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They say “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and we agree. So just in time to help you deal with mid-winter driving, we are happy to announce the arrival of traffic and road condition cameras on MapQuest.com.

To see the cameras, just click on “Live Traffic” in the upper right portion of your map. You’ll see toggles for traffic cameras and traffic conditions (our extensive traffic speed and incident info), which you can show together or separately. Hovering on camera icon will show the location, and clicking on it will bring up the images (hint: zoom in closer if there are a lot of cameras in the area).

Our coverage consists of over 11,000 cameras covering 100+ markets in the US and Canada, and we’ll be adding more soon. Update frequencies will vary, but most are updated every couple of minutes or so.

Now you can quickly visualize traffic and weather conditions before your morning commute or heading out on that weekend getaway. It’s all part of our mission to help you get there safely and efficiently.

Check out MapQuest traffic cameras now

MapQuest starts 2012 with an all-new mobile browser experience using HTML5. Designed to be more app-like, we built the mobile website from the ground up to have a much more intuitive look and feel. It’s now easier than ever to determine where you are, where you want to go, and how to best get there from your Android or iPhone web browser.

Pull up mapquest.com in your mobile browser and we’ll find your location and update it as you move around..

Find hotels, food, gas stations and more with a single tap. To help you decide, we have ratings and reviews for hotels and restaurants. We even have the latest gas prices near you.

When giving directions to a friend, most of us mention landmarks to make it easier: for example, “Turn left at Elm Street, immediately after the golf course”. MapQuest does the same for you by mentioning familiar places to keep you oriented and letting  you know if you’ve gone too far. And if you don’t want to drive, we’ll give you walking directions.

Everything in the new MapQuest mobile web app is organized to be easy to find and easy to use. Common functions, like seeing traffic and switching to satellite view, are in the dropdown. And you can even pick from a selection of “you are here” icons, which includes everything from a battle tank to a unicorn. :-)

Please check it out and let us know what you think!

Here’s a scenario most everyone has faced: you find yourself in a new neighborhood with some time to kill.  Where do you go?  What do you do?  What’s the best restaurant?  What do others suggest?  Well, we built the MapQuest Vibe iPhone app (mirroring our recently announced site) that we hope answers those questions with aplomb.  Download the free new app here ;)

MapQuest Vibe aspires to make you a local, anywhere.  Launch it on your iPhone and identify which of the 50,000 U.S. neighborhoods and 27.000 cities you’ve entered or explore what’s just around the corner.

Use the neighborhood map to identify the best restaurants or tap an adjacent orange “Vibe Score” oval to begin discovering places in nearby vicinities.  For even greater detail, switch to list view or an individual detail page.  A proprietary algorithm combines social signals, user intent and a lot of analysis to create real-time, authoritarian rankings for each and every place.

Sign in with your Facebook account to vote local places up or down.  Yes, it’s that simple to show your neighborhood support.  Votes dynamically influence place rankings, as well as the neighborhood’s overall Vibe Score.  Areas of concentrated coolness (we’ve termed these ”hotspots”) are voting-influenced as well, causing new ones to appear and old ones to change shape or disappear.

Each ‘hood is ranked by a Vibe Score – giving you instant insight into your surroundings.  Is it walk-able? Edgy? Is it a great ‘hood for going out? Peer at the neighborhood details and find out.

User votes and comments about local businesses roll up and appear on the neighborhood wall forming a tapestry of helpful commentary.  Many neighborhoods have hoods-inside-of-hoods.  The ‘In This Neighborhood’ tab lists these oft-obscure gems for you to explore.

Next time you find yourself exploring a new neighborhood, discover the best with MapQuest Vibe.

Late last week, we announced the launch of MapQuest Vibe, a new site that’s all about helping you find the best neighborhoods and the most popular restaurants, shopping, and spas within them.  What could make this announcement even better? Why, free stuff, of course! So, we’re giving away the ultimate neighborhood vehicles: Vespa scooters, cruiser bikes and longboards.

Just go to sweeps.mapquest.com to enter.  It’s a 42-day sweepstakes with a new winner every day so come back daily.  We’re announcing the daily winners on the sweeps site, so keep a look out for your name!  Chris D. of Denver was our first winner – I can only assume he’s already having sweet dreams of riding his new Vespa through all the Mile High neighborhoods.

Here’s a hint: You can earn up to 24 extra entries per day (yes, that’s more than 1,000 extra entries in total).  After you enter, just look for the 2 options: click to go to mqVibe.com (it’s that easy) or share with friends so they can enter, too.

So, what neighborhoods would you explore on your new ride?

One of the great things about MapQuest Vibe is how you can quickly see which neighborhoods you want to go to or even the ones where you’d like to live. There are so many times where I could have used the “local” perspective to get a sense of the vibe of a place, instead of figuring it out through trial and error.

If I had MapQuest Vibe when I moved to Denver from London about 10 years ago, it would have taken about 15 minutes to figure out where the best neighborhoods and local hotspots were. Instead, it took 5 years of trial and error, poor rental move choices, with a few serendipitous stumbling over wonderful areas that I never knew existed.

If I had MapQuest Vibe last month on vacation with my wife in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I could have figured out which were the best towns to stop in for lunch while we were on the road, and where the best places were to go exploring in Marquette and other small towns.

A few weeks later, I did have an alpha version of MapQuest Vibe during a business trip in New York. That’s how I quickly found I found the local sushi bar a block from my hotel that was the best in the neighborhood. What did I care about the top star-rated restaurants scattered all over the city that other dining-out online services showed me? I wanted to know what was good in my ‘hood.

Yesterday, I had a great experience in a new local bar/restaurant I like to have lunch in across the street from our offices. How should I reward them? Write a review? I haven’t got time for that. So I gave them a thumbs up on mqVibe and it happened to be just enough to push them from #9 to #8. And maybe, with a little support from my friends after I spread the word on Facebook, it can be, and probably should be, the best bar in the neighborhood.

Earlier today, I had lunch at the #1 place in the neighborhood. It definitely didn’t feel like a #1. The service was blander than the food, and most of it was pretty unhealthy.

How shall I express my dissatisfaction? Write a bad review? I still haven’t got time. And I don’t have enough to say, nor do I harbor that much ill will. I’ll just vote it down with a quick comment, ‘service is blander than the food’, and I’ll accelerate the power of word of mouth to my local friends on Facebook. After all, I don’t hate that joint, I just want to give honest feedback without any hassle, in a way that might get their attention and influence them to do better.

This is MapQuest Vibe. It is just the beginning of a revolution in how you discover your city, participate and influence your local community, and explore out of town. Imagine yourself in any of the situations above, play around with the site and see what you find.