Posts Tagged ‘Google Maps’

Google Maps 6.0 for Android adds a feature that people bewildered by navigation in unfamiliar large indoor places like airports and shopping malls: Indoor maps.
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A lot of mobile apps depend on Google Maps for displaying maps with all kinds of different information. The screenshot here, for example, is WeatherBug for Android’s weather map. For the most part, most of these commercial and non-commercial uses of Google Maps by third parties fell under Google’s free Terms of Service policy. The BBC News reports that some of Google will introduce a fee, under certain conditions, for using Google Maps starting January 1, 2012. This may impact a lot of the apps many of us use daily if this fee is extended to apps as well as websites.
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If you have Google Maps for mobile running on your phone (Android and iPhone, for example) and live in Europe or plan to visit, you’ll be happy to know that there now is traffic data available for 13 countries in Europe: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland.

Live traffic information for 13 European countries

Traffic events within the past 5 to 10 minutes are available in the Google Maps for mobile. Desktop users can use the “Change” link next to the “Live Traffic” label to get traffic forecast information for specific days and times. This option is not available in Google Maps for mobile.

I’ve also noticed that Google Maps for mobile has recently started providing traffic information for some surface streets in my area. Previously, information was only available for sections of highways. If you live in the U.S. and were getting incomplete traffic information, you may want to check Google Maps again.

What happens when you mashup Foursquare on a smartphone, Google Maps and the basics of the old territory control board game Risk? Why you get WorldOfFourCraft, of course.

Clever Foursquare Hack Turns New York City Into a Giant Game of Risk (Mashable)

Players authenticate through Foursquare and then declare a home borough in New York City: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island. Looking at the HTML, I also see something identified as “wilderness” (“Here Be Dragons”).

The game’s goal is described as: The World of Fourcraft is an adventure of Social Conquest. The object of the game is to join forces with your Borough Buddies and swarm over and conquer the entirety of New York City.

Here are WorldOfFourCraft’s instructions:

1. Login into the World of Fourcraft site
2. Swear your allegiance to your favorite Borough
3. Incessantly check in on Foursquare, as you are wont to do
4. Use our Battle Map to get the latest news on The Social Wars

You can find the game’s site at:

worldoffourcraft.com

Google Maps now tops the most used apps in UK with 6.4 million users using it to find their current location and destinations, according to a research by comScore and GSMA mobile data records. Yahoo is second in place with 3.6 million users for its weather app. Facebook is very close to yahoo with 3.5 million connected users and it is expected to take the second place soon.

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The Google Maps team has released a version of the Maps for Android, they are now up to version 5.5.  The new release adds redesigned Transit schedules and Place details pages as well as the option to edit home/office address for Latitude. It is now much easier to check in/out of places, get transit schedules and rate different locations with the new Maps.

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Google Maps for Mobile is now part of more than 200 million mobile devices worldwide, according to Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of maps and local products, speaking at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference in New York City.

Google Maps is an integral part of the Android platform and its phenomenal adaptation has played a major role in Google’s success with mobile mapping. Google has put in a lot of efforts to make its mobile maps accessible from a wide number of platforms and devices. Google powers iPhone mapping and its mobile mapping is also available to other popular platform like Symbian, BlackBerry and others.

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If you use Google Latitude, you have always been able to see where’s you’ve been using the little known Google Latitude Dashboard found at:

http://www.google.com/latitude/history

It shows you where you’ve recently been, airplane trips (take offs and landings), time at work vs.home vs. out, and countries visited. You can even export the last 500 visits out to a KML file that can be used by Google Earth. The latest update to Google Maps for Android provides some of this information right on your Android smartphone.

See your location history dashboard and more with Google Maps 5.3 for Android

The updated Google Maps app also lets you check-in at “Home” after setting your home location. You may want to check where Google thinks you’ve been. I’ve been using Latitude since it launched but have not defined my “home”. I also transition from working in an office to working at home recently and Google has interesting ideas about where my “work” place is.

After GroupOn snubs Google’s acquisition attempt, the search giant creates Google Offers. Will Google’s massive web presence make it a success, or will it be an embarrassing footnote in the coupon rush?

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The title bestowed on Google as the most popular and powerful search engine in the world is well known, but the power to start a war? That appears to be the case in Central America, where an error on the site’s Maps feature has caused an international conflict.

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