I checked out Yahoo! Maps and overall I was very impressed. Although at times the service was slow (but hey, it is just an early beta), the widget that allows you to see your location in a larger context I found extremely useful for navigation. It is a smart move by Yahoo! business-wise since the popularity of their home page seems to be as strong as ever; they really should leverage that fact with new offerings such as Maps like this.
The nicest feature though, is the fact that Yahoo! has opened up an API for GeoCoding that uses a simple REST based protocol. If you would like to try the API from PHP, a great example is available at Rasmus’ Toys Page.
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Hey, i still prefer google maps, just seems to work better (ok i know yahoo is alpha), the good news is there should be no reason why you can’t use yahoo geocoding api with google maps! so it’s cool until google respond by opeining up their own geocoding functionality (it’s there already, just not available via api)
Jon B – I agree, I still like Google Maps better, and my first thought when I saw the geocoding api was using it with a google maps mashup.
The better news here, is that competition is good, and I think it won’t be long before Google updates their map api to include geocode lookups