Items tagged with Maps
Google Maps has been around for a good long while now, and the search (er, maps) giant is still updating its images of the whole world in order to keep those Street View shots as current as possible. Now, with a catalog of aging photos, Google has opted to make something cool out them instead of just dumping them into the abyss of history. “Starting today, you can travel to the past to see how a place has changed over the years by exploring Street View imagery in Google Maps for desktop”, wrote Vinay Shet, Google Street View Product Manager in a blog post. “We've gathered historical imagery from past Street View collections dating back to 2007 to create this digital time capsule...
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Unless you happen to live in a pineapple under the sea, you're probably not afforded many opportunities to visit the watery underworld and take in all the wonderful sights. Lucky for us landlubbers, the Catlin Seaview Survey has made it their mission to create a baseline record of the world' coral reefs in high-resolution 360-degree panoramic vision. Even better, they've partnered with Google to provide underwater images for Google Street View. The Catlin Seaview Survey and Google just added a bunch of new images, giving curious undersea peepers like us more ocean to explore, including Isla Mujeres and Cancun. Things you may bump into during your underwater expedition include a whale shark and...
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Apple iPhone and iPad users can no longer download Nokia's HERE mapping application from the App Store. The Finnish phone maker voluntarily removed the app because of compatibility issues with the iOS 7 update that could ultimately "harm the user experience." Nokia said it's not blaming Apple or iOS 7, but this is a case where the app simply wasn't optimized for the updated mobile OS, so the decision was made to remove it. Nokia launched HERE on iOS back in November of last year. It was around the same time Apple was taking heat for its decision to remove Google Maps as the default mapping application in iOS. HERE might have become a fan favorite after Google Maps left (temporarily) the App Store,...
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It's tough to even remember how we operated in a world without Google Maps, as the service has rapidly evolved into a must-have tool in just a few short years since its launch. One of the ways it has expanded is by enabling the world to populate it with data, and there's probably no better case to be made for crowdsourcing than mapping. Now, the company is allowing folks around the globe to create their own Street View. If you're unfamiliar, Street View is a street-level view of popular places on Google Maps, where a camera recorded an image at a given point and allows you to view what that point looks like online. It's almost like being there, through your laptop display. Google has spent years...
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Apple continues to have a mess on its hands with Maps. In almost every way, it's a subpar product compared to Google Maps, and the kicker is that Apple booted Google from the default map position within iOS 6. When you make a change like that, the world expects whatever you toss in to be superior, and that obviously isn't the case. So, Apple has been working overtime behind the scenes to right the wrong, and while Maps for iOS could still use a lot of work, it appears that progress is being made. Apple has just acquired Embark, a mapping app that it recommended for users who needed mass transit directions in major cities across the U.S. As it stands, Apple's Maps app still relies on third-party...
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Apparently, Locationary wasn’t the only maps-related acquisition Apple is making these days; the Cupertino company also snapped up HopStop, which is a service that provides “door-to-door transit, walking, biking, and taxi directions in over 300 cities worldwide”. It would seem that HopStop’s key features concern the ability to navigate city transit, as well as the ability to email directions, plot a course with multiple destinations, and even helpful items such as the calculating cab fare or estimating calorie consumption (on a bike ride or walk). Apple’s initial foray into maps, which was an attempt to break free of a Google Maps reliance on its mobile devices,...
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While Yahoo! has become the undisputed king of start-up acquisitions over the past year or so, Apple has definitely been on a fairly steady buying spree as well. While Apple never makes public its acquisition targets, huge innovations in the company's portfolio have began as ideas that were born outside of Cupertino. Take Siri, for instance. Now, Locationary looks to be the latest start-up joining Apple's ranks. It's a local data outfit based out of Toronto, and while Apple would not confirm what plans it had for the new kid on the block, it's fairly obvious: bolstering its mapping services. Apple has taken a particularly harsh lashing from the media and critics alike due to its subpar mapping...
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The latest in the Bond film series, "Skyfall," was certainly one to remember. And not all of those memories were pleasant. The head villain's island lair was a particularly spooky place, and sure enough, it's roots are grown from a real place. The decaying wasteland depicted in the film was a shadow of Hashima off the coast of Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan. Due to its unique flat shape, the island is most widely known in Japan by its nickname Gunkanjima — aka “Battleship Island.” In some circles, it's called "Dead Island." According to Google: "Starting in the late 19th century, Hashima served as a coal mining facility and residential complex for 5,000 people. After the decline...
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Hopefully Google didn't pop the top on expensive bottles of champagne celebrating the $1.1 billion acquisition of Waze, a popular GPS-based turn-by-turn navigational app for mobile that hard drawn interest from a number of suitors, including Facebook. The expensive acquisition has drawn the attention of antitrust lawyers at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which have contacted Google about its purchase. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the FTC may have asked Google to hang tight and refrain from baking Waze into its software and service until the investigation is complete. At issue for the FTC is whether or not Waze would have become a direct competitor with Google and its...
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For some, spending a billion bucks comes easy. Just this week, Yahoo closed its deal to acquire Tumblr with next to no fuss from regulators. But when it comes to Google, it seems that the feds are constantly casting glances. The company recently announced its intentions to acquire rival mapping firm Waze for over a billion dollars, but now the Federal Trade Commission has launched an antitrust investigation to see if the deal will be allowed. Google has confirmed that such an investigation is ongoing, but won't speak further on the details. Media reports suggest that the breaking up of the deal is unlikely, as the FTC would, at this point, need to provide evidence that the combination of companies...
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One could easily argue that the company who manages to perfect human-to-computer voice communications will have the future at their fingertips. While talking to a computer (or your car, or Siri) isn't new, it's not exactly ironed-out. Many folks won't even use Siri because the results are so spotty. Not even Google has managed to nail it; if you've ever looked at a Google Voice transcription, you'll know that things aren't always accurate. But Nokia is looking to gain where others have faltered. The company's mapping services are already amongst the most robust, and this week it's updating the HERE platform with a different kind of human-to-computer link: sight recognition. HERE uses sight navigation...
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Foxconn is Apple's major manufacturing partner, and has ridden Cupertino's coattails to excellent year-on-year profit growth, even as its employees opted to take flying leaps from its manufacturing centers. The two companies are intertwined to the point that Apple products now account for between 60-70 percent of Foxconn's total revenue. That linkage leaves the Chinese manufacturer open to dips in Apple product sales as well, which is why the 19% drop in Q1 revenue has investors worried. "A quarterly decline was expected, but not a yearly decline," KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo told Reuters. "This shows that Hon Hai's revenue depends too much on Apple, and iPhone orders corrected more than...
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Thinking about punching in updated directions on your smartphone while cruising in California? Think again. Over the years, states have been marching towards a highway system that's devoid of any texting, phone holding, etc. And that's a good thing, given that distracted driving can (and does) lead to far too many accidents. But if you're a smartphone owners, chances are high that you've taken a risk a time or two by punching in new directions on a GPS app while still in motion, or perhaps at a stoplight if you're one of the dutiful citizens of the road. Now, however, a court ruling in California is making it illegal to use a mobile phone to check a GPS program. In other words, it may soon be...
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It wasn't all that long ago when iPhone users were lamenting the loss of Google Maps, especially when Apple's own mapping software was leading them astray. Not only is Google Maps back on iOS (provided you download it from iTunes), but it's receiving updates, the most recent of which introduces faster local search and contacts integration. New to version 1.1 of Google Maps, you can now search your Google Contacts. When a user signs in and searches for a friend or family member name, the app will serve up saved addresses with mapping data. You can also quickly search for local places by selecting popular categories such as restaurants, bars, cafes, gas stations, and so forth. Google also added...
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