Yahoo Travel Globe

This spinning globe displays vacations taken by Yahoo members. The client was able to promote its travel services, track user interest for different travel options and direct users to travel services that may interest them. The Travel Module utilizes data gathered from the Yahoo Travel API to display 10 travel locations on a rotating globe.

The default state of the module is a spinning globe with predefined cities tracking their position on the globe. At the extreme ends of the globe a city bubble will shrink in proportion to its proximity to the edge of the globe.

When the user starts interacting with the globe, the welcome text will fade away. If the user is idle for more than 30 seconds, the welcome text will return.

After clicking a location on the globe, the module switches to a detail state that displays some information about the trip including the username of the vacationer, a short description with a link to a detailed version, and a link to view all the trips to the selected city by Yahoo members.

There are also button to return to the globe, create your own trip and to click through other basic trip descriptions.

Clicking the left and right arrows in the upper right hand corner of the detail state allows the user to move to another trip created by a Yahoo member. The trip will slide in front either the right or the left depending on the direction of the arrow clicked.

Each click of the arrow sends a call to the API which returns an XML file that is parsed and used to populate the next detail trip view.

The new detail trip view then slides in from the opposite side that the previous trip slide out.

A content producer can use the XML configure file to define the number of detail trip available for each city, the icon on the “view more trips� button, and the color of the background on the “view more trips� button.

The detail view is set up to handle the various forms that the data will arrive from the API call. Spacing does not fall apart if the user didn’t include a picture. Likewise the module knows to truncate text that goes beyond its character limit and add a clickable “read more� link.

The module track user clicks. A content producer is able to see which cities users are favoring, how many detail views are shown, and if the user clicks to the website from the detail view.

The Travel Module was very successful. It was delivery to users via the right column ad space in the Yahoo mail client. In fact, it was a little too successful. Within the first week, the module was calling the API so often that the servers supporting the API slowed down almost to a crawl.