New Yahoo! App Brings Web 2.0 Mapping to the Masses

Like the titan Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man, Yahoo! just launched a new service called MapMixer that allows anyone into the once-sacred inner sanctum of online map generation.

MapMixer allows users to take their own maps and layer them over a Yahoo! Map to show details and elements of both.  For example, a National Park Service map showing details of the Grand Canyon could be overlaid on our northern Arizona map to enable you to pan and zoom the area, focusing on hiking trails, the visitor’s center, or scenic overlooks important to you.

Take a look at following map, a sample of a MapMixer mashup of the University of Wisconsin, Madison's building on a Yahoo! Map.  Use the opacity slider in the upper right hand corner to see the interplay between the two maps.

In an online announcement, Yahoo explains that this new tool sprang from one of their Internal Hack Days where employees get to spend 24 hours hacking and cracking on any project they want.  Many of these hacks end up becoming real Yahoo services, like MapMixer.

Now I love mixers as much as they next guy (whether you're referring to casual social functions or cocktail flavorings) but I don't think that any good can come out of amateurs mixing maps.  Best leave that to the professionals, like the engineers at HotPads.com.  Having already created a Flash-based map of the entire United States to allow fast and fun rental housing searches, mapping out your next pub crawl would be a piece of cake for those guys.