Free movie tickets, just in time for Avengers: Infinity War, just what the doctor ordered. That's what Google made real this week via Google Maps Local Guides. "Just in time for some of the season's biggest movies," said Google, "we've teamed up with Atom to get you a free movie ticket. Use the app to redeem your perk by June 3, 2018."
Google Maps APIs Gaming was just announced for game developers around the world. With these keys to Google Maps, developers have access to the most vital component of the most successful mobile game in history: Pokemon GO. Before now, the only games that really, truly took hold of an entire planet of GPS-mapped coordinates were Niantic's own. Now, Google's opened their doors to the future of mobile gaming.
Google Maps and Waze, both owned by Google, have changed the way many of us travel. Their usefulness, however, has so far been best experienced by those walking or driving themselves. Commuters, sadly, aren’t as lucky. That will change soon, according to TechCrunch,with an update that will make Maps a bit more commuter-friendly, with bus stop notifications and even notifications on your lock screens.
It’s almost hard to imagine these days how we’ve managed to survive the past decades without Google Maps and related services like Waze. But despite their convenience, finding the right spot when and where you need still isn’t as easy or as fast as we may want it. Pending direct Internet-to-brain interface, Google is initiating some changes in Google Maps to cut down on the time your eyes spend scanning the screen for relevant markers. And it does so by lowering the information density as well as color coding markers.
The newest version of Google Maps Street View will have a much more complete view of this planet. Or at least the parts the company's driven to or hiked to or swam through so far. Street View panoramas, specifically, are all about to look a whole lot better for everyone - and that's not even the best part. The best part is - nobody has to go back out and take all of those photos again. Google's fixing everything with computer algorithms!
While we’re probably still dozens of years away from actually getting lost in our travels between planets in our neighborhood, that doesn’t mean we can’t start pretending already. Google Maps was originally created as a way to navigate our own terra firm but has long expanded to ocean depths, volcanoes, and, now, outer space. Google has just added not a few round objects from our solar system, both planets, moons, and one former planet, so you can live out your space-faring fantasies while companies scamper to make that a thing.
This week the folks at Apple have revealed their next big mapping adventure with Indoor Maps of malls. This update will be for Apple Maps and will have maps of a bunch of malls right off the bat. The first round of mall maps will arrive in Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Jose, Tokyo, and Washington, DC. This next update will also be launched with indoor maps of Airports.
Absolutely yes, your smartphone can be tracked - the question we should be asking is: what can we do about it? Today we're going to run down several easy ways in which we can see our phone being tracked, first of all. Then we're going to shut down this tracking in a few easy steps. It's really not too big of a hassle, just a trade-off - location tracking lets us map where we're going, but in exchange, our phone has to know where we are.
Google has announced a new Google Earth Timeplapse feature, created in partnership with Time, that presents satellite imagery from 32 years of the Earth's surface in animations to show in detail how our planet is changing. Google Earth has added an additional four years of maps to what was available before, and now makes use of higher-resolution images that offer greater surface details, as well as animations with consistent color and quality.
Google is no stranger to controversial products. The Google Glass was criticized for being a privacy nightmare made real and Google's self-driving cars still continue to be a topic for lawmakers and regulators. As far as web services are concerned, however, it was perhaps Map Maker that garnered the most flak last year, leading to its suspension and very slow return. Well, no more, as Google finally decreed that Map Maker will be no more starting next year. Most functionality will, instead be transferred to Google Maps itself.
The most recent models of cars these days are equipped with all kinds of sensors, and yet traffic services still mostly rely on just one source of data: GPS probe data. HERE, the map making service formerly owned by Nokia and now owned by a consortium of three German car makers, is aiming to change that with four new services of its own. Falling under the collective HERE Open Location Platform, the services will pool data gathered from the sensors of different cars. And these cars won’t even have to come from the same brand.
Maps apps, especially Google’s, has become a household name in modern day traveling, be it within cities or between countries. But sometimes, you need more than just a clear indication of where you are or where you’re heading. You also need to know what direction you’re facing to make heads or tails of the map directions in the first place. While Google Maps already had that feature before, using an inconspicuous arrow, it is refining that using a shining blue beam instead.