Thursday, November 03, 2005
Lots of releases today
The past 24 hours has seen a flurry of new releases:
- Google Desktop 2 has upgraded, and has supposedly graduated from being a beta. There is a new mapping plug-in in the side bar, but this in particular seems very beta quality to me. (It's very hard to use - the sidebar does not accept drag and drop, so you must type in where you want to go, and there is no "go" or "Search" button, so you can't simply paste with the mouse, since you must then touch the keyboard to use the enter key).
- Ask Jeeves Desktop Search has been upgraded - see the blog for full details. One of the features they particularly claim is increased stability.
- Yahoo have introduced a new mapping beta. This goes against the grain, and requires Flash, which I think is a backwards step, and also falls in to the same trap as Virtual Earth did of believing that America is the only location that counts.
- Yahoo also slightly redeem themselves by offering a new mapping API, which does offer an AJAX based embedded map, and also a REST based geocoding service (again unfortunately only for America).
# posted by zmarties @ 11/03/2005 10:27:00 pm 
