Introducing Route Planner and More Ways to Share Maps and Directions

The Web is a constantly evolving place. People communicate and share in different ways now than they did just a few years ago and they have more tools and complex needs for the services they use. In response, MapQuest has been adapting and evolving as well.

Route Planner

Today we’re happy to announce the release of MapQuest Route Planner. This new tool will allow you to quickly create and optimize your trips.

You’ve been able to re-order stops on MapQuest for years, but Route Planner offers much more:

• Multiple ways to input addresses:
  • Upload a CSV or XLS file
  • Copy/Paste
  • Manually enter addresses one at a time
• With 1-click, optimize your trip by reordering stops by time or distance
• Ability to add notes to each location

Route Planner is powerful enough for business users (e.g. real estate agents, sales reps, delivery reps, etc), but intuitive and easy-to-use for anyone with a lot of places to go!

Share To

Last month, we added a new way to share your Maps, Directions, and Searches with Facebook. We’ve recently also made it easier for you to ‘Share to’ via Twitter, Delicious, email and hundreds of other services, powered by our friends at AddThis.

How Share To Works:

1. Go to a Maps, Directions, or Search page
2. On the toolbar near the top of the page, you’ll see there are a few new icons in the “Share to” section next to the recently added Facebook icon:

   Twitter

   Starts a tweet containing a link to the MapQuest page you’re sharing

   Delicious

   Save and share a bookmark of the current MapQuest page

   Email

   Emails a link to the MapQuest page to your friend/colleague

   AddThis

   This opens a menu giving you access to hundreds of other sharing and bookmarking services

What Else?

Route Planner and Share To are just a few of many useful features we’ve added recently. Here’s a quick summary of what else we’ve been up to:

• Added basic voice guidance to our free iPhone app, MapQuest 4 Mobile
• Enhanced our Mobile Web product to feel more like an app than a web page and also added the ability to Search Along Your Route for restaurants, gas stations, etc
• Announced Send to SYNC®, a partnership with Ford that will allow users to get directions, maps or search from MapQuest.com and then send them directly to their Ford, Lincoln or Mercury vehicle equipped with SYNC.

As always, stay tuned to our blog for the latest announcements from MapQuest.