Have you ever noticed the amount of homogeneity that exists in the roads of the western world? I am pretty familiar with California and spotting a motorbike is as rare as spotting a mosquito. It seems like a vast majority of them are, in fact, on the same type of vehicle ( a car) and hence are most likely to take the same route/direction given two places. And so Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and all of these guys have just one type of route. Fair enough.
Bring India in and the equation changes quite phenomenally. Just like our people, vehicles on our roads are of various types. We have all the kind of Vehicles known to man kind running on our roads and each one of them is as important as the other. I would even think there are more (motor)bikes and scooters than cars on Indian roads.
Now, let me build a hypothesis on top of that previous statement. Arguably, The same person travelling between the same two given places may take a different route depending on the kind of vehicle he is on.
I, for one, prefer the side roads (gallis) and small roads that are less polluted and less crowded over main roads when I am on a motorbike. I am willing to ride a few hundred meters extra if I can skip a few junctions/signals which are a big bottleneck on traffic speeds. But when I am in a car, I would rather stick to the main roads because the condition of side roads are unpredictable. Plus, you never know if that big gravel truck is parked blocking the entire street. But, whenever I take the cycle, I really want to avoid main roads completely if possible, because, they are simply not safe.
There are very many ways to get to a place. Sometimes, you want to take the fastest route, Sometimes the shortest. But the kind of vehicle never used to play a part. But, now it does. At Yahoo! India maps. Search for a route and watch out for buttons on the right pane. Now Obviously, the single Search Box knows about all of this too. So, Type in "bike from anna flyover to parrys, chennai" and you get your (motor)bike directions. Or would you rather prefer a cycle around? Try "Cycle from Domlur bus stand to Yahoo egl Bangalore".
Popularity: 39% [?]
Here in India, we speak several hundred languages amongst the billion of us. Even our Government officially recognizes 23 of them. No single person can possibly learn all Indian Languages in his lifetime and so, most of us make do with a few. Yahoo! India Maps is no exception. After sitting through a lot of language courses, Yahoo! India Maps has now learnt to speak nine languages (Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Kannada & Malayalam) apart from English. Watch out for the "Vernacular" button along with "Map", "Satellite" and "Hybrid" buttons to see an area in it's primary language.
We have covered the major cities and towns and will expand the "Language Map view" to other regions in the time to come. For us in the team, Maps in vernacular languages is magical. Because for once, our Grand-moms and Grand-dads will get to see and understand what we do all day long sitting at Yahoo!.
Popularity: 70% [?]
A hack built on Hackaholics hack day from one of our hackers (Kush B) from Connected Life India Team has gone live on the Yahoo! Widget Gallery. I downloaded it on my BlackBerry. Pretty neat and functional, esp. since I have been tracking the dollar going up lately - its at Rs.40+, 40.225 INR to be exact per the currency converter.
Congratulations Kush!
Popularity: 63% [?]
Yahoos got together and had a lot of fun on Feb 21-22 @ the internal hack day.
This time around we tried to get all hackers together in one space and collaborate together - as opposed to earlier times when hacking was restricted to their desks. This did create a lot of positive energy and buzz as hackers and non-hackers mingled during the science fair style hack demos. There were ~176 Hackers with ~121 Hacks. This is an awesome display of the enterprising nature of our employees. There were several other hack concepts that were not introduced into this event but will be getting due attention in the incubation "cellar" pipeline.
Judging the best hacks was a phased process with floor judging and a final top 25 judging panel. Alok Mittal (Canaan Partners) part of our esteemed judging panel and got a chance to review our hackers' creativity at close range.
We had some hicups in the process but that is part of the "Live & Learn" philosophy. We will be posting some of the hacks on our hack gallery page (coming soon). Some of the awards we gave out and how the Hackers coveted them were:
Which award do you covet?
And now to name the winners (hackers)
Congratulations to all the winners.
Popularity: 77% [?]
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