14 DAY TRIAL // Never a dull day with Yahoo! Announcing and releasing yesterday two new services at once, a social network (KickStart) and a platform service (FireEagle), it decided to keep something for later. Later in the day that is: in Korea, Yahoo! announced the beginning a Korean - language map service that is distinct from English - language Google Earth (the two great rivals aren't cooperating for working on the same thing that so far profited only one? Shocking!) and local portal sites such as Naver and Daum, that cover only South Korea, announced Cho Jin-seo of The Korea Times.
The new satellite image and map searching service that Yahoo! brings to the table is an attempt to distinguish itself from the local portals that have this far operated their own map search services that only cover South Korea. An advantage of this new service over the older but better known Google Earth is that it does not require any software to be installed, users being able to access it directly from Yahoo! Korea's web site. A frail advantage I might add because it's not like the Google Earth programs are restricted to the few and wise, they are freeware (except for the Pro version but that doesn't come into discussion here) and easily downloadable from the Internet.
"Localization has been a key issue for us, so we have made big efforts in this project," a company spokeswoman said. "We are planning to develop this project further." At the moment, about 2.2 million names of cities, mountains, streets, buildings and tourists spots all over the world are available in Korean and can be searched on Yahoo Korea's web site, the firm said. "With globalization continuing, the map service is also expanding," said Choi Woo-il, manager of Yahoo's Korean map service. "We will provide the best map search service by linking it with our global network."
"Three types of maps can be searched through the revised Yahoo Map service. The first is an image map, of which the names of streets and buildings were provided by SK Energy, a major road navigation data provider in Korea. The second is a satellite image service provided by a company named i-cubed. The third is a mixture of the two, where the street information is overlapped on the satellite image", the Korea Times reporter detailed.
I wonder what tomorrow will bring us from the Sunnyvale giant...