SES Chicago - December 7-11, 2009

June 30, 2005

The Birth of A9 Maps; Block View Imagery Added for More Cities

With the release of API's for Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, non-developers might be start thinking that there is nothing new in the world of online maps to talk about. WRONG. Greg Linden has an overview on his blog about the new online maps from A9.com.

I've only had a short time to use A9 Maps but will try to spend more time using the service over the weekend. However, after just using A9 Maps for a few minutes, I have to agree with Greg, they've has done an impressive job of integrating the maps with the "block view" imagery they began offering in January as part of their visual yellow pages service.

and speaking of the A9 Visual Yellow Pages...

I've also noticed that A9 has added "block view" imagery for several more cities.

Here's a list of the new locations:

  • Austin, TX
  • Detroit
  • Philadelphia
  • San Diego
  • San Jose (previously listed with San Francisco/Bay Area)

Posted by Gary Price at 10:16 AM | Permalink

April 19, 2005

Images from Five More Cities Added To A9's Visual Yellow Pages

When Amazon.com's A9 launched their visual yellow page service about four months ago they offered images from about 10 cities and metro areas.

News today that A9 has added images from five new cities to the mix. You can now find images for the following cities:

+ Washington DC + Phoenix + Miami + Houston + Fargo (ubetcha!)

Want to learn more about A9's visual yellow pages? Here's an overview article from SearchDay that includes info about other visual yellow pages. You can also read this Clickz interview with the Amazon VP who led the development of the project.

Finally, A9 Yellow Pages now has its own dedicated site at http://yp.a9.com.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:05 PM | Permalink

March 9, 2005

A9 VP Talks About New Visual Yellow Pages

Interested in learning more about A9's new "visual" yellow pages?

During SES last week, Zachary Rodgers from ClickZ chatted with Barnaby Dorfman, a VP at Amazon's A. The Q&A style interview: Questions for Amazon.com's Barnaby Dorfman, has info about the companies providing data to the service, Dorfman's thoughts about why the images can be useful to consumers, how a9 plans to increase the user base, and much more. For an overview about what the service has to offer, see the SearchDay article: Amazon's A9 Launches Visual Yellow Pages.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:07 AM | Permalink

January 31, 2005

Issues With A9's Yellow Pages

The USA Today's Jefferson Graham writes about a few problems he's noticed with a9's just released yellow pages plus + images database. You can read his findings in the article: Oops! Amazon's new online Yellow Pages pictures Rockefeller Ice Skating Rink as a bus. Graham also touches on privacy concerns that some people might have with a9's new service.

Like Graham, I've noticed images that don't match to the correct address. Additionally, I've comes accross many businesses I've searched for not even listed in their telephone directory. For example: + Movie Theaters, Silver Spring, MD. There are many to choose from in a 10 mile radius and zero are listed. + Chicago Cubs in Chicago didn't return up a phone number or address. + Fluky's, a famous Hot Dog joint on Western Ave. in Chicago, is not listed. Other locations are listed. + Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, CA is not listed.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:58 AM | Permalink

January 27, 2005

A9 Debuts Visual Yellow Pages

I've long been fascinated by France Telecom's Yellow Pages site, Pages Jaunes that I wrote about last year. Why? The directory features millions of pictures of virtually all buildings in the cities that the directory covers. You can literally "walk around" in Paris, Madrid and other cities using this cool system. But nothing like it has ever been available in the U.S.

That's now changed. Amazon's A9 has launched a similar service, starting off with coverage of ten major U.S. cities. The key difference is that Amazon automated the process of photographing and geotagging the cities, and was able to pull this impressive feat off in just under a couple of months. And they plan to aggressively add cities to their visual yellow pages over the coming year.

My SearchDay article, Amazon's A9 Launches Visual Yellow Pages, covers this seriously cool new service. Up until now, A9 has largely been a Google flavored service with some useful additional tools. No longer. A9 has thrown its hat into the ring of the very competitive online yellow pages/local search space. I doubt the other players will stand still, so it's a safe bet we're going to see a lot of interesting developments in this area get deployed over the coming months.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:01 AM | Permalink

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