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These Boots Are Made for Tracking: GPS Technology Comes to Shoes

Lauren Goode — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:03:18 +0000

A shoe that blends wearable comfort with GPS technology has made its way to the market. The tech-enhanced footwear is aimed at those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia whose caretakers may want to monitor their whereabouts.

The GPS shoes have a tracking device implanted in the right sole, with a GSM/~~CDMA~~ antenna snaking up behind the heel so that the GPS signal is not blocked by the body; the shoe also includes a USB port, primarily for charging the product’s battery.

Made by footwear company Aetrex, with GPS technology provided by GTX Corp., the shoes cost $299.99, with the added monthly cost of a tracking plan. Caretakers can opt to have the wearer’s location recorded every 10 minutes for $39.99 a month, or every 30 minutes for $35.99 a month.

Customers can visit the Aetrex Web site to purchase the shoes, set up an account for the shoes through GTX Corp. and, using Google Maps, create a “geo-fence” encompassing what’s considered a safe distance around a wearer’s house or living community. The caretaker can opt to have messages sent via email or receive simple SMS text messages on a cellphone when the wearer wanders outside of the geo-fence.

The caretaker can then access the online portal to find the wearer’s location on a Google Map. There’s also an emergency backup system the caretaker can call for additional help; that requires the caretaker to share the GPS information with the emergency-care provider.

Aetrex began planning and designing the GPS shoes two years ago; the product was certified by the Federal Communications Commission in September of last year and began shipping in late December. Only a few hundred pairs have sold so far, but Aetrex president Evan Schwartz said the companies have done little marketing at this point, and have been focused instead on a strategic rollout of the shoes.

Schwartz also said the company will begin shipping to Canada and other countries soon, and that Aetrex and GTX have struck a deal with an international SIM card provider to make the tech available internationally.

For now, Aetrex and GTX are selling the shoes directly to consumers, but they have been in talks with the Alzheimer’s Association and the Veterans Benefits Association to explore partnerships for marketing the shoes to assisted-living communities and geriatrics departments.

While the GPS shoes could give caregivers some peace of mind if a family member is prone to wandering, the concept of trackable clothing could raise questions from both a technical and legal standpoint.

Aetrex says the battery life of the shoes lasts two days on average, but the shoes would be rendered ineffective if a caretaker wasn’t around to charge them, or the wearer forgot to do so. Also, if the person monitoring the shoe-wearer opts in for more frequent pings, the battery will die more quickly. Aetrex says the GPS shoe system does send email or text notifications to remind the caretaker when the battery is getting low.

There’s also the possibility, of course, that the wearer could remove the shoes, or simply refuse to wear them.

When someone purchases the GPS shoes and goes to activate the online monitoring system, he or she has to sign off that they are a designated caregiver, and that they have the authority to monitor the wearer of the shoes and make those kinds of decisions for the wearer. But, as with many of the technologies we have at our fingertips, there is always the possibility of misuse.

A recent Supreme Court case involving law enforcement officials’ use of GPS to track a drug-trafficking suspect has also raised some questions about the rights civilians have when it comes tracking others using GPS technology (our Wall Street Journal/SmartMoney colleagues did a good rundown of some instances where it can be done legally). Stories like these indicate that we’re still in the early stages of setting privacy standards when it comes to digital tracking.

“It’s all kinds of good and bad and ugly popping up when it comes to GPS tech these days, and that’s definitely a concern,” Schwartz said. “There are enough people who make jokes about tracking a spouse, or what if you threw the shoe in the trunk of someone’s car and they never know it’s being used for that, that sort of thing.”

“But at the same time,” he added, “this shoe has been designed to serve a purpose, and it’s to help caregivers, so we have a hard time believing someone would abuse this.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article said the GPA shoes support CDMA technology. The shoes do not support CDMA; the antennae in the shoes are GSM/GPS.

Google Maps the Indoors, So Navigating Ikea Is No Longer a Nightmare

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:35:04 +0000

Even though GPS does not work reliably indoors, Google has found a tricky way around that limitation to map the insides of buildings, starting today with a handful of malls, airports and retailers in the U.S. and Japan.

Google Maps 6.0, available to Android users, will provide access to indoor layouts for a few dozen locations, so shoppers and travelers can find their way around without having to ask for directions.

Google’s Product Management Director Steve Lee told All Things D that — just as with outdoor Google maps — a person’s location will be highlighted by a flashing blue dot surrounded by points of interest.

In an airport, that means you’ll be able to find a particular gate or ATM, or if you are in a mall, you’ll be able to find the Gap or the kids’ play area. For Ikea, the home furnishings store known for its sprawling layout and chaotic atmosphere, it means finding the bathroom or the smorgasbord before a state of emergency is reached. Better yet, it could even mean figuring out where to park, based on which mall entrance is closest to the store you want to visit.

The announcement was made today on Google’s blog.

To make it all work, Lee says, they’ve been able to fine tune the location-based services Google uses for the outdoor locations, including cellphone towers, Wi-Fi hotspots and GPS — without requiring the retailer to install any new hardware. He claims it’s so accurate that the phone can pick up on the fact that a shopper is taking the escalator up or down and automatically changes the display of the store’s floor layout accordingly.

Bellevue, Wash.-based Point Inside has been working on this very problem for the past few years and has teamed up with several malls, retailers and other app developers to provide the indoor-mapping technology. Its technology works across iPhone and Android devices, but of course, Google’s advantage is that it will be able to leverage its install base of millions of Google Maps users, who will likely start using the new feature without having to change behavior or download a separate application.

Google said all the technology was built in-house by its own engineers.

For Google, the key will be accuracy. Getting location information even with the help of GPS can be challenging, even outdoors. Adding multiple floors, thick cement walls and getting up-to-date data from the retailer, mall or airport, adds to the complexity.

Starting today, there will be indoor maps for several hundred million square feet, including 17 airports, several department stores, including Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s; big-box retailers like Home Depot and Ikea; and major malls, such as the Mall of America in Minneapolis.

Lee said that for now the team’s focus is on adding more locations, not on monetizing the feature, but it’s easy to see how Google could present an advertisement to someone as they walk by a merchant in the mall. With the search provider already dabbling in daily deals and mobile payments, it’s not a stretch at all.

Here’s Google demonstrating how it works:

(Restroom photo credit: Pictonym.)

Google Lets More People Know That They Just Missed Their Bus

Ina Fried — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:49:30 +0000

For those who have a smartphone and depend on public transit in San Francisco, life just got a bit easier.

Google said Wednesday it is adding real-time transit info to Google Maps in San Francisco and five additional cities (Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin, Italy).

“Starting now, Google Maps for mobile and desktop can tell you when your ride is actually going to arrive with new live transit updates,” Google said in a blog post.

In San Francisco, such information was already available on a site called Nextmuni.com, but the integration with maps can be handier than entering in one’s location and preferred route by hand.

Google Earth Builder Brings Cloud to Companies and Governments Who Make Big Maps

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:56:45 +0000

Google Maps is useful when you need to know the exact location of the restaurant you’re going to or when you need directions to someplace you don’t know well. Google Earth is fun and useful when you want to check out a place you want to visit on vacation, like, say, Key West.

But there’s also a big specialized industry around the handling of detailed digital mapping data in what are known as Geographic Information Systems. Governments collect and store aerial and satellite images of important places to keep track of how they change over time and to help manage those changes. Businesses in a range of industries use the data to scope out new factories or to plan logistics. Power companies use GIS technology to map their grids, and wireless companies use it to build detailed maps of their tower infrastructure.

There is, however, one big problem with GIS data: The files are huge. Once you start collecting data, you can easily end up with terabytes worth of information. Typically, those files end up trapped on big servers out of reach of people who could actively use the data.

Beyond that, you usually need a lot of computing power to process the images. Stitching a bunch of aerial images taken of a town or county into a single image requires a lot of computing time and access to expensive and specialized tools. Plus you need someone with the expertise to work with the data.

Today Google announced that it is opening up its cloud infrastructure to companies and governments so they can put those files to use and basically build their own internal Google Earth applications. It’s called Google Earth Builder, and the basic idea is that you can upload, process and store your geospatial data in the cloud, and then put it to use in the familiar Google Earth and Google Maps interface.

Once in Google’s cloud, the data can be accessed from any Web-connected device, but you can also secure it so that if it’s proprietary data, only those who need to see it will, though it’s still easy to publish to the Web as well. Google handles the processing, which is a computing-intensive task. For instance, stitching several aerial images together into a single cohesive image is a pretty daunting job, but it’s one that Google’s distributed systems can make short work of. Then there’s potential savings to be had from not having to buy servers to store and back up the data.

Dylan Lorimer, product manager for Google Earth, told me that in the six years or so since Google bought Keyhole–the satellite imagery company that became the basis for the product–the company has built a deep well of experience and infrastructure around working with the peculiarities of GIS data. “We can process all these different kinds of data, whether it’s satellite or aerial imagery, basemaps, 3-D models, terrain models, we can process it on a massive scale, and we do it every day,” he told me. Here’s an interesting stat: Google processed and published 20 million square kilometers (about 7.7 million square miles) worth of high-res imagery for use on Google Earth and Google Maps.

One company that has been testing the service is Australia’s Ergon Energy, which used it to manage some of its GIS data. Another customer is the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a U.S. defense group whose mission is to “Know The Earth, and Show The Way.” It provides what it calls “geospatial intelligence” to the military in times of conflict, and to civilian government agencies in times of disaster, like the Midwest floods in 2008 or the West’s wildfires in 2007.

It’s also a fairly large industry, and it looks like Google has its eyes on using its cloud infrastructure to try to upend it a bit. One study by a firm called Daratech pegs the size of the U.S. market for GIS and geospatial software and services at $4.4 billion last year and on track to grow to $5 billion this year.

Google plans to release the service in more than 100 countries during the third quarter, and hasn’t specified anything in the way of pricing other than to call it “competitive with other GIS products.” Seems like Google will be saying more on this subject soon.

Country No. 184 for Google Map Maker: The United States

Liz Gannes — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:01:47 +0000

Google Map Maker, which enlists users to expand and keep up to date Google Maps and Google Earth, will on Tuesday become available in the United States. (Other independent user mapping efforts include Waze and OpenStreetMap, both already available in the U.S. ) A product developed by Google in India, the company says Map Maker has already been used by thousands of cartophiles to edit maps in 183 countries and regions around the world. User edits are usually approved for inclusion in the live product within a few days. And now, that forgotten nation…the U.S..

Our Chinese Mapping Services Application? Must Have Gotten Lost in the Gmail.

John Paczkowski — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 23:25:08 +0000

If Google wants to continue offering its mapping service in China, it best step lively. The licensing deadline is tomorrow, and as of Tuesday, China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping hadn’t received an application from the company, a requirement under regulations announced last May.

Google declined to comment specifically on whether an application had been submitted. But given Beijing’s claim and the timeline here–not to mention Google’s recent spat with the Chinese government over Gmail and its souring relations with the country–this looks like more “New Approach to China” posturing.

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Bridge Parties Mark International Women's Day

Voices — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:36:02 +0000

Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, and if you click through Google’s appropriate doodle for the occasion, you can scan the global scope of Join Me on the Bridge, a campaign by Women for Women International to hold celebrations on bridges (and at other venues) around the world, from California to the Congo. One other Google nod: On Google Maps today, Pegman–the Street View icon–has been replaced by Pegwoman.

Google's Navigation App Now Able to Steer Android Users Away From Traffic

Ina Fried — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 18:09:45 +0000

Google said on Monday that it is adding a feature to its Android-based navigation app that will allow the turn-by-turn program to automatically reroute users around traffic jams.

“You don’t have to do anything to be routed around traffic; just start Navigation like you normally would, either from the Navigation app or from within Google Maps,” Google said in a blog posting.

Until now, Google said its app would generally choose the fastest app based on expected traffic, but would not take current conditions into account. “It would also generate additional alternate directions, such as the shortest route or one that uses highways instead of side roads,” Google said. “Starting today, our routing algorithms will also apply our knowledge of current and historical traffic to select the fastest route from those alternates.”

The result is that the app should steer users away from traffic, Google said.

The company said the new feature is being added in Europe and North America in places where it has both turn-by-turn and real-time traffic data. It added that it can’t guarantee it will always be right.

“Keep in mind that we can’t guarantee that Navigation will be able to find a faster way, but it will always try to get you where you’re going as fast as possible,” Google said.

Google Shows Off Honeycomb Features, Android Web Market

Ina Fried — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:59:41 +0000

Although we brought you some of the fun ahead of time, Mobilized is on hand at the Googleplex on Wednesday morning to bring you live coverage of the Honeycomb event starting at 10 am PT.

For those who need a quick recap, Honeycomb, a.k.a. version 3.0 of Android, is designed with tablets in mind and features improved multitouch and notifications, as well as a new user interface and the ability to have applications span multiple panes.

Here’s the liveblog, and there’s a video at the bottom.

10:00 am: Things are just about to get underway here. Everyone has been let in and is in their seats. Presumably to avoid recent issues, we’ve been asked not to use wireless hotspots but, thankfully, there is Google-provided Wi-Fi.

10:02 am: Andy Rubin takes the stage and is welcoming folks. Rubin promises a demo of Motorola Xoom and then we’re going to hear about the future of Android Market.

10:03 am: Rubin on Android: It’s open source. “We consider ourselves the shepherd of it,” he said, noting how many cool Android products he saw at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show.

“With open source, you don’t really know what is going to happen. All the innovation doesn’t happen in this building.”

10:04 am: Rubin is talking about the central role of the cloud, noting that in the future we’ll see more integration between phones and tablets and Google TV (which is also based on Android).

10:05 am: Now up, Hugo Barra, head of Android products, to show off Honeycomb.

10:06 am: First shots of Honeycomb. The bottom left corner has a home button, a back button and a button that brings up recently used items. The bottom left has a clock and various notifications.

“The rest of the screen is dedicated to applications,” Barra says.

10:08 am: Notifications are designed to be non-intrusive, like on phones, but use the extra real estate to provide a bit more information, such as the photo of the person sending an instant message.

In another example, while a music app is active, one can play or pause music from the notification tray.

10:10 am: The notification area also provides quick access to settings such as Airplane mode and to lock the screen orientation.

Barra said that existing apps that follow Android guidelines should run well without modification. Demos existing version of Fruit Ninja, developed before Honeycomb, running well on the tablet.

10:11 am: Of course, Google wants to encourage Honeycomb-specific apps as well. To do that, Google added a number of new tools and concepts, such as fragments, which let apps be split into various panes. Barra is demoing how this works in a Gmail app.

10:12 am: There’s also improved drag-and-drop capabilities in Honeycomb, as well as an application bar at the top that brings common application commands to the forefront.

10:14 am: Barra says that the company spent a lot of time optimizing performance, particularly around 2-D and 3-D graphics.

Existing 2-D graphics code can be hardware accelerated with just a line of code, while a new framework has been added to speed up animations.

There’s also a new engine, called RenderScript, aimed at 3-D graphics. Barra shows this in action in YouTube carousel and turning pages in Google Books.

10:17 am: Barra also shows 3-D in action in Google Body–kind of like Google Maps for the human body.

Now he brings up a game developer to show. Thomas Williamson, CEO of some game maker whose name I didn’t catch, shows Monster Madness, a PS3 game being brought over to Android.

10:21 am: Demo of new camera app, with new design taking advantage of added screen real estate.

Honeycomb supports video chat natively.

They’ve added image stabilization to video chat to improve quality and save bandwidth.

10:23 am: Barra is trying to demo video chat, but can’t find “lady killer” whom he was trying to chat with. Perhaps that user is out, killing ladies.

Decides to chat with his friend Anand instead.

“Sorry I’m not lady killer,” Anand says. “I’m not bad with the ladies, though.”

10:24 am: Now invites CNN exec to show an app they have built for Honeycomb.

10:25 am: Louis Gump, VP of mobile, showing new tablet version of its app for Android. It uses fragments to allow users to choose categories, dive in and swipe from one place to another.

“This is an incredibly immersive experience,” Gump says. “Consumers love it.”

The app includes audio and live video.

10:28 am: It adds iReport for the tablet, allowing people to view user-generated content as well as capture their own photos and videos and upload them from within the app.

10:31 am: Okay, we’re still trying to reach “lady killer” but moving on nonetheless.

10:32 am: Demo of new Android market features with Chris Yerga, an engineering lead at Google.

10:34 am: Release of Android market Web store. It’s the new way for users to get applications on their devices. Previously had to do so only from the Android device. Now users can go to browser.

From the Web, users can purchase and have the app installed directly on their Android devices.

10:35 am: For those who had “cloud-based Android Market” in their Honeycomb Bingo, please mark your square now. (Google Music, anyone?)

10:37 am: Allows you to install app on one or all of one’s compatible Android devices. Moving to the Web allows more graphics and a better sense of the Apps, Yerga says.

He demos buying an app, putting it “on his Google corporate credit card.”

Android Market Web site also makes it easier for friends to share and recommend apps. Email can take a link direct to that app’s page in the store.

In addition to screenshots, developers can post a YouTube video of their app in action.

There’s also a “tweet” button for each app that creates a deep link to that app in the market.

If you are on a computer, the link takes you to a Web market; from an Android device it will take you to the built-in Android Market client.

10:43 am: Okay, if you had “automagically” in your Honeycomb Bingo card, you can mark that one as well.

Next time, perhaps Mobilized will make up actual Bingo cards.

10:44 am: Developers will also have the option to price their app for different currencies. Currently, apps are priced in one currency and then converted.

This will be rolled out in phases, Yerga says.

(Still no “lady killer,” Yerga notes.)

10:45 am: Support for in-app purchases also coming to Android via a new software development kit.

10:47 am: A Disney Mobile rep is up talking about its Android plans. “That number is about to get a lot bigger,” the rep says, noting that the company is bringing Radio Disney and two other apps to Android.

Also bringing Jelly Car, a physics game, as well as Tap Tap Revenge, the company’s biggest mobile title.

The company waited for in-app purchases to be available on Android before porting Tap Tap Revenge, says Disney Mobile exec Bart Decrem.

10:52 am: That allows you to, say, download the latest track from Bruno Mars, who is apparently a really big deal. (Mobilized is old and has to be told who is big these days.)

10:53 am: Yerga is back. Developer code being released for in-app purchases today, though Google has been testing with a few publishers.

In-app purchases will be released for customers before the end of the quarter, Yerga says.

10:54 am: Almost time for the event to wrap up. But first we have “lady killer,” who is apparently music artist Cee Lo Green. (Did we mention we are old?)

10:55 am: Event wraps up and we are off to the demo room to try to shoot some video of Honeycomb in action.

Update: And here it is:

[ See post to watch video ]

'With This App, I Thee Wed…'

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 22:57:08 +0000

Brides- and grooms-to-be take comfort in the tangible, whether its bridal magazines that seem to weigh five pounds each, reception venue floor plans or photos of dream cakes. But keeping these tangibles handy at all times means lugging around a thick binder stuffed with paper. No thanks.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested several wedding-planning applications for mobile devices that may get couples reaching for an iPhone instead of a binder. As a recently engaged person, I tested them for realistic usability, time-saving techniques and friendly user interfaces.

The Strength of The Knot

It’s nearly impossible to get engaged without quickly growing addicted to TheKnot.com, a one-stop shop for brides and grooms alike. Here, couples can create budgets using a template that estimates cost per item, and they can import guest lists in Excel spreadsheet format. They can also page through photos of other weddings held in their area, or obsessively chat online with other engaged people whose friends are tired of listening to them.

Unfortunately, The Knot Inc. doesn’t have one mobile app that replicates all of the rich features on its website, though typing http://mobile.theknot.com into the mobile browser on a device like the BlackBerry, iPhone or Android phones opens a condensed version of some features, including the ever-ticking countdown (201 days to go!) and checklists sorted into Category, Date or Reminders.

The Knot Wedding Dress Look Book encourages brides to enter personal details to find the best gown.

The company does offer two free iPhone apps (Android apps are in development) that focus on certain features of the website: The Knot Wedding Dress Look Book and The Knot Wedding 911. The Look Book encourages brides to find just the right wedding gown by entering details about themselves like body type, personality, type of wedding and best physical feature. Wedding 911 includes hundreds of wedding questions that are collected, sorted into eight categories and answered by the site’s editor in chief.

IPad owners can get their Knot fix by reading a digital magazine with features like videos demonstrating do-it-yourself save-the-date cards. The iPad app itself is free, but the magazine costs $4.99 per issue. Subscriptions aren’t available.

Get Yourself Registered

Thanks to the iPhone’s built-in camera, couples don’t need a store’s barcode scanner gun to add items to their registries; instead, they can take photos of products’ barcodes with their phone to automatically add items to registries. The MyRegistry.com Universal Wishlist With Barcode Scanner ($0.99), WeddingScan ($0.99), Registry Stop (free) and Gift Registry 360 Scan and Add (free) are four such iPhone apps that perform this function. If the barcode photo doesn’t work, users can manually type in the product name and take their own photo of it to illustrate.

Gift Registry 360′s free iPhone app is a personal bridal registry. Users photograph barcodes with their phone cameras to automatically add products to the list.

Wedding Planner-Approved

A friend of mine who’s a successful wedding planner in North Carolina recommended two apps for the iPhone and iPad: Brides Wedding Genius and My Wedding Concierge. Both are available in free versions, though a $4.99 version of My Wedding Concierge is also available for the iPad.

Brides Wedding Genius is a free iPhone app that focuses on dresses, jewelry and travel destinations for a wedding or a honeymoon. Users conduct searches for content by plugging in preferences such as price, style of ring or destination. Results can be starred and saved to a list of favorites. A helpful “Find Online” tab quickly opens each item’s website within the app. A $2.99 upgrade will add features and sync the app with BridesWeddingGenius.com.

My Wedding Concierge is a self-described inspiration engine, and I tested the full version of this app on my iPad. The home screen of this app offers a large search box and an “Inspire Me!” option below this box. Inspiration comes in the form of suggested wedding blogs, of which there are many, I’ve discovered since becoming engaged. I like that My Wedding Concierge tries to sort through these blogs to return relevant content, even though some blogs seemed a bit unrelated to my searches.

The Knot’s iPad app offers a digital magazine version of the popular website and costs $4.99 per issue.

Make Contact

The $9.99 iWedding Deluxe iPhone app works well if you have a lot of people already added as contacts in your iPhone; a shortcut lets you move those contacts over to the app in one step, thus keeping names of transportation companies, photographers, the ceremony officiant and rental companies in one central spot.

This app’s Home screen shows a countdown clock that measures time down to the second after users input the time of their wedding during setup. A section called The Guide helps locate nearby wedding vendors using GPS and Google Maps. It also lists useful blogs and tips for setting a budget, choosing a ceremony venue and proper etiquette.

BlackBerry and Android

I found a handful of wedding planning apps on the Android and BlackBerry platforms, including a $1.99 Android app called MyWeddingBudget and a $2.99 BlackBerry app called Wedding Organizer. But both of these felt rather bare bones and not as intuitive as the iPhone and iPad apps I used.

If all else fails, the $0.99 Bridezilla Tamer iPhone app will try to add humor to the situation with lines like, “You’re right, it’s perfectly reasonable that our cake costs three months’ rent because we’ll remember how it tasted forever!”

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com

Dive Video–Google's Andy Rubin Shows Off Prototype Motorola Tablet

John Paczkowski — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 06:30:29 +0000

Google’s Andy Rubin came to D: Dive Into Mobile packing some serious hardware, and not just the company’s newly announced smartphone, the Nexus S. He came with a prototype Motorola Android tablet, running a dual-core Nvidia chip and Honeycomb, the next iteration of Android. And he used it to show off a forthcoming update to Google’s mobile maps application.

[ See post to watch video ]

China's Blood-Stained Property Map

Josh Chin and Juliet Ye — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 07:00:25 +0000

China’s property sector, with its forced evictions and sometimes bloody confrontations, has long been described as something akin to a war zone. Now a team of online volunteers, led by an anonymous Chinese blogger, has launched a map-based project that brings that simile into stark relief.

Called “the Blood-Stained Housing Map,” the project uses Google Maps to plot violent housing evictions and land grabs across the country. The result bears an eerie, and sobering, resemblance to the Guardian’s own Google Maps chart showing deaths recorded in the Wikileaks Iraq war logs.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Senkaku, Diaoyu and Google Maps

Yoree Koh — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:15:08 +0000

Few would imagine Japan and China are yet ready to link arms and–-ahem–-sail off into the sunset following the renewed territorial dispute over an island chain sparked by a boat collision last month. But pointed remarks like, say, demanding one of the controversial names be wiped off the face of Google Maps, was unexpected in light of recent overtures from both countries that suggested relations were on the mend.

Japan’s Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said Thursday the government will demand Google remove the Chinese name of the disputed archipelago in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan from Google Maps (GOOG), the Internet search giant’s web mapping service, according to the Japanese press. The uninhabited islands go by the name Diaoyu in Chinese.

“It’s a totally sensible, justifiable action,” the minister was quoted as saying. “I think the government should take concerted action if deemed necessary. The Foreign Ministry will steadfastly make a demand.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

First, Facebook Stories and Now…Google Stories!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:18:59 +0000

A few weeks ago, as part of its marketing campaign around garnering its 500 millionth registered user, Facebook launched “Facebook Stories,” a slick site dedicated to tales of love, loss, serendipity and more that had taken place on the social networking site.

Earlier today, on its official blog, Google announced it was launching “Your Google stories: the right answer in the nick of time.”

According to the Silicon Valley search giant’s blog, “This is the first in a series of stories from people who have shared how Google has helped them in their lives. Check back the rest of this week for more.”

Is this supposed Google-Facebook rivalry getting a little ridonkulous or what?

But BoomTown will bite on this obvious bit of marketing plagiarism, due only to the gripping tale of a couple who heard a strange noise coming out of their fireplace, Googled “chimney fire” and found out they had better skedaddle out of the house and quick.

“Nervous, I quickly Googled ‘chimney fires’ and within a second the first link caught my attention,” reads the tale. “At this site I learned that the rumbling sound is what many people hear when their chimney have caught fire! I then called 911 and they advised us to get out of the house right away!

“Within 5 minutes our chimney was fully engulfed with flames! I have been praising Google all day today!”

Praise be Larry and Sergey!

Here’s my heart-pounding search story, which Google is free to use: My kids got lice at school last year! Suddenly itchy and considering burning down my house via a chimney fire, I Googled “Good God, save me from icky lice or I am torching the place” and found someone I had to overpay to come to my house and deal with it.

And then there was that time Google Maps led me on a wild goose chase across rural California with a dwindling gas supply! Oh, was that a fun night! Not at all.

In all seriousness, this is the second time recently that Google has done a wholesale borrow of a high concept from a rival. It recently tested putting striking photographic images on its front page, which you can still opt to do here, a clear grab from what the Microsoft (MSFT) Bing service debuted last year.

IMHO, Google (GOOG) should stick to its own original marketing ideas, including the most excellent fictional video “Search Stories” series, like the terrific “Parisian Love,” which is below:

Google Places a Bigger Bet on Local Business Guide

Voices — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:44:35 +0000

Google updated its Maps for mobile application today with a feature providing quick, location-based access to Places, its listing of local businesses and customer reviews. The move is a further foray into the territory of Yelp, which turned down a reported $500 million buyout bid from the search giant, and in an amusing twist, many of the reviews appearing in the Places directory are scraped straight off of Yelp.

Speaking of the Microsoft-Google Game of Internet Risk, Bing Adds More Square Kilometers in Maps

Kara Swisher — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:53:00 +0000

In one of the more interesting battlefields of the multifront war between Google and Microsoft, Bing Maps today added what it calls its “largest imagery update to date, adding 6.7 million square kilometers of new imagery.”

That includes the Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the United States where there is existing black-and-white imagery, as well as bird’s-eye imagery for Sweden.

The ongoing innovations to online mapping by both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) have been a boon to consumers, who are getting increasingly cool and substantive looks at our world.

In February, Microsoft debuted a series of eye-candy features in its ongoing one-upmanship with Google with a new series of enhancements to its spatial search offerings.

Coolest new ones from Microsoft: Indoor panoramas to move mapping inside and real-time video overlays to maps.

Google Maps is also not resting, adding a series of features over the last months from Google Goggles (which takes pictures of an object or location and then identifies it via search) to spoken, turn-by-turn directions on its Android-powered smartphones.

I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s next from these archrivals.

Here’s Microsoft’s blog on the improvements:

March 05, 2010, 09:00 AM by Chris Pendleton

Last month we pushed out our largest amount of new imagery EVER in terms of square kilometers. This month, we’re blowing THAT record out of the water. You thought 1 million+ sq. km. was large? How about 6.7 million square kilometers! It’s pretty much unfathomable. The big winners? Aerial: The Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the US where we had black and white imagery. Bird’s Eye: Sweden. Deets:

Aerial

Australia 524,645 sq. km.
Botswana 61,433 sq. km.
Estonia 618 sq. km.
Hungary 3,369 sq. km.
Mexico 236,624 sq. km.
Morocco 13,303 sq. km.
Namibia 72,162 sq. km.
New Zealand 14,987 sq. km.
Poland 6,254 sq. km.
Romania 3,695 sq. km.
Russian Federation 553,244 sq. km.
South Africa 123,138 sq. km.
Turkey 16,148 sq. km.
United Kingdom 15,221 sq. km.
United States 4,961,758 sq. km.

Oblique (Bird’s Eye)

Austria 238 sq. km.
Belgium 898 sq. km.
Denmark 718 sq. km.
Finland 1,634 sq. km.
France 2,001 sq. km.
Greece 931 sq. km.
Ireland 1,340 sq. km.
Netherlands 1,709 sq. km.
Norway 2,425 sq. km.
Portugal 2,184 sq. km.
Romania 1,534 sq. km.
Spain 5,143 sq. km.
Sweden 6,747 sq. km.
Switzerland 424 sq. km.
United Kingdom 13,094 sq. km.
United States 56,007 sq. km.

Check out the Bing Maps World Tour for visuals. Also, Johannes has a sweet application for viewing imagery based on shape files. Niiiice.

CP – Follow me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton

Xerox to Google, Yahoo: If You Need Additional Copies of the Lawsuit, You Know Whom to Ask

John Paczkowski — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:33:41 +0000

Xerox is not a name that springs to mind when one thinks of search. It is, after all, a 100-year-old global document-management company best known for its office and production equipment. Odd, then, to hear that Xerox has accused Google and Yahoo of pilfering intellectual property.

In lawsuits filed last week, Xerox (XRX) alleges that Google’s AdSense and AdWords and Yahoo’s Search Marketing, Publishing Network and Y!Q Contextual Search software all violate its 2001 patent for a “System for automatically generating queries.”

Xerox further claims that Google Maps, Google Video, YouTube, and Yahoo Shopping infringe on its 2004 patent, “Method and Apparatus for the Integration of Information and Knowledge.”

Xerox is seeking treble damages for the alleged infringements, which it claims are willful. Evidently, it attempted to negotiate licensing deals with the search companies that would have precluded legal action, but was rebuffed.

“We’ve been in dialogue with Google and Yahoo for some time without coming to a resolution,” company spokesperson Bill McKee told Bloomberg. “We believe we have no option but to file suit to properly protect our intellectual property.”

Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO), for their parts, dispute Xerox’s allegations. “These claims are entirely without merit, and we’ll vigorously defend ourselves against them,” Catherine Lacavera, Google’s senior litigation counsel, said in an emailed statement. A Yahoo representative offered a similar comment: “Yahoo does not believe we infringe and plans to fight this case.”

Apple iPad Event Liveblog

John Paczkowski — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:00:40 +0000

After months of feverish speculation and as many years of wishful thinking, Apple uncrated its tablet computer–the iPad–at an invitation-only event in San Francisco this morning.

Liveblog

9:13 am PT: Quite a scene here this morning; the queue for media credentials is nearly as long as some of the iPhone 3G launch lines I saw a few years back. Moments ago, an Apple PR rep slipped through the doors of the Yerba Buena Center to ask that the press waiting outside take two big steps back. The last time that happened to me, I was at a Jesus Lizard show.

9:54 am: The doors open and the press enters the event hall. Initially, at least, the scene is pretty crazy. “This is like the subway in New York,” an attendee behind me jokes. More like the subway in Tokyo, I think to myself.

A Bob Dylan soundtrack plays as media and guests file in. It’s momentarily interrupted by a “please take your seats, our event is about to begin” announcement.

10:00 am: Interesting stage set-up today: Instead of an empty stage or a simple table, there are a black leather chair and side-table. Lights are dimming….

And Steve Jobs takes the stage to a standing ovation.

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical product, but first a few updates….A few weeks ago we sold our 250 millionth iPod…I didn’t want to let that moment pass without recognizing it.”

10:05 am: Jobs offers a quick overview of Apple’s retail operations and some of the new stores it has opened recently before moving on to the iTunes App Store. “A few weeks ago we announced that three billion applications had been downloaded from the App Store–that’s in 18 months…amazing.”
He notes, as he did in the company’s earnings release the other day, that Apple is now a $50 billion company.

Apple is a mobile devices company, says Jobs, “the largest mobile devices company in the world now. Larger than Sony’s mobile device business, larger than Samsung’s and, astonishingly, Nokia’s as well.”

10:07 am: A quick historical overview now. Jobs touches on the first PowerBook, introduced in 1991. He moves on to the MacBook and then the iPhone.

“All of us use laptops and smartphones, now. And the question has arisen lately: Is there room for a device in the middle?…We’ve pondered this question as well.”

This “middle” device, says Jobs, must be better at doing certain tasks than either the laptop or smartphone. If there’s going to be a third-device category, it must be better at browsing the Web, video, photos, music, etc.

“Some folks say this device is a netbook…. The problem is, netbooks aren’t better at anything.”

10:10 am: But we have something that is, says Jobs, “and it’s called the iPad.”

Photos of the device appear on the giant screens. Very thin. Very slick. “IPad offers the best Web browsing experience there is–way better than laptops.” There is no camera that I can see. That’s not going to go over well with folks hoping for a device that supports video iChat.

10:13 am: Further details: The “iPad is a dream to type on,” Jobs says, pointing out its life-sized onscreen keyboard. It’s also an awesome way to enjoy media. iTunes, iTunes University and YouTube HD support are built in.

10:14 am: Jobs sits down to demo the device: “Using this thing is remarkable. It’s so much more intimate and capable than the laptop.” He loads Safari and surfs over to the New York Times (NYT). The iPad loads quickly and Jobs is able to easily navigate the page, loading stories and zooming in on articles.

10:15 am: Demonstrating landscape and portrait now. “This device adapts to the way I want to use it.”

Definitely an impressive browsing experience. Fast and elegant.

Now, an overview of Mail. Also elegant. Nice split-screen presentation. Hit compose, and a nice onscreen keyboard pops up. Jobs types out a message to his colleagues at Apple. Seems relatively easy.

10:19 am: Moving on to iPad’s photo capabilities. It supports iPhoto’s Events, Faces and Places features. It also offers built-in slideshows complete with soundtracks and transitions.

Running a slideshow demo, Jobs pauses and looks out at the audience with a Chesire Cat-wide grin. He’s clearly relishing this moment.

10:22 am:: The iTunes experience on iPad is much as you would expect. Similar, if not identical, to what the software currently offers. Calendar and Contacts apps are also nice and, again, similar to what you’d find on a MacBook or iPhone.

10:24 am: Demoing Google Maps now. The iPad supports Google Street View and the implementation is very slick.

10:25 am: Moving on to video. Jobs calls up an HD clip from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube and displays it in both portrait and landscape. That finished, he fires up iTunes and loads “Star Trek” to demo the device’s video features, scrubbing, etc. Then he shows us a clip from Pixar’s “Up.” Tap to go full-screen. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

10:27 am: Watching that is nothing like actually having one in your hands, says Jobs.

iPad is one-half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds, and comes with 9.7 inch IPS display–“very high-quality display”
Full capacitive multitouch
16GB-64GB flash storage
iPad is powered by our Apple’s custom silicon–“We did it inhouse and it just screams,” says Jobs.
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, compass.
Battery life: 10 hours.

“And in addition to 10 hours of battery life, iPad offers a full month of standby time,” Jobs notes. “It’s also a good environmental citizen,” he adds, noting that it’s a very green device.

10:31 am: Jobs invites Scott Forestall to the stage to talk about apps on the device.

“We built the iPad to run virtually every app in the App Store right out of the box,” Forestall says.

Evidently, a built-in pixel-doubling feature automatically scales iPhone apps to full-screen iPad apps.

10:35 am: Forestall runs an unmodified racing game from the App Store. He first demos it in the screen size of an iPhone. Then, using the pixel-doubling feature, he blows it out to full screen. Very slick.

“So you can buy the iPad, take it home, hook it up and download all your iPhone apps and run them with no problem at all,” he says.

Forestall announces a new iPhone software development kit specifically geared to the iPad. He notes that iPad-specific applications will be featured “front and center” in the App Store.
He then invites Gameloft’s Mark Hickey to the stage to demo some new games the company has developed using the new SDK.

Hickey notes that the iPad’s additional screen space is a boon for developers, particularly those building games. He demos a first-person shooter that showcases this. “We’re now able to interact with the game world in ways that we weren’t able to before.”

10:40 am: Next up, the New York Times. Martin Nisenholtz takes the stage to talk about its iPad effort.

After talking up the Times iPhone app, Nisenholtz segues to the the paper’s new iPad app: “We think we’ve captured the experience and essence of reading the newspaper.”

The app is largely what you’d expect. Tap to resize text, zoom, breaking news updates, video. “This is everything you love about the paper and everything you love about the Web.”

10:44 am: Now, a painting application called Brushes that was famously used to create a New Yorker cover.
The app is impressive enough on iPhone; it’s even more so on the iPad. It supports “playback” of paintings, and as the presenter notes, brings us one step closer to a real virtual painting studio.

10:46 am: EA’s Travis Boatman take’s the stage. The topic of his presentation: Need For Speed.

“Building for the iPad is a little bit like holding a high-def TV screen a few inches from your face,” he says.

The iPad version of Need for Speed boasts a number of touch-activated enhancements: Tap on the car to view its interior, tap on the rear-view mirror to look behind you.

10:52 am: Up next: MLB.com’s Chad Evans. He demos the outfit’s iPad-optimized app, which uses the device’s additional screen space to display video excerpts and MLB TV.

MLB TV can be streamed like and enhanced with onscreen stats and data. “This big display really allows us to create a much more immersive experience,” Evans says.

10:52 am: Forestall returns to the stage to make another brief plug for the SDK before Jobs takes over for him.
“Let me show you another one of our apps that we’re very excited about,” Jobs says. “An e-book reader.”

Behind him a photo of Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle appears. “Amazon did a great job with their reader and we’re standing on their shoulders here….Today we’re announcing the iBooks store,” says Jobs, adding that it will be supported initially by Penguin, Simon & Schuster and a number of other big publishers.

The iBooks Store interface begins with a simple bookshelf view. Tap the screen and it loads a more iTunes-like view. Purchase a book and it’s added to your bookshelf with a slick little animation.

The reading experience seems very appealing. Much more book-like. From where I sit, the pages look like they’re written on paper.

“We use the e-pub format, the most popular open-book format in the world,” says Jobs. “We think iPad is going to be a very popular e-reader not just for bestsellers, but for textbooks as well.”

10:58 am: And here’s another new product announcement: A new version of iWork tweaked for use on the iPad. Jobs invites Phil Schiller on stage to demo it.

“We have a completely new version of Keynote, a completely new version of Pages and a completely new version of Numbers–all optimized for multitouch.

Schiller demos Keynote first. Creating presentations appears intuitive and simple–a slide navigator on the left, tap to load individual slides in the main window, drag to rearrange.

Nice use of multitouch gestures to enhance the app. Pinch to resize photos, tap to insert animations and transitions. These are all fairly advanced techniques and the device seems to handle them well.

11:05 am: Moving on to Pages now. Also impressive, though creating a written document on a tablet device like the iPad seems like it might be a drag. A nice tool for editing, though. Simple controls.

11:07 am: Moving on to Numbers. This application also makes good use of multitouch gestures and boasts a data-entry keyboard along with some 250 built-in functions. The software’s gesture capabilities makes Excel look antediluvian.
Powerful and fast.

So what’s Apple going to charge for iWork? $9.99 each, says Schiller, who notes that all three applications are compatible with their Mac versions.

Jobs returns to the stage, grinning. “Isn’t that great?” he asks for what’s easily the 10th time. iPad, he says, will synch to Mac or PC via USB.

11:14 am: Evidently, there will be two iPad models–one with Wi-Fi-only and one with Wi-Fi and 3G. The 3G device will come with two plans: 250 MB per month for $14.99, unlimited data for $29.99.

And who’s the carrier? AT&T.

A small groan ripples through the audience.

Jobs allows that AT&T is also throwing in free Wi-Fi at its hotspots. He follows that up by noting that there are no contracts for the iPad. You can cancel at anytime.

All iPad 3G models are unlocked and they use new GSM micro SIMS, so chances are they will just work, Jobs says, after noting that Apple hasn’t yet worked out international carrier deals.

11:16 am: Now a quick overview as a wrap-up. Jobs touts the overall tablet experience along with the new iBook app and iBook Store. “This is an amazing product with tremendous breadth. What should we charge for it?…When we set out to develop the iPad we not only had aggressive UI goals, we had aggressive price goals, because we wanted to put this in the hands of as many people as possible….IPad pricing starts not at $999, but $499,” Jobs says to a huge round of applause.

$499 for 16GB base model.
32GB for $599.
64GB for $699.
Adding 3G requires an additional fee.

Apple will ship Wi-Fi models in 60 days and 3G models in 90.

11:20 am: Apple has created new accessories for the iPad: A standard dock and a second dock with a keyboard attached to it. “Keep one of these in your den and you can write the next “War and Peace” on it.” The final accessory, a new case that doubles as a stand.

Running a video now. It features a number of Apple execs enthusiastically talking up the iPad.

11:25 am: Let me circle back here for a moment to pricing. Adding 3G to iPad requires an additional $130. So we’re talking $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB and $829 for the 64GB version.

Designer Jon Ives on the iPad: “In many ways iPad defines our vision, our sense of what’s next.”

11:32 am: Jobs returns to the stage and recalls the “middle device” scenario he mentioned earlier today. “Can we create this new category? The bar is set pretty high, but we think we’ve got the goods.”

“This is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” he adds. “The reason the iPad is going to be so great is because Apple has always strived to be at the junction of technology and liberal arts.”

And with that he concludes. Lights go up and Dylan begins playing over the speakers again.

View the slideshow

PREVIOUSLY:

Apple’s Tablet: A $2.8 Billion Business?

Apple’s Tablet: MacBook Airbus?

Apple Announces Jan. 27 Special Event: “Come See Our Latest Creation”

Major Apple Product Announcement Set for Wednesday, Jan. 27

Apple Pitching Tablet to Publishing Industry; Spring Launch Expected

Time (Finally) for the Tablet? Apple Developers Supersizing Their Apps for January Event.

The Apple Tablet Is Delayed? So What?

$1.9 Billion in Capex? What’s Apple Planning?

Apple’s Tablet: Read Different?

Imaginary Demand for Mythical Apple Tablet Exceeds All Estimates

Apple Tablet Coming to AT&T?

New From Piper Jaffray Analyst Gene Munster: The Apple iPad

Rumored Apple Netbook Actually an E-Book?

iTablet: Apple’s Killer App for Higher Ed

iFugly

Will Nexus One Be a Hit? Maybe. But Not Every Google Launch Lands Well.

Drake Martinet — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:05:38 +0000

Google has finally rolled out a slick-looking mobile phone called the Nexus One–not just a phone but a superphone!

But the search giant hasn’t confined its ambitions to mere hardware and software design. It also wants to reinvent the way the mobile business works.

Heady stuff, but then, Google (GOOG) has already reinvented some industries (ask the old search engines) and is helping reorder others (ask any newspaper publisher).

The flip side: While Google does launch lots of stuff, many of its products are now on the shelf with other dusty tech curios.

Below are a few of the choicest nuggets in our newest slideshow. Some are first-place finishers, while others had to be killed off and turned into mulch for Google’s organic garden.

Open House? Google Has Also Been Eying Trulia in Real Estate Search Play.

Kara Swisher — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:51:46 +0000

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

According to sources close to the situation, along with its pending bid for Yelp, Google has been in on-again, off-again acquisition talks with Trulia, the real estate search engine.

It is unclear what price Google (GOOG) would pay, but sources estimate that Trulia’s valuation ranges between $150 million and $200 million, although there could be a big premium on that.

Rumors about Google’s interest in the real estate search market–and specifically in Trulia–have been rebounding around Silicon Valley for the last year.

But Google has pulled the trigger on a number of acquisitions of innovative start-ups recently and, sources said, will continue to do so.

Trulia–which is based in San Francisco and allows people to search for a range of data about homes for sale in particular zip codes or cities nationwide–is one of the more obvious candidates for the search giant’s local and mobile efforts.

Its business and that of its competitors–which is largely based on advertising and lead generation–has been growing quickly, despite the economic downturn in housing.

More interestingly, Trulia is deeply integrated into Google Maps, an arena the company recently targeted for growth with a series of announcements about new search features.

Trulia has raised about $33 million since 2005, with investors that include high-profile Silicon Valley venture firms Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital.

Interestingly, Accel and Sequoia recently made bank when Google bought AdMob for $750 million.

Trulia’s clearest competitor is the larger Zillow, located in the Seattle area. But, sources said, Google is more interested in Trulia, given its location in the Bay area and lower valuation.

Zillow has raised about $87 million from Benchmark Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures, PAR Capital Management and Legg Mason.

Redfin, another Seattle-based rival, has raised about $31 million from its own well-known collection of VCs.

This week, Google’s interest in Yelp, the local review site, also became public, in a deal that could cost upward of $600 million.

It is all part of a buying spree that Google has engaged in of late, with six acquisitions costing $1 billion so far.

Filtering Junk Mail and Buying Laptops

Walt Mossberg — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:32:32 +0000

How can I filter junk mail on my iPhone?

A: The iPhone’s email program doesn’t include a junk-mail filter. It relies on your email service’s junk-mail filtering system, such as the ones built into Gmail, Yahoo Mail or your company’s email system, to clear out the spam before it gets to the phone. Obviously, these server-based filtering systems aren’t perfect, so you’ll still get some spam. But you might experiment to select the email service you feel does the best job. Once you decide, you can make that the main, or the only, service you use on your iPhone, and forward all the email from accounts that receive a lot of spam into an account on that relatively spam-free service.

What model of laptop do you recommend for a student of middle-school age, at the $500 price range?

A: At that price range, you have several broad choices, so it depends on how the student will be using the machine. If it will be mainly staying on a desk or just used around the house, you should be able to find a standard-sized laptop with a 14″ or 15″ or even larger screen, and adequate speed, memory and hard disk capacity, for around $500, or even less, depending on sale prices. If the student wants more mobility, then a high-end netbook, or a low-end “thin and light” or “ultrathin” machine would work, though their screens and hard disks might be smaller and their processors slower.

However, if the student is a hard-core gamer, or does sophisticated video production, the graphics on any $500 laptop might prove inadequate, and you may have to spend more.

I have no particular model to recommend, since the best way to do this is to have the intended user try various models, to be sure she is comfortable with the screen and keyboard, and that the machine has whatever specific features she wants for the price.

I understand that the new Motorola Droid phone has a GPS function. I was considering a Garmin unit but wonder if I would be just as well off with the Droid and Google maps. What do you think?

A: The Droid not only has GPS and maps, which are common on many other phones, but it has a free voice-prompted, turn-by-turn navigation system powered by Google, which isn’t common. This is very similar to what you’d get in a stand-alone unit sold by companies like Garmin and Magellan, or in a paid, add-on app for the iPhone.

However, in my tests of this new feature on the Droid, I ran into two occasions when the Google voice-promoted navigation system gave me completely erroneous directions. On Garmin products, I have often encountered directions I considered too roundabout or time-consuming, but I have personally never received absolutely wrong directions. So you might bear that in mind when deciding if the Google capability in the Droid is a good enough substitute, at least in this stage of its development.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free at the All Things Digital web site,http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Apple in Extreme Mapover?

John Paczkowski — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:18:15 +0000

The deal went unnoticed until this week, but Apple evidently bought mapping outfit Placebase this past July in an acquisition that may have undermined its relationship with Google, which provides mapping technology for the iPhone.

The deal and its terms were never announced and Apple has not confirmed it. But Computerworld notes a summer tweet from a Placebase customer claiming the acquisition had been made in “hush-hush” fashion. The tweet also notes that Placebase founder and CEO Jaron Waldman’s LinkedIn profile now shows him as part of the “Geo Team” at Apple. And Placebase.com, which once touted the company’s Pushpin mapping platform has been taken offline.

Reached for comment, Apple (AAPL) declined to offer one–or to confirm that the acquisition has even taken place. But assuming there has been an acquisition–I know the evidence we’re dealing with here is circumstantial at best–this might explain the increasingly strained relationship between Apple and Google (GOOG), the Apple board’s Schmidt-ectomy and the Google Voice for iPhone debacle in which the companies offered two very different stories to explain the application’s rejection/delay from the App Store. If Apple has acquired Placebase, it could certainly use that company’s technology to replace Google Maps with an in-house mapping solution.

Of course, Apple might have something else in mind entirely–adding a new layer of customization to its current map offering, perhaps. After all, that was Placebase’s forte–enhancing maps with private and public data sets (demographics, crime data, etc.). In any event, we’ll never know unless Apple tells us, and right now, the company clearly has no intention of doing so.

New from Google Labs: Google April Fools Overkill

John Paczkowski — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:59:58 +0000

If 2008 (or 2007, 06, 05, 04…) was the year April Fools on the Web jumped the shark, then 2009 was the year it was eaten by it. The Web is so overburdened with pranks this year, it may be that the best April Fools announcement of all proves to be Palm’s–a company promising to deliver real news and not some over-thought hoax. Google alone has posted no fewer than 12 pranks–and none of them match Pigeon Rank in wit.

First the company gave us CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity), an “artificial intelligence” tasked-array system with the personality of a 12-year-old girl and accompanied by its own homepage, YouTube channel, blog, monograph and versions of Google Earth and Google Maps. And to these, Google has added Google LOLCODE, Google Brain Search, Google Chrome with 3-D and a new Gmail auto-reply feature. The search giant also announced a new upside-down viewing option for YouTube and an automatic red-eye function for Picasa.

Overkill? Maybe, just a little. Google (GOOG), of course, wasn’t alone in pumping the Web full of pranks. Seems people with Web sites everywhere fancy themselves Don Rickles today. Hotels.com began taking reservations for rooms on the Moon. And Expedia (EXPE) began offering flights to Mars. Microsoft (MSFT) renamed its Kumo search product Omuk and unveiled Alpine Legend for Xbox 360. Some angry librarians staged a Kindle burning in a Los Angeles park. Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media appointed Gary Busey as Director of Human Resources. Torrent index The Pirate Bay partnered with the hopelessly litigious Warner Bros. The Guardian adopted an all-Twitter publishing model. Gizmodo was taken over by spam overlords. Amazon (AMZN) launched a brand new cloud-computing dirigible called Floating Amazon Cloud Environment, or FACE. Yahoo (YHOO) debuted an Ideological Search. And, finally, Qualcomm (QCOM) took convergence a bit too literally.

There are plenty of others, of course, far too many to mention here, and most of them unworthy of that mention in the first place. As Good Morning Silicon Valley aptly notes, “The sad fact is that pranks are like fireworks–once amateurs get to fiddling around with them, somebody’s going to end up lame.”

Google Marks April Fool’s Day in China

Juliet Ye — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:21:13 +0000

The Google April Fool’s Day joke has become something of a tradition at this time of the year, even in China.

Last year, Google (GOOG) posted a mock recruitment ad for a Google “human flesh search engine” (here in Chinese). This year, the Internet giant announced the launch of a new service in China: the “Google Pigeon Bird’s Eye View.” Similar in concept to Google Street View, Google says the new service will be used to improve the image resolution on Google Earth and Google Maps, while also embracing China’s vibrant “shanzhai” culture.

The project’s mission: to collect all sorts of shanzhai information about shanzhai celebrities, shanzhai places to go on a date, shanzhai innovations and shanzhai terms.

Google says that the new service aims to help “everyone can enjoy the benefit of shanzhai culture.” An exact total of 31,415,926 pigeons have been trained as “Google pigeons” (in Mandarin, “Google pigeon,” ?? guge, is a pun on Google’s similar sounding Chinese name, ??). The birds will be equipped with high-tech devices including a blue hat with GPRS and head massaging capabilities, a Chinese-style chest covering to hold CADIE chips (a reference to another Google spoof).

Read the rest of this post

Tracking Friends the Google Way

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:02:04 +0000

For the past week, I’ve been stalking my sister, my boyfriend and my boss. They’ve also been stalking me, and we still like one another.

All four of us have been using an application that, once downloaded onto a mobile device, uses location-based technology to track its users’ movements. The app then displays the user’s location on a map for friends to see, so they can know where the person is at all times.

We used Google Latitude, a new feature in the search giant’s Google Maps mobile application as of today. People can get this if they upgrade their current version of Google Maps or install Maps for the first time. It works on Google’s G1, most color BlackBerrys, most Windows Mobile devices and some other smart phones. Google says it will soon work on the iPhone, iPod touch and Sony Ericsson phones.

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Google (GOOG) is arriving late to the party where location-based apps like Loopt (Loopt.com) from Loopt Inc. and Where (where.com) from uLocate Communications are already following people on a variety of mobile devices ranging from basic cellphones to iPhones. These apps rely on GPS satellites, Wi-Fi or cellular towers to locate you and your friends, and then use this data to encourage people to find nearby attractions, local information or social networks.

Latitude is an opt-in-only feature, meaning no one can see your location — or vice versa — without permission. It uses either GPS satellites or cell-tower and Wi-Fi location technology depending on your mobile device’s specifications and what’s most available in certain spots. My trusted testers and I used Google Latitude on three different kinds of BlackBerrys: the Pearl 8130, Curve 8320 and two Curve 8900s. Of these, only the 8900s made use of GPS.

Latitude, a feature in Google Maps, shares someone’s location, status and photo with friends. Location data can update every several minutes when a user is moving.

Along with their locations, friends can share other information on Latitude by updating a status line or changing their picture, which appears as a tiny representative icon on a map. Changes to one’s status or picture will be reflected in Google Talk, Google’s instant-messaging tool, but this doesn’t integrate with other status-related social-networking programs like Facebook or Twitter, and thus may saddle people with another status entry to update.

It’s easy to find fault in Latitude since it often spots people inaccurately, including showing my sister in Boston’s Charles River, rather than in a neighborhood along the river. It’s worth noting that tracking technology in general, including GPS, can be inaccurate. But even with these inaccuracies, my friends and I liked finding one another on our respective maps and used this geographic information to send location-specific messages to each other: I joked with my boyfriend about not leaving his house on time for a dinner and commended my sister on getting up early for church on Sunday.

Usability issues aside, location-based services like Latitude can be just plain creepy, especially when a Big Brother like Google is tracking your whereabouts. So Google incorporated easy-to-change privacy settings so that locations can be automatically detected, manually entered or completely hidden from other people. Or people can sign out of Latitude altogether.

Likewise, users can adjust the level of geographic information they’re willing to share with each person. For example, I might want to share with my boyfriend my best available location information, like a specific spot on a street, and share only city-level location information with my boss.

The city-level information would be helpful for my parents, who often wish they had a better idea of when I’m traveling for work and where I’ll be. But my parents aren’t likely to download Google Latitude onto their mobile devices anytime soon. For them, a special Latitude widget in iGoogle — Google’s personalized home page feature on a PC — might be best. This widget is also useful for people who may have Latitude on a mobile device but are sitting at their desks and want to see where their friends are.

As expected, Latitude worked differently between me and the people who live in the same area, compared with how it worked between me and people who live hundreds of miles away, like my sister in Boston. For example, my boyfriend and I are more likely to use our respective locations to plan where we’ll meet for dinner, while my sister’s current location is just fun to see. Still, my sister and I know one another’s neighborhoods well enough to have an idea of where the other was, and we felt a little more plugged in with each other’s lives when we saw one another on our maps.

People who live in urban settings will likely use Latitude differently than those who live in the suburbs. One of my testers noted that it could be fun using Latitude to see where friends are out in a city on any given night. But because Latitude sometimes pegs people’s locations as a lot farther away than they are — one test spotted a friend 1.5 miles away from his real location — this might be tough data to go on.

After using Latitude for a while, I grew to recognize familiar location mistakes like home or work, and knew where my friends actually were. But it’s unfortunate that locations aren’t more accurately marked.

Latitude returned the most precise location results when determining where the two GPS-using BlackBerry Curve 8900s were at any given time, though these spots still weren’t perfect. If a mobile device doesn’t have GPS or if GPS simply isn’t available in the area, cellular towers and Wi-Fi will help a determine location. These alternate methods use less battery than GPS, so they will work instead of GPS when Google Maps isn’t running in the foreground of a device.

Latitude users can opt to allow their location to automatically update every several minutes while they’re moving. A Friends List that appears with the map lists people in order of who is moving starting with who moved most recently. Users can send text messages or call friends directly from this list, or find nearby spots like bars or movie theaters by typing into a search box; restaurant information includes ratings and reviews. Directions to and from friends’ locations are also available, and you can plan your route via car, mass transit or walking.

Location-based services like Latitude are great for keeping tabs on friends and could even come in handy in other situations — such as when parents want to know where their kids are or when elderly relatives want to let someone always know their whereabouts. But I wouldn’t want to depend on them in an emergency.

Google Latitude Web Site

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com