Yahoo! Maps Introduces Driving Directions

Yahoo! India, has introduced driving directions and community search on its existing Yahoo! India maps offering at http://in.maps.yahoo.com.

Users can search for directions between 179 cities, 4767 towns, and 226114 villages and also search for about 3 million points of interest marked by Internet users from around the web.

Yahoo! India Maps understands queries in a conversational style like "From Hard Rock café, Mumbai to Lower Parel Railway Station, Mumbai" or "ATMs near Forum Mall, Bangalore". It also provide landmarks along the route, the count of roads between turns and the areas that they will enter and leave. Apart from calculating the distance and time taken for travel, the instruction set also takes care of One Ways and even Auto Rickshaw fares in major cities. Users of Yahoo! India Maps can send Driving Directions to their mobile phones as an SMS. They can pan and zoom to any point on the map, right click and ask for directions from or to that point.

Sharad Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, Yahoo! India, R&D, said

"At Yahoo! India R&D, we are constantly innovating to develop product and services that make the lives of our users easier. Driving directions & Community Search will make Yahoo! India maps more compelling and deepen our engagement with users."

Upcoming Games of 2008: Part VI

Iron Man

Platform: PC, Xbox360, PS3, PS2, Wii
Release Date: May 2008
Based on the upcoming movie of the same name, the Iron Man game will plant players firmly in the boots of billionaire industrialist Tony Stark AKA Iron Man as he embarks on a quest to stub out all things evil just like any other self-respecting superhero. The game will take place from a third person perspective and a major chunk of it will focus on aerial combat; something all of us have been looking forward to ever since the crapfest that was Superman Returns graced consoles.

Backbreaker

Platform: Xbox360, PS3
Release Date: TBA 2008
I’m not a big fan of American football but the only reason this game’s managed to catch my eye is because it’s being made using Natural Motion’s Euphoria engine along with AGEIA’s PhysX engine – which means that not only will tackles look highly realistic (and painful) but each tackle will play out differently... or so the developers claim.

Upcoming Games of 2008: Part V

Killzone 2

Platform: PS3
Release Date: April 2008
Well, what do you know; Sony’s 300 LB beast that’s been hiding in the shadows for over two years will finally see the light of day this April. While the game doesn’t look as good as the E3 2005 footage claimed it would, it still looks better than tons of games out there and from the most recent video shown at E3 2007, it looks to be about as intense as a Call of Duty game.

Borderlands

Platform: Xbox360, PS3, PC
Release Date: TBA 2008
Take a bit of Mad Max, add in a dash of Diablo’s RPG style of gameplay, sprinkle over 500,000 weapons and seal the deal with an awesome co-op mode... and you’ll begin to understand what Brothers in Arms’ developer Gearbox Software is working on. And yes, the game will be made using the Unreal 3 engine.

Duke Nukem Forever

Platform: PC
Release Date: 2008?
According to the teaser trailer released by 3D Realms in December 2007, the Duke is still alive and he’s looking pretty decent after being stuck in development hell for over ten years. As of now we have absolutely no info on this game but we’re hoping (and praying) 3D Realms finally deliver the game they’ve been promising us forever (pun intended) this year.