Those folks over at Ask.com...they really like to have a little fun with their search products. It wasn't enough to let us turn maps into an etch-a-sketch that let us mark up directions and send them to friends, now we can block off areas of a map and limit our search to that area. Very nice. Much nicer than entering a zip code and limiting your search by the mile.

The Ask.com blog has a nice set of screen shots on their blog post about the new features. The updated version of AskCity allows you to highlight a single street, a couple of blocks, a radius from a center location or whatever weird shape you can come up with using their line tool. I created a strange, eight sided shape that took in a few nooks and crannies around the Hilton New York where I'll be staying next month and was easily able to locate a few pizza and Chinese food options nearby.

I've also used this option to draw some strangely shaped search areas to hunt for restaurants down by Ohio State University. Like most big cities, Columbus has a few areas where a single street can mean the difference between a nice meal and a good chance of having your car stolen, so the ability to draw customized search blocks is pretty appealing to me.

Of course you also can't discount all the other great features that remain an integral park of Ask City. Once you run those searches, you can click on any listing to immediately receive more information about the business, including user reviews. You can also mark up the map with your own comments and take snapshots to pass on to your friends. I could see using this option for a friend that was coming in from out of town and wanted an easy way to see where they might find some nice spots to visit (and avoid).

If you still haven't bothered to take Ask City for a test drive, give it a whirl. It takes some getting used to what with all the information that's available, but once you get the hang of it, it far surpasses the local search offerings of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.