Monday, December 11, 2006

Evidence of an Ask.com mapping API?

Along with a lot of other people, we've been anxiously awaiting any news about an Ask.com mapping API. Why? Because Ask.com provides much better satellite imagery than Google. Check it out yourself. We REALLY want that on MyOutdoors.net.

So, what makes us think there's an API on the way? Well, IAC/InterActiveCorp, the ownerof Ask.com, also owns Evite, where the new Ask.com maps are now being used. I just happened to get an evite recently and and pulling up the source from a map on the evite shows us this little beauty:

<script type="text/javascript" 
src
="http://api.syndication.ask.com/maps/maps1.1.js"
<
\script>

Well I did a wget on the file and a little bit of hacking to try to run it off of our local server, just to see if it would work. I got everything running, but no imagery :( I didn't look into it much further since I'm guessing they designed it that way.

1 comment:

Woody Wallace said...

Looks like the ask.com (at the link you provided) is using bing maps/virtual earth. MS already publishes and api for their map data. You could give that a try.