New Feature - Local Search Enhancement

We're delighted to have implemented a new feature which will surely enhance your local search experience with Mapdoo. On top of Mapdoo's huge local database, we've integrated the Google local search capability onto the map (located at the bottom left corner of the map). The combination of these databases greatly enhance the chances to return anything you are searching for.

For example, you could search the places as usual through the Mapdoo search box on top of the page; once it brings you to the location you could search the businesses ie. "restaurant" through the Google local search box at the bottom. It should returns you with the restaurants near the vicinity.

We hope you enjoy using the new feature!

-The Mapdoo Team

Selamat Hari Raya!

We would like to wish you Selamat Hari Raya & Maaf Zahir Batin!

-The Mapdoo Team

Get Directions Feature

The "basic" feature of direction guidance is now available at Mapdoo. Meanwhile the feature is pretty much self-explainable so please check it out soon. Well the tech team is certainly not stopping here as we're now tweaking the codes to enhance the get directions function. Please stay tuned.

-Mapdoo Tech team

LatLog Info For GPS Navigator Fanatics

A quick update about the little feature that must be useful for the GPS navigator faithfuls. To answer a great number of requests from Mapdoo users; LatLog info is now shown at the top left corner of the info window for each placemark in Mapdoo. We hope you enjoy LatLog-ing and exploring Malaysia maps and local listings with ease while using other devices too!

-Mapdoo Tech Team

Collaboration Announcement - Angel Wong Chui Ling "EatEatEat" with Mapdoo

Today, I'm absolutely delighted to announce the soft-launch of yet another collaboration portal between Mapdoo and Angel Wong Chui Ling named "EatEatEat".

Angel, or better known as Chui Ling to her many fans is a Hong Kong-born Malaysia-based TV and radio personality, host and columnist. Her eating TV show, One Day Five Meals (facebook page here) has been a huge hit among the Malaysian fans and is entering into its 3rd season screening on Astro projected to be in June 2009.

"EatEatEat" not only showcases the places that Chui Ling likes to eat. It also allows Chui Ling's fans to recommend good or bad places to eat with the easy to use Mapdoo local search engine. It is indeed a Web2.0 platform that needs your participations and interactions with Chui Ling to make it a truly useful food portal.

I want to to thank both Chui Ling and Joanne Ng (Aluva Media), and the entire team at Mapdoo for the quick execution of this collaboration . You could start to explore "EatEatEat" today and I'm off now to suggest my favorite chicken rice place for Chui Ling :)

I hope you enjoy using "EatEatEat" and enjoy eating!

-say

Happy 2nd Birthday & Happy April Fool's Day

Time flies and today marks the 2nd anniversary of Mapdoo. We want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have made this anniversary possible. Your great support has enabled us to work tirelessly with the aim of bringing you to places... with ease!

On April 01, 2007, Mapdoo emerged and it emerged as the very first local company that provides local search for Malaysia. It did not come about because there was a great financial opportunity; it did not come about because there was a chance to gain great popularity and honor, but it did come about because there was a commitment to make local search lively available to everyone for free and searching for places shouldn’t be a miserable experience in Malaysia (& APAC region)

We knew from the very beginning it would be a sacrificial effort. Yet our commitment to provide this was unshakable. Many people predicted it was a mission impossible, and others predicted the website would fold in less than six months. Yet from day one, there was a vision, excitement, and incredible dedication on the part of our staff. We did indeed upset the doomsday predictions. Today, 2 years later, no one denies that Mapdoo has emerged as the primary local search platform in Malaysia.

Today, as we celebrate our 2nd anniversary, Mapdoo is stronger and more battle ready, but not yet the best we can and will be. We can assure you, with your support, Mapdoo is going to bring you much more than what you are seeing now. Once again, thank you very much!

Mapdoo Taking Off the "BETA" Label!

The Mapdoo tech development team has been hard at work improving the stability and overall performance of the site since we first released Mapdoo (beta) in April 2008. After more than 10 months, we have reached a great number of active users around the world. We're excited to announce that we've taken off the "beta" label last week on the 18/02/2009 and officially named as "Mapdoo Local".

Thanks to the many users who sent their feedback helping us rapidly diagnose and fix issues to make Mapdoo a better local search utility today. We have removed the beta label as our goals for stability and performance have been met but our work is far from done. We are working to add some useful/interesting features in the near future. We've also started to deliver geo-contextually targeted display ads called "Mapdoo LocalAd". Mapdoo is convinced that success depends on providing ads that actually improve the user experience, while at the same time allowing businesses to reach their target audience. We shall elaborate more about the "LocalAd" in the next posts.

If you are already using Mapdoo, thanks a lot and if you think it is useful please tell your friends about us and join Mapdoo on facebook too. Well if you haven't used Mapdoo for a while, now might be a good time to give it another spin.

Mapdoo+Malaysiakini = 1Map (Collaboration Announcement)

Today, I'm absolutely delighted to announce a collaboration that has been done between Malaysiakini and Mapdoo. The collaboration project named 1Map (1map.malaysiakini.com) will deliver to users Mapdoo's highly localised and geo-based contents with the combination of an intuitive platform and powerful search functions of "on-map" classifieds.

1Map has been officially launched on 5th Jan 2009 and opened for users to list classified ads on-map for free. The collaboration demonstrates Mapdoo's aggressive efforts to create and gather local content and businesses for new distribution platforms and Malaysiakini's drive to leverage its leading edge as the top local online media in Malaysia to provide consumers with excellent user experiences.

Cooperating with Malaysiakini, which is widely recognized as one of the most influencial online companies in the region, allows Mapdoo to show the world the very best of what both companies have to offer - engaging news and location-based information on sophisticated and innovative platforms.

I do want to make sure to thank both Premesh Chandran (CEO, Malaysiakini), and Siva Chandran (Marketing Director, Malaysiakini), and the entire team at Malaysiakini. There's been a lot of hard work and good faith brought to this process over now about a 6-month period of time that we've been working on some very complicated issues that needed significant innovation on both the business and IP front, as well as the technology front.

Thanks to Daryl (COO, Mapdoo) & Rico (CTO, Mapdoo) and the entire Mapdoo team. Everybody worked their socks off to bring this collaboration to bear.

Finally, I hope you enjoy using 1Map.

-say

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Happy New Year & 2009 Predictions

I've read a handful of 2009 predictions lately and thought this analysis done by the Kelsey Group to be pretty interesting.

“The complexities facing the local advertising industry as a result of the challenging global economic situation are likely to accelerate the transition of some local advertising dollars to the Internet, while at the same time making the role of the local media sales representative more important than ever." said Neal Polachek, chief executive officer, The Kelsey Group.

You could read the full article here.

Meanwhile my personal prediction for APAC region in 2009? Guess what.. I'm convinced that we'll see the majority of things happened in 2008 for the local media and commerce industry in US/Europe sweeping across the APAC region in 2009.

• small business front, search will become more widely accepted in key local segments
• percentage of SMBs with websites or personal profile pages will be creeping up
• traditional media will be going through a storm
• declining circulation hit the newspapers hard
• with the emergence of new, highly targeted ad products, we could see advertisers spending much more on marketing than in the past.
• traditional classifieds will be taken a huge hit
• geo targeting will become so widespread
• Greater onlne ad adoption by regional advertisers such as supermarkets, banks, furniture store chains and restaurants

Happy new year to all of our friends, and thanks for your support to Mapdoo. See you in 2009.

Podcast - Interview of Mapdoo CEO, Say Chan on BFM89.9

Hosted by Patrick Michael, the interview on BFM89.9 the business station, was done on 19th Nov 2008. Say Chan basically talked about the overview of Mapdoo, the inspiration of the start-up, the funding, the staffs, the local broadband penetration, the online AdEx, the future plans and the challenges etc.

You can listen to the podcast of the complete interview of Say on BFM here: http://www.bfm.my/Mapdoo-Online-Mapping-Location-Malaysia.html


-mapdoo tech team

Live Interview on BFM 89.9 - 10am Wed, 19/11

Thanks for the invitation from BFM 89.9 and its founder Mr Malek Ali, I'll be having a live interview with the business station on Wed 10am, 19/11 .

You could follow the BFM live feed here: http://www.bfm.my/assets/media/bfmfeed.html

Meanwhile there will be some major announcements in the coming weeks as Mapdoo sets to partner with a leading online media to provide yet another useful online utility for users. Please stay tuned.

Mapdoo Featured on Google Maps Mania Blog... Again!

Thanks a lot to Keir Clarke and Mapdoo once again featured on the Google Maps Mania blog. GMM first mentioned Mapdoo back in May 2008 with a very brief intro. This time around in Sept 2008, Keir obviously has better grasp of what Mapdoo possesses as he spotted our own Malaysia geocoder and numerous Malaysia businesses listed on the map. Many thanks to our users too that contributed thousands of both commercial and leisure listings.

You could read the full article here...

Explore Malaysia 3D Earth with Mapdoo!

Good news.. we could now announce the latest feature we've developed after the major server upgrading works were carried out last week. You could now explore Malaysia with the exciting 3D earth experience on Mapdoo. The combination of the Mapdoo local search and the flying experience with 3D earth without leaving your browser is truly awesome. In short, now you have the option to display the information in 3D, Map, Satellite & Hybrid.

All you need is to download and run the google earth plug-in installer to start flying. However please note the plug-in is only meant for Windows and doesn't support Mac & Linux currently.

The whole process is pretty straight forward as illustrated below:

1. Logon to Mapdoo; click the "Earth" button located on the top-right corner of the map window:


2. You'll be prompted to get the google earth plug-in now; click the blue button and move on:


3. Save the google earth plug-in installer into your disk:


4. Run the installer and it should take several minutes:

5. Restart the browser; logon to Mapdoo and click the earth button. The globe could be seen now:


6. You can now start to search around and enjoy the 3D earth on Mapdoo!





Meanwhile we are working on some noticeable bugs albeit they are minor ones that you should be able to find out once you have tried this feature. We hope you enjoy this!

-mapdoo tech team

Sorry Desmond.. No Breakfast on 29/7 & 30/7

First of all, I would like to apology for the Mapdoo outage between 29/07 & 30/07 as we've carried out some major upgrade works during the said period. I hope the improvement especially the faster loading speed of pages are noticeable by now. The objectives are plain simple as we strive each day to enhance your local search & mapping experience with Mapdoo.

While we were offline, i managed to read a few emails from the users concerning about the outage and this message from a user named Desmond certainly stood out! It reads as below:

***

"i was disappointed when i logged in to mapdoo today, and to my dismay find the site is under maintenance......its like i missed my morning breakfast....hope you get back on track soon, mapdoo....WE NEED YOU !!!!! -Desmond"

***

Sorry to have made you starving Desmond... Haha! I'll be glad to buy you 2 breakfasts to thank you for your support!

cheers..

Thank you... David!

It is not uncommon that we usually received lots of emails about technical issues. However we've got something different few days back from a user named David. It was certainly a timely boast to spur us on and we certainly appreciate the encouraging words written by David as below:

***

"I just found out that you guys are malaysian. Great work. I've been using mapdoo for more than a year and only realized your HQ is just down the street in where I work (puchong). Well done and keep it up. "

***

By the way, Mapdoo beta has just been released for 3 months... but David has been using it for more than a year... interesting :) Perhaps it is a hint from David that we should upgrade Mapdoo server asap. No matter what, with the rapidly increasing users each day, upgrading plans are in place to ensure/enhance the browsing/mapping experience for all users.

Thank you David!