Yahoo TagMaps: Photos + Maps + Tags

ResourceShelf and O’Reilly Radar discuss a new offering from Yahoo Research Berkeley, in California: TagMaps.

TagMaps are something like the word “tag clouds” meeting maps and Flickr. There are currently three offered, as described from the TagMaps site:

• World Explorer: “Explorer is based on photos users upload to the Flickr website. The World Explorer engine analyzes the information tied to the photos (such as location and tags) to find the main ‘attractions’ in each location and in every zoom level and compute their ‘importance’ “
• NightExplorer: “Night Explorer is based on the exact same idea, only our computation only take into account Flickr photos taken at night.”
• TripExplorer: “Trip Explorer has nothing to do with Flickr, but amazingly, it is another place where the wisdom of the crowds (there, we said it) generates very similar results. Trip Explorer is based on items that appear in Yahoo! Travel users’ public Trip Plans.”

These all plot photos and, in the future, additional user-generated content on a map. These are from the folks who also developed ZoneTag mobile photo tagging and uploading.

With a few refinements, this could become a worthy a next-generation interface for Yahoo Local, which now prominently features maps. But it’s equally good or even better as an interface for real estate or travel. Those Yahoo properties already offer maps front and center but might profit from the more graphically compelling look in World Explorer.

Here’s more from the Yahoo Developer Network blog.