November 4, 2005

Shedding light on the Yahoo! Maps APIs Terms of Use

Yahoo! Maps Developers,

I wanted to take a brief moment to clarify our terms of use for Yahoo! Maps, as many folks have contacted us asking whether they could use the APIs on their site.

Our position has always been to allow usage of the Yahoo! Maps APIs free of charge for non-commercial use, as well as commercial use granted on a case-by-case basis. This is defined in our FAQ which also has instructions for how to contact us should you want to seek permission for commercial use.

In general, if you are displaying mashups featuring Yahoo! Maps on your site or application and you make your stuff available for free to users, you’re welcome to use the Yahoo! Maps APIs. This is true even if your site is supported by ads -- even ads from other vendors.

But while I've got you thinking about monetizing your site, allow me to make a shameless plug for something else we’re doing at Yahoo! -- take a look at the Yahoo Publisher Network BETA. Revenue, relevant ads, no hassle. Easy. Sign up today for your YPN beta invite.

Vince Maniago, Product Manager, Yahoo! Local

Posted at 1:09 PM | Comments (3)

November 2, 2005

Announcing New Maps APIs

In June of this year, we gave developers the ability to overlay geographic data on a Yahoo! Map. Since then, we've seen a lot of terrific maps mash-ups. But you wanted more. You wanted the ability to embed Yahoo! Maps on your own Web site. You wanted to programmatically convert addresses into geocoded longitude/latitude pairs. You wanted more data feeds, such as highway traffic and local data, to plot on a map. But most importantly, you wanted a user experience that's better than any online mapping product out there.

Today we build on the success of the Simple Maps API by adding several new APIs for Yahoo! Maps. These products enable developers to use Yahoo! Maps in exciting new ways — including embedding maps on your Web site.

With this release, we are providing:

• APIs for both Flash and AJAX to give you a choice of presentation models
• Specific support for ActionScript and Macromedia Flex for Yahoo! Maps developers targeting Flash
• New "building block" APIs, including geocoding, traffic information, map images, and local search.

Of course, the Simple Maps API we released in June is still there, giving developers and non-developers the ability to plot locations on Yahoo! Maps with no programming and no rate limits.

We're giddy with excitement about this release, and we can't wait to see how you use the new APIs. We know there's lot to digest here, so if you have questions, feedback, or just want to show off what you've done, please join us in the yws-maps group.

Jeffrey McManus
Director, Yahoo! Developer Network

Posted at 9:01 PM | TrackBack