the UK it was lottery… of interest though, in Germany the top search topic was maps! By topic section it was unemployment that ruled in the business search, World Cup dominated sports search,  and Yahoo! questions was topped by searches on how to tie a tie!

The New Yahoo! Goes Loco With Local offers and a Dozen Partners

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Out of the Web2.0 event this week in San Fran, Yahoo! has lifted the lid off their latest plans to harness the power of location and mobile location tech – enter Yahoo! Local offers. Some details… Yahoo! is launching its Local Offers program with more than a dozen partners to provide a wide selection of local deals, coupons, and other offers — from nearby spas, restaurants and other local retailers. Currently in limited beta in the U.S., Yahoo!’s Local Offers program will make it easy for millions of people to find the best local deals and savings on Yahoo!. Launch partners include Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt City, BloomSpot, BuyWithMe, DealOn, Zozi, CrowdSavings, Lifebooker, FreshGuide, Scoop St, Goldstar, HomeRun, Tippr, Coupons.com, and Valpak, with more partners to come. See more in the official PR

Yahoo! is also touting more locally relevant search results via their search engine and services – see New Yahoo! Search

Add geo-location to facebook via fire eagle friends on fire

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A tip for you Geo geeks on facebook… I stumbled onto an update from Yahoo! Fire eagle this morning that enables facebook users to integrate more geo location functionality into their account courtesy of the friends on fire applet http://apps.facebook.com/on-fire/ .

To use the app you simply add it like any other application you would allow to access your facebook account settings. First though you’ll also need a Yahoo! fire eagle account – http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/. Once added you can invite friends and connect with others that are using friends on fire so you can share your location (precise or more generalized options) and even post notes.

GeoCities R.I.P as Yahoo! pulls the plug

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I doubt that there will be very many tears shed, however, one of the web’s old timer resources is shutting down today as Yahoo! pulls the plug on GeoCities. I have to admit, I haven’t even looked at a GeoCities site in over a decade and I suspect that very few of you have either. In my opinion there really wasn’t very much traditional “Geo” involved in GeoCities although you have to admit it was a great name and likely  pretty high in demand… anyway, so long GeoCities http://geocities.yahoo.com/

Yahoo! Increasing your whereness with Placemaker

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From Yahoo1 Dev net today comes Placemaker, a geoparsing Web service that gives you a way to determine the ‘whereness’ of unstructured content. From Yahoo!… This read-only service identifies, disambiguates, and ‘extracts’ places from structured and unstructured text content, such as web pages, feeds, news, blog posts, and status updates. As an open API, Yahoo! Placemaker helps developers make applications and datasets location-aware. See http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placemaker/

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