Tag: GOOGLEMAPS

Google Earth just got a whole lot more realistic with the release of Google Earth 6. The new version of Google's gorgeous "digital atlas" integrates Street View and adds 3D trees, making browsing Google Earth even closer to actually being there. The trees have been added to Google Earth's existing 3D environment, while Street View has basically been dropped on top of it. You can activate ...

Voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation is now available for Google Maps for Android in Australia and New Zealand. This feature works if you have a smartphone running Android 1.6 or newer. Maps Navigation is integrated with Google Search and even Google Voice Search -- meaning that you don't even have to know your destination's name, you can just search for it either by typing or speaking. ...

Google has announced that Google Maps for Android now supports Hotpot, Google's new local recommendation engine. You can now rate places and write reviews from your phone. This is made easy by a rating widget that you can add to your homescreen. You can also rate and review places straight from any Place page -- these are in the process of being rolled out into Google mobile search results for ...

Google Street View launched over the weekend in Germany, complete with a small proportion of houses "removed." Roughly 3 percent of Germans included in the Street View covered areas objected to having their house photographed and included in the service. German privacy standards allowed officials to force Google into providing an opt-out, which allowed German home owners to request the ...

Google Maps for Android just got a big update, including the ability to read and add reviews of a place using Google's recently-launched Place pages, the ability to search for nearby and currently open businesses, and -- most interesting of all -- real-time tracking of your friends' locations in Google Latitude. Latitude is Google's location-tracking service, which up until now has let you ...

Google has admitted that its Street View cars have collected entire passwords and emails while mapping the world and collecting information about open Wi-Fi hotspots on their way. Google's Senior VP of Engineering and Research, Alan Eustace, mentioned this today in a blog post dedicated to how Google plans to deal with privacy controls inside the company. Google has been accused by many ...

There's no doubt that murder is one of mankind's most belligerent acts. But have you ever wondered how many homicides take place in a city? Or whether there's any pattern to their locations? The team behind Murder Map had those exact thoughts. To answer these questions and more, they took it upon themselves to map every single murder and manslaughter that has ever been recorded in the ...

That's it, summer's over -- roll on winter and time for flu season. Yes, it's that time of year again, but big G is trying to make dealing with sickness easier using its continued collaboration with the US Department of Health and Human Services, the American Lung Association and flu.gov. This year, like last, if you need a flu shot, Google's at hand with its Flu Vaccine Finder. Just visit ...

Pedestrians might get exercise or save on gas, but they don't get the fancy turn-by-turn GPS directions that drivers do. Or, they didn't until Google decided to release Walking Navigation in Google Maps 4.5 for Android. Android users can now use GPS navigation in walking mode, getting suggestions for the best pedestrian routes Google knows about. This navigation mode isn't just a copy of ...

Google's Street View vehicles drive around collecting the images that power the very useful map service, but it turns out they've been collecting a bit more than that. The trucks grab location data from open Wi-Fi networks as they travel, automatically jumping networks five times a second. It turns out that in that 1/5th of a second they spent on each network, Street View vehicles may have ...

Google has just launched a new service -- Location History -- that keeps track of your movements. Before you get your panties and/or beard in a twist, you can delete your location history at any time. It's private, too: neither your friends or the public can see your location history. Now, with that out of the way, are you grinning like a fool at the prospect of how awesome such a tool is, ...

I really like the whole Slow Food movement. I think buying locally grown food can really have an impact, both on your health and on the planet. It's not always easy to find a farmers' market nearby, though. Local Dirt is a website that tries to help with that. You feed it your address, and it shows you (on a Google map) what local food markets are close by. Technologically, the site still has a ...

Google Maps now has a Google Earth view right within the site. This new addition further blurs the distinction between Earth and Maps. It's basically just like Earth, only in your browser. When I tested the feature, navigation, tilting and panning seemed just as smooth as in Earth. The 3D-buildings layer is enabled, and as far as I was able to tell, there's no way to disable it or enable other ...

When Google launched turn-by-turn navigation for Android phones, everyone read it as a slap in the face to Apple. Sure, Google may power the iPhone's Maps app, but Android was going to have the exclusive ability to replace that expensive TomTom (or other name-brand navigation system) in your car. Earlier this week, Google started rumors that all that might change, and its free nav software would ...

My girlfriend recently took me on a long road trip through rural Canada. We had a blast, but one of the trickiest parts was navigating. Canada is vast, and we had to keep flipping back and forth between differently-scaled maps. If only we had known about GMapCatcher before the trip, things could have been much simpler. In a nutshell, GMapCatcher lets you select an area of land and a range of ...