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May 31, 2006
Ask.com Maps: Aerial Europe
The first thing people usually try to do with our mapping product is look for an aerial shot of their house or where they grew up. Call it "vanity searching" for maps. Being from the Netherlands, that was a difficult proposition with all of the existing products out there. But with the launch of our Maps that is no longer the case.
Here
is a shot of the town I grew up in.
Here
is the university I went to in Eindhoven.
Working on our aerial maps makes it hard to get homesick. :)
Some quick facts about Eindhoven: It is the city where electronics giant Philips was founded in 1891, Jan de Bont was born there, and it is home of the soccer team PSV Eindhoven.
Not only do we have great maps coverage for the Netherlands, but also for a lot of Western Europe and even parts of Northern and Eastern Europe. We hope to cover the entire world at some point, but this is a great start for our users in Europe.
Here are some other interesting shots:
Take a look around and let us know if you spot anything interesting.
Michiel Frishert
Ask.com Site Research and Development
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Comments
you can almost look into your old room through the roof-window ;-)
http://maps.ask.com/maps?l=lt%3D51.4271229047%7Clg%3D5.4222893715%7Cal%3D-1%7Ccx%3D252697%7Ccy%3D-2803750%7Czm%3D3%7Cvt%3D2%7E%231#5
Posted by: Hans Frishert | May 31, 2006 1:33:33 PM
Michiel, have you ever tried the physical map option for the Netherlands? Interesting results, not?
Still, Ask has the edge over Google, Yahoo! and Live for aerial photography in the Netherlands. http://www.wowter.nl/blog/2006/03/luchtfotos-van-nederland-just-ask.html
But I can't wait for Live.com 3-d pictures for the Netherlands.
Posted by: WoW!ter | Jun 1, 2006 1:21:49 PM
If you really want us to understand you have more than US data, then try altering the maps.ask.com site so that it is not asking me for City/State/Zip and add perhaps the word Country. Yep, I can find my area in the UK on your maps. I just have to zoom way out, then slide over the UK, then hunt and drag my way to my area. And a search for "houses of parliament" brings me to the middle of the United States, not so thrilling.
Posted by: Danny Sullivan | Jun 5, 2006 7:14:20 AM
Danny,
Thank you for your comments. We currently do not support international address geocoding in our product, but display all of the data we have available. In fact, we have heard several reports of people in western Europe using our product for driving directions by using our right-click context menu. So they will navigate to their starting point, right-click to add a point, then navigate to their end point and do the same.
You are absolutely right...we should be advertising our Euro maps better. However, we are waiting for that support to be put in place before letting the whole world know. We will keep you posted on our progress. Please let us know if you have any other comments or suggestions.
Thanks,
Andy
Posted by: Andy | Jun 7, 2006 3:33:35 PM
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Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not of IAC Search & Media and may not have been reviewed in advance.
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