Looks Cool, shame that its locked down because i wouldnt mind having a go myself.

it should be live soon.

I can’t wait to try this one out. AskCity should be an interesting local search engine.

Yeah…. its password protected now…..

I have more screenshots on my blog:

http://www.feedblog.org/2006/1.....nches.html

Take snapshot of current map looks cool! Are they going to unlock it at 00:00 PST?

Come’on guys - but even a TC review will not help Ask.com.

Sounds great, but I don’t have a login. 2:41am here and nuthin. Seems rather silly that they’d ask you to review this before it was available to the public … unless of course it will be by morning.

I can’t wait…

It’s been over 2 hours now since this post live and I still can’t access the d@m* site.

Does anyone knows when is this going public, so that I don’t keep checking on the site only to get the login box.

The funny/weird thing is that AskCity is listed as one of the key tools on

http://www.ask.com

and it is pwd protected

Why release a tool on your main site without giving public access to it?

Check out Palore - http://www.palore.com , it is interesting Contextual RSS local play. Palore is synergetic to local sites such as askcity.

Now its down. Maybe they are updating the site now?

I always have my doubts about a piece of software that glibly says “Cannot find the location requested” when I’m actually looking at that location on their map and have spelled the named exactly as it appears on the map. Perhaps “Sorry but there are no businesses/whatever listed for the requested location” would be more helpful…

. IT HAS JUST GONE LIVE - A FEW MINUTES AGO!

They got some compatibility issues with Firefox - I can’t use the local search, pencil & other drawing tools.

At least they should have called it “beta”

John - those features work for me with FF on a Mac.

Working for me. FF2.0 on Win xp. Looks great!

Are they kidding us? It’s an exact replica of Google’s capabilities. Google also knows how to extract reviews from other sites now and use meta-data such as hours of operations, cuisine type, payment methods, etc. from other sources. AskCity does not live up to the hype.

Exact replica?? Do a search, Some One. Here’s one if you can’t think of anything: “Restaurants, SF” Top results on google are all hotels! They claim 70,000 results-are there 70k restaurants in SF? If so, how come top 4 are hotels (and #5 is a bar, and #7 is another hotel.) Ask’s results are much better.

I’m liking it. The search results are much better for me, and the ability to add custom pinpoints and draw on the map is excellent. The only thing I can’t fiqure out is how to save a map for later. Without that, it’s going to be pretty useless for me. How do I retrieve a saved map?

I think this works best for a North American audience in terms of the audience and geography which make a service like this more relevant. Perhaps it will become more relevant to everyone when we start using our phones more to find this kind of information. In the meantime google maps is superior for my needs (London, UK) - being able to drag the map is great and the whole interface is clearer. For anyone not already aware and interested in this area you should look at Transport for London’s Journey Planner (non-profit). Quite impressive how it integrates with actual transport information and even produces customs start/end journey pdfs: http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk ( - click on the green words for ‘more options’ to see everything it offers )

You lost me at “We’ve previously named Yahoo Maps the top maps application on the Internet.”. I still think they’ve got work to do to catch Google. I find Yahoo maps to look ugly and it’s so slow.

Is there an API for developers to create custom maps using their service? I believe the success of Yahoo! and Google in maps is significantly influenced by the propagation of maps on other sites where developers tapped the API.

Ask.com seems to be making some strong headway this year in this very dominated and competitive space. I’m always glad to see options in the marketplace.

I have to disagree with Wade on Yahoo! Maps. I have developed applications with both Google and Yahoo! map systems. Yahoo!’s API is much easier to work with in your coding. I also prefer Yahoo! because it more aesthetically pleasing to users and the illustrations are much better visuals from a creative standpoint. I haven’t had any problems with lagging initialization with Yahoo!..that maybe from the Flex loading. But I have had problems with Google maps for users on slower connections where some quadrants don’t appear at all and the map takes a significant time to load. Just my experience.

I think this is a fantastic new service and an area that obviously has a lot of potential in the future. On the side of the reviews, does anyone know who has written the reviews? Obviously the content is coming from Citysearch, but who does citysearch get to write the comments? It would be nice to see some form of review aggregation from multiple sites into this type of clean interface so that we get a completely balanced POV

Looks like finally in some years we would be able to locate resources worldwide. A fragmented beginning.

http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

CitySearch has good content? Yikes.

Try searching for stuff outside of San francisco.

Sucks.

Searched for a Zagat rated seafood rest. here in White Plains NY and said it could not find it.

Maybe I should search for “Google Maps” or “Windows Live” which finds the rest. instantly.

If that was not enough, the results could not find 3 of 5 rest’s. I searched for.

sorry, close the shop and get back to work.

too many map services on market right now, for me, I never saw the maps, if i want to go somewhere I never knew, I will ask someone else, in another hand, the best way to promote this service is to embedded it into the GPS or mobile, it’s more convenience.

http://www.ezecho.com

Blech. I type in Japanese in Vancouver, it shows me restaurants in Tennessee.

This isn’t new, and it isn’t better than google or yahoo. Give me a break. Ask isn’t even a decent fast follower.

What are you taking about Dave of LakePlace.com, I totally disagree with your comment.

I think the saying: any press, even bad press, is good press, definitely plays here.

Plus you have to give it to Ask.com because their market share is increaseing:
- Aggresive search marketing campaign and partnerships, I hope they keep it up. I mean who has not run into the Ask.com search box on other websites advertised.
- Ask.com revamp is actually come along very well. They dropped jeeves, integrated teoma, revamped the asking process, then the feeds, then the maps, and now AskCity. It is coming along, now they just need to remove Barry Diller from CEO to just Chairman, and things will be alot better.

I still only use it as a reference source, but it is coming along very nicely.

They definitely have the bad press (crappy tv ads) covered.

CG is too complimentary about citysearch’s content even in SF. Any site that’s built on their content is doomed to fail…

Wow. Crazy rants and raves. I think for an initial release, this is actually not bad. Do you guys remember when Google Maps and Yahoo Maps (Ajax-style) came out…they were pretty damn simple.

I like the fact that it reverse geocodes when you add a marker. Some of the functionality is kind of clunky, but they do seem have added some stuff out-of-the-box that neither Yahoo or Google offer.

My 2 cents: a nice product, but will get eaten alive once Google and Yahoo get wise. My money is on Google or MSN Live Local for long term success.

Pretty impressive. Great to see the continuing competition in this arena, I am sure we will continue to see new consumer-oriented features that will make our lives easier as the competition continues to heat up (and when is mapquest going to get a makeover).

I like it. A lot of new and original features that are completely missing from Google or Yahoo.
I am very surprised considering how much smaller Ask.com is.
Compared to AskCity, Google Local looks like it’s been thrown together by a of couple college freshman hackers.

Erik, I checked out Palore.com — no clue what contextual RSS is, but this site is great. too many review sites cluttered the internet….palore.com is stil in beta, right?

Not bad, but it’s a little buggy. I drew on the map and when it moved to accomodate text I was writing, I lost the drawing tools on the bottom.

Also, once I complete my search, I’d like to minimize the sidebar. It’s wasted real estate and I’d like to see more of my map. I’d also like to be able to minimize the directions to see more of my map.

ask looks more appealing according to me