Yahoo! eyes on Coimbatore too!
Just eight months after David Filo challenged his India-based engineers to come up with compelling Web applications for the world, the co-founder of the Web's biggest portal, Yahoo, is back here to announce that two of them have been converted into working solutions. On Wednesday he launched "Our City", a new Net resource which aggregates city specific information including, news, travel and tourism, weather, local business as well as user contributed blogs, photos and videos, for 20 Indian tier-1 and tier-2 towns.Content in the local language of the region is also linked. (http://in.ourcity.yahoo. com/)
The site is linked to the other resource launched here: `India Maps' consolidates satellite imagery and street maps for 170 Indian cities, 4,785 towns and over 2.20 lakh villages — arguably the largest India-specific cartographic service available on the Internet.
The map data have been provided in collaboration with the India-based CE Info Systems — and Yahoo spokespersons were quick to point out that all imagery was compliant with Indian government guidelines. Users could merge street maps with satellite pictures to create hybrid maps of their own. (http://in.maps.yahoo.com/) Mr Filo explained that the two trial or beta launches, while flowing from Indian efforts at the Web portal leader's 1,000-strong Bangalore development centre, would soon be extended to other geographies worldwide.
On Thursday, the India R&D centre moves to a new 2.2 lakh sq. ft. facility here to cater to the workforce that is expected to grow shortly to 1,600. It also marks the return of the research centre head, Venkat Panchapakesan, to the U.S. end of Yahoo's operation as Head (Audience Group Engineering).
The new India R&D head will be Sharad Sharma, formerly, India General Manager for Product Operations with Net security specialists, Symantec.
The 20 Indian cities now in Yahoo's new Our City Web portal are: Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Bubhaneswar,Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Madurai, Mangalore, Mumbai, Mysore, Pune, Shimla, Thiruvanantha- puram.
