MapQuest Blog

As a kid, I have fond memories racing around my grandparent's backyard with my Easter basket in tow-searching those hard-to-find places I knew Grandpa had stashed a few "bogeys". Occasionally we would find an egg that had been lost in time...hidden away from the animals and elements, for gosh...who knows how long.

My Grandfather has long since passed, but his legacy of the "hidden bogey" still lives on with my two boys. For the past few years we have organized an impromptu Easter Egg Hunt with friends and neighbors, but we miss the "polish" a more formal hunt provides. Unfortunately, finding a "formal" hunt can be a challenge. Yes, they exist, but we have yet to find a source that lists and maps all of the Easter Egg Hunt's for a specific area.

Fortunately, my wishes have been granted. MapQuest just added the ability for you to search local Easter Egg Hunt's and have them displayed on a MapQuest map! For those of you that haven't used our new On Map Search Tool for quick-visual listings of Hotels, Parking Garages, Coffee Shops, and Movie Theatre's, now is your chance. Simply find your desired location on a MapQuest Map, then click the little "Easter Egg" icon (within the scrolling search tool on the right side of the map) to display the Easter Egg Hunt's in your area. NOTE: My default MapQuest map location was set to my neighborhood, which did not return a set of results. I zoomed out and instantly found a number of Easter Egg Hunt's within a few miles of our house.

Once you find a Easter Egg Hunt that fits your needs, simply click the specific, on-map "egg icon" to see the event's address, website, and phone number to call for event times and details.



With over 233 listings in over 80 cities across the country, finding that perfect compliment to your Easter Sunday is merely a click away. Just make sure to tell your kids to watch out for Grandpa's Bogey!
Happy hunting everyone!

Use The Enhanced MapQuest4Mobile With My Places To View Saved Maps & Directions On Your BlackBerry instead Of Printing.

The MapQuest4Mobile developer and Quality Assurance teams are going to sleep well tonight! In the last month we've been working crazy hours to get the full "My Places" experience on your BlackBerry. So while we head home to regenerate our burned out brain cells, you've got some pretty sweet stuff to try out in today's new version of MapQuest4Mobile. If you haven't downloaded the app yet, or haven't signed-in to My Places since we released it for mobile last month, take it from the dev team: Now is the time.

Our goal in this release was to leave our toughest competitor in the dust. The competitor I'm talking about is the "Print" button; you know, the one you use to print out paper directions from MapQuest.com, only later to realize you left them in the printer tray in your hurry to get out the door. Well, once you've tried the new My Places feature in conjunction with the new MapQuest4Mobile, my teammates and I hope you'll agree: "Save" is the new "Print." It's faster, it's easier, and it saves trees.

Here's how the enhanced My Places feature within MapQuest4Mobile works. If you haven't already, create a free My Places account on MapQuest.com. Using the "Map" or "Directions" form, create a destination or route as you normally would, but instead of clicking "Print", click the "Save" button instead. While your car is warming up or you're sitting at a light, launch MapQuest4Mobile on your BlackBerry-signing into your My Places account that you created on MapQuest.com. Next, scroll the top carousel over to the "My Places" icon and click the "Refresh" button. In seconds you'll have a direct link to the directions or map you just saved back at your home on MapQuest.com.



If you saved directions, they show up with the classic "little blue car" icon. If you saved a map--it has the familiar MapQuest "globe" icon, etc. When those icons are clicked, each displays almost anything you saved from the MapQuest.com site.



Here's my favorite way to use the enhanced My Places feature on MapQuest4Mobile. I made a map of Denver on MapQuest.com, selected the "Traffic" option, then saved it to my "My Places" account with the name "Denver Traffic." Now I can access that same map and have real-time traffic information on my BlackBerry even when I'm at the breakfast table. One click on the "Denver Traffic" link while I'm downing my second bowl of Lucky Charms and I can see just how late I'm going to be to the office!



To see more information on the new MapQuest4Mobile with MyPlaces feature, click here.

If you would like to access the free download link from your BlackBerry device, type m.mq4m.com in your mobile browser.

For the seasoned Midwesterner, traveling to Boston during the winter is a daunting challenge to say the least. I have done my time in the city since I lived there in the early 90's and have a comfortable ignorance when it comes to driving and parking downtown.

While the Back-Bay represents a modern side to Boston, the Financial District is full of twists, turns, and one-way's with hard to maneuver, narrow side streets. If you have been there, then you know what I am talking about. Great city to walk in, but a nightmare to drive and park.

As most parking garages fill-up before 8am on a typical weekday, I have spent many a time driving to the top of a garage only to find that the last spot has just been filled. Without some type of easy to find parking garage map at my ready, I have had to blindly drive around looking for my next target.

So here is where MapQuest fits in. With the recent introduction of the new On-Map Search Tool, I can bring up a map of my intended destination, and then click the handy little [P] icon to display all the parking garages within that map's view. Since I will be driving, I print the map to visually see my options and have at-the-ready.


Printing my map of Parking Garage locations is one thing, but the cool thing is the ability to save this customized map to my My Places account for future use. While I know Summer will see me back in Boston, it is highly likely that I will forget where I parked and the various options available. A quick login into My Places displays my custom map entitled "Boston Parking Garage, spots downtown".

Now, I can blindly file away my troubles finding a parking garage in Beantown and know that in a few months I can return to My Places and once again easily print my map for this Summer's return visit.

Ok, it's been a flurry of product launches here at MapQuest the last few weeks and I finally had the chance to stretch my legs a bit while traveling to Chicago this weekend.

I have been to Chicago several times, but never to see downtown...and it is safe to say that I was a fish out of water. With little time and so many choices of restaurants, I was a completely overwhelmed at where to start my search. It 's like that in any new city right? You know there are fantastic places hiding in the bowels of concrete and glass, but where do they exist from your current location?

As fate would have it, I had my laptop and was near a coffee shop with WIFI. Once settled, I opened MapQuest.com, downloading and installing the new MapQuest Toolbar into my browser. The new toolbar not only allows you to easily search Maps, Directions, Gas Prices, and Traffic from your browser anytime, it has a new "Find Me" feature that I was going to put to good use. Using the Skyhook Wireless Loki plugin, "Find Me" was able to approximate my location on my MapQuest map of Chicago.



Knowing my location in this monster of a city was half the battle, now I needed to see what restaurants were close to me (my flight was leaving in 3 hours). Using the new MapQuest On-Map Search Tool, I was able to click on the restaurant icon (see below) to instantly see tons of restaurants displayed on the map (you can also see gas stations, hotels, and much more). Wow! Just as I suspected, the huge city of concrete and glass was hiding many fantastic restaurants---all within a "stones throw" from my current location.



After stuffing my face with a Chicago style, deep-dish pizza, I fired-up my laptop once again and checked traffic on MapQuest.com. I was able to hop a cab and make my flight with time to spare...wondering if I should have enjoyed another slice!

Thanks MapQuest for making it all so easy.

If you already have the current MapQuest toolbar, be sure to upgrade to this newer version and enjoy all the great new features of this enhanced version. Or, if you're new to the Toolbar, try it out and see how helpful it is to have MapQuest with you wherever you surf the web!

See more details on the toolbar.

Everyone knows MapQuest has always provided directions, but did you know that we also help people find hotels, stores, movie theaters, and other useful points of interest? With this in mind, we've added an On-Map Search Tool to our maps to make it even easier to get you where you want to go and find what you need along the way.

So what's our On-Map Search Tool all about? It's an easy-to-use, scrollable toolbar that displays both trustworthy brands as well as top-searched categories such as Restaurants or Hotels right on your map.

Just click on any of the icons in the toolbar to see the locations for that brand or category on your map or route. You can then find the location that works best for you and easily add it to your directions or to your map.

How could this tool help you? Here's an example: You and your family are taking a summer road trip and you're hoping the drive will go as smoothly as possible. Wouldn't it be great to plan these stops in advance? With the On-Map Search Tool, you can find a hotel or other services along the way, making it easy to determine how to manage the road, time, and your passengers.

Check out MapQuest On-Map Search Tool to see how it can help you find everything you need while you're on the road!

Last August, we launched a new MapQuest.com Beta that upgraded our classic home page. We added a map with traffic, gas prices and weather data as well as upgraded our forms to include a copy and paste option that let you paste an entire address into one field for maps and directions.

This morning, that Beta home page became the new home page at MapQuest.com.

We took several suggestions from you, our users, to make further improvements. For example, we added tabs to the form area that allows you to quickly switch between the map and directions forms. We also went "fullscreen" and made the map bigger-making it easier to view and utilize.



Keep your eye on our new scrolling "ticker" at the top of the page and the "What's New" tab on the home page for announcements of more new and improved features from MapQuest in 2009!

If you would like to learn more, read our feature page discussing the latest round of updates. As always, we welcome your feedback!

I've been making plans for the annual pilgrimage to Austin, TX for SXSW Interactive. Austin is also the "Live Music Capital of the World." Being a former resident, I can attest to this.

So to help me find concerts while I'm in town and to help you find concerts wherever you may go, this morning we released a Tour Tracker widget on MapQuest Local. MapQuest Local is already part of my "where to go, what to do" toolbox, both on my desktop and on my iPhone. As a music-lover, being able to find what concerts are coming to town is helpful. That's what Tour Tracker does.

The Tour Tracker widget allows you to sort upcoming concert listings by date and music genre near your current location. You can also get a map or directions to the concert venue and you can hop over to AOL Music for tickets and additional information about the show.

It's all happening... on MapQuest Local.

Just in time for Spring Break planning, we have introduced a fantastic new feature to our popular MapQuest 4 Mobile application. Now you can view saved maps and routes stored within your MapQuest.com My Places account (formerly My MapQuest) on your BlackBerry Smartphone...right within our MapQuest 4 Mobile product.

With Spring Break on the horizon, lets say you are taking the family to your favorite Colorado ski resort to ski and snowboard for the week. As it is your first time to this specific resort, you don't exactly have a good idea where to eat, find your hotel and make the Gondola run by 9am.

In planning for this trip, you'd probably plan out your directions for the various places you're going on MapQuest.com and print them out to review on the way (assuming you don't lose them along the way or leave them on the dresser at home!).

While this scenario is the tried and true way MapQuest has helped people over the years, it relies heavily on the fact that you carry the printed directions with you at all points throughout the trip.

Let's rewind a bit and assume you have a BlackBerry Smartphone and have created a My Places account on MapQuest.com. Those maps and routes you created above? Well, instead of printing them, you saved them to your My Places account with all the details you need for eating, skiing, and sleeping during your vacation. Now, let's also assume that you have downloaded the new MapQuest 4 Mobile application with the new My Places feature to your trusty BlackBerry. As you are the consummate planner, you fire-up your phone, launch the MapQuest 4 Mobile application and login to your My Places account to find the maps you saved earlier---right where they should be!

With your trusty maps and locations always in your hand, you scurry-off to your snow filled destination ready for such questions as, "Where is the restaurant from our hotel?", "How do we get from our hotel to the gondola?" And should you find something new along the way, you can easily save that location to a map within the MapQuest 4 Mobile application--- ready for next year's return visit!

To download the MapQuest 4 Mobile application, visit m.mq4m on your BlackBerry today! Or for more information go to www.mapquest.com/mq4m. Don't have a My Places account on MapQuest.com? Click here to sign-up and start saving your maps and routes for your next big (or small) trip.

You may think of MapQuest just as a maps site, but with all the features we've added over the last year, we're branching out to be a travel resource for millions of consumers. Users are finding valuable services such as our Gas Prices site or finding out what's going on around them using our Local site to enhance their overall travel experience. Whether they're finding what's nearby home or what to do at their far-away destination, more MapQuest users are using us for a variety of valuable travel features.

As proof of the popularity of our expanded resources, Hitwise, a leading online intelligence service, recently presented MapQuest with awards in the Travel-Maps category. Every quarter, Hitwise recognizes the 10 most popular websites in over a 160 categories.

For the forth quarter of 2008, MapQuest is proud to have earned three awards:

• #1 MapQuest.com
• #9 MapQuest Gas Prices
• #10 is MapQuest Local, which was launched less than 5 months ago.

The Hitwise Top 10 Award Program is based on popularity according to the market share of user visits a website receives compared to other websites in their industry during a specific period.

My Name is Larry; I use an iPhone

Since getting an iPhone, I've started leaving the laptop at home when I travel. While visiting family in Indiana for the holidays, I discovered that MapQuest Local was in need of a few enhancements when viewed on the iPhone. One of the great things about being a developer for MapQuest is having the ability to do something about this; I wanted to make MapQuest Local a first class citizen on the iPhone. So now, with the support of both the Mobile and Local teams, you can now see MapQuest Local as part of the MapQuest.com experience.

Local, Wherever You Are

Whenever you type http://local.mapquest.com into the address bar on Mobile Safari, you'll find that you can now view MapQuest Local. Additionally, you can also visit http://www.mapquest.com and find Local as a new item listed in the dropdown menu.

With MapQuest Local, you can find a place to eat, a movie to see afterwards, and check current traffic incidents all while on the go. It seamlessly integrates with MapQuest experience on the iPhone, so you can get directions and view maps of where you're going. Also, we've only included the content and links to our content partners with mobile-friendly sites.

Look for additional content and features on MapQuest Local and our Mobile products in the near future.

As I'm out and about, I try and notice what devices people are using. One of the devices I've noticed, in literally every airport I've visited, is the BlackBerry 8700. This ubiquitous work horse of business deserves a hard-working, free mapping application. MapQuest 4 Mobile Beta fits that bill! Point your mobile browser to m.mq4m.com and download MapQuest 4 Mobile for FREE.

MapQuest 4 Mobile Beta is available for these BlackBerry's.

MapQuest 4 Mobile Beta is FREE, easy to use, and offers valuable features such as maps, directions, local business search and more. See more information.

By far, the most requested handset of 2008 was the BlackBerry Pearl. Well, here it is! We are pleased to furnish our loyal users with MapQuest 4 Mobile Beta on the Pearl (BlackBerry 8100), at no cost.

If you have a BlackBerry Pearl on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, Rogers, Bell, or Telus, point your mobile browser to m.mq4m.com and download MapQuest 4 Mobile to enjoy our mobile map and directions application.

MapQuest 4 Mobile Beta is already available for these BlackBerrys

MapQuest 4 Mobile Beta is FREE, easy to use, and offers valuable features such as maps, directions, local business search and more. See more information.

That's all 4 now. Keep checking back 4 updates! We'll have the new Pearl flip soon!

Hope your Holidays are Sweet!

Warmest Regards,
The Staff at MapQuest

For many, the end of the year presents an opportunity to reflect on everything that the year has brought. Let's take a moment to see some of our key accomplishments in 2008.

We completed an amazing amount of work behind the scenes, but it's the services we provide to our users that matter most in the end. So, in expedient fashion in order to move straight to planning for 2009, here's our Top 8 in 2008 review:

#8 – Fuel Cost for Trip Calculation

With gas prices spiking over the summer, many people were forced to evaluate just how much a trip might cost them. By entering your vehicle information in the settings for My MapQuest, we can help you estimate the cost of gas for a trip based on your vehicle's miles per gallon and the local gas prices along your route.

#7 – MapQuest on iPhone

No doubt the iPhone is a popular gadget. You've always been able to access MapQuest.com from your iPhone but, we launched an iPhone-optimized site which automatically loads when you visit MapQuest.com from your iPhone. The site offers the iPhone flick and pinch gestures that so many love.

#6 – Real-Time Traffic

In March, we launched our real-time traffic feature. With coverage now in over 100 metro areas, you can view traffic flow, road closures, incidents, and construction to plan your drive. Traffic is even available on MapQuest for mobile web and our iPhone web version.

#5 – Draggable Routes

Our Draggable Routes feature launched in November and lets you drag your route to get you to your destination the way you want. Draggable routes lets you create directions around that stretch of highway you know is under construction, drive that scenic route along the highway, and drive through other parts of the city/state/country on your trip.

#4 – MapQuest 4 Mobile

Getting maps and directions is easy from your computer. But,often times, you need to find places and get directions when you are out and about. MapQuest 4 Mobile, our new, free mobile application, makes that a snap on many BlackBerry devices and carriers.

#3 – Saving Your Maps and Routes with My MapQuest

How often do you plan your trip or route in advance? With the introduction of My MapQuest this November, you can now save your maps and directions and retrieve them anytime. You can even save the directions you've customized with draggable routes (see feature #5) for later use.

#2 – MapQuest Local

MapQuest Local released with accolades in September. With loads of locally relevant content including news, movies, reviews, and much more bundled into a single page for a single location, Local is a great new online destination for finding what's going on in your destination location.

#1 – Brand Refresh

Last but not least, we refreshed the MapQuest identity as a reflection of our site's evolution. The logo was redrawn from scratch, to make it fresh & modern, yet familiar and instantly recognizable. The colors are sharper, the layout of MapQuest.com is cleaner and the brand is more vibrant and proud. It's a design that stays true to what you said MapQuest means to you.

We also re-introduced "Mark the Star," a fun and friendly character who marks the locations you find on MapQuest. He's been with us from the beginning, but he finally got a little polish, personality and an elevated status across the site.

And of course, we can't forget you. You've sent us your stories, your suggestions, your questions and corrections. A small group of you even worked closely with us weekly-sometimes daily- to provide your feedback and direction on our projects and concepts. Your feedback was crucial to the successful launch of all 8 products listed above. A heartfelt "thank you" from all of us at MapQuest.

And now, onward to 2009!

My MapQuest, expanded MQ 4 Mobile, Draggable Routes, MapQuest Local...with so many great new products and features launching lately, we almost forgot to mention one of our coolest new additions.

Showing specific business locations on a map is of course an important capability. But since many MapQuest users come to us mainly for driving directions, we thought showing locations along your route would be helpful too!

Scenario 1:
You live in Colorado Springs and are planning a snowboarding trip to Telluride, but want to spend a day exploring Mesa Verde National Park first. You like staying at Holiday Inns and want to know what options are convenient to the Park.



Scenario 2:
You are a Titans fan planning a trip from Nashville to Indy to the see the season finale vs. Peyton Manning and the Colts. You need to find Walmart along the way to stock up on tailgating supplies.


You can change your view using the "Show on Map" legend which appears in the lower right corner of your map. Alternate display options include showing business locations near a route stop or within the visible map area (enabled only at certain zoom levels).

Our thanks to Walmart and Holiday Inn for their charter sponsorship of this new feature. We will be extending the Locations Along Route capability to other types of searches in the near future, so stay tuned!

For more information about MapQuest Business Locator and other advertising programs, click here.