Hasta La Gadget!

It’s no secret how useful Google Maps can be when traveling in an unfamiliar locale — especially in regards to public transportation. The folks in Mountain View have tallied over one million stops for bus, train, subway and tram systems in about 500 cities around the globe with the software. To celebrate the achievement, Google has released an update to its Maps for Android app. Version 6.10 adds some tweaks to the Transit Lines layer in order to display just one individual method of transport and updated the station pages to display needed information like departure time and lines of service in a more accessible fashion. Also among the new additions are modifications to region highlighting, My Places and Location History. Now, when you enter a city name or zip code, the boundaries of that particular region will be marked for visual reference. For a full rundown of the latest version, hit the first source link below or sprint on to the second to grab the update.

Update: Oh look, Mountain View’s even tweaked the icon, which we’ve added after the break.

Continue reading Google Maps notches one million public transit stops worldwide, celebrates with an update

Filed under: Cellphones, Software

Google Maps notches one million public transit stops worldwide, celebrates with an update originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Aug 2012 22:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google has rolled out a new update for Google Maps, and it adds quite a few important things. First and foremost, users can now find public transportation schedules for 500 cities around the world. This was added due to the high volume of requests Google received from Maps users in big cities where a car isn’t necessary, and indeed, sometimes proves to be something a nuisance.

Even better is the fact that you can choose which public transportation system you want to see, be it bus, tram, train, or subway. In all, over 1 million different public transportation stops and departure times can now be found on Google Maps, which those living in big cities will find particularly helpful. In addition, the Google Maps app will now show an area surrounded by a border whenever when you search for a postal code. Also included is new My Places functionality, as you now have easier access to your saved maps, and if you have Location History turned on, you can browse through the locations you go to on a daily basis.

This update was rolled out not only to satisfy those living in big cities, but also to give Google an edge against Apple, which is planning its own navigation system with iOS 6. If the rumors are true and Apple is indeed planning to reveal the next iPhone during an event taking place at the beginning of September, then iOS 6 is right around the corner. Google is planning to bring Google Maps to iOS eventually, and it’s understandable that it wants to the app to be fully-featured when it arrives.

As time goes on, we’re seeing Google Maps become better and better. Google has done a lot to make Google Maps a worthwhile download, but the question is will it be enough when Apple’s own navigation system arrives on the scene? We’ll just have to wait and find out. Stay tuned, and be sure to check our story timeline below for more posts on Google Maps!

[via Official Google Blog]

Google Maps update for Android adds public transportation routes is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Good news America! Following Google’s decision to bring live traffic to seven new counties last month, the Mountain View-based Internet search titan is announcing the expansion of the Google Maps feature to more than 130 smaller cities across the U.S. including Kalamazoo (Michigan), Portland (Maine) and Tuscaloosa (Alabama). Additionally, Google is also bringing live traffic to the capitals of Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama, and improved its coverage in some parts of Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and U.K.

To check out the cities with the live traffic data, you can check it out here. “Whether you’re online on your home computer ensuring no unexpected snarls await your drive to the airport or you’ve been stuck behind a line of cars for a few minutes and can ask your friend in the passenger seat to check whether it’ll clear up just around the bend, we hope these updates save you time and stress when getting to your destination,” Google said in the official announcement.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Google Maps now includes live traffic info for Europe, Google Maps now shows you NYC subway alerts,

We’ve seen, heard and read interesting stories of how someone lost their iPhone and managed to recover it thanks to the Find My iPhone feature, or simply because the thief was stupid enough to take photos with their location in the background, so here’s another one that you guys can add to the list in which David Pogue, the technology writer for the New York Times, managed to recover his stolen iPhone thanks to technology. He utilized Twitter to reach out to the masses, which we guess helped since he does have a pretty huge following, Google Maps, Google Street View, Find My iPhone and finally thanks to a police officer, he has managed to recover his stolen device which for some reason was discovered lying in the grass at the backyard of a house, rather than in the hands of the thief. Anyway the folks at Gizmodo have the full run down so if you’d like the play-by-play, head on over for the details!

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Meet The Tweet lets you follow Twitter feeds without an account, Twitter fully integrated into iOS 5,

Geotagging. It’s not exactly a long, lost art, but it’s certainly not something most folks bother to do after a trip. Avid travelers, hikers and the general outdoorsy crowd have been embracing the feature for years, though, and it’s actually seeping into the mainstream without most individuals even noticing. How so? Smartphones. Given the proliferation of iPhones, Android handsets and Windows Phone devices making their way onto the market — coupled with the explosive use of geo-minded social networks like Path, Instagram and Foursquare — an entire generation is now growing up in a geotagged world. Phone users have it easy; so long as there’s a data connection and an embedded GPS module (commonplace in modern mobile devices), there lies the ability to upload a photo with a patch of metadata embedded. Snap a shot at a national park, upload it, and just like that, viewers and friends from around the world now have an idea as to what a specific place on the Earth looks like.

Solmeta N3 geotagging module review

Columbia’s GPS Pal app for Android and iOS

Casio Exilim EX-H20G (with Hybrid GPS) review

For travel hounds like myself, that’s insanely powerful. I’m the kind of person that’ll spend hours lost in Google Earth, spinning the globe around and discovering all-new (to me, at least) locales thanks to the magic of geotagging. It’s sort of the photographic equivalent to putting a face to a name. By stamping latitude, longitude, altitude and a specific time to any given JPEG, you’re able to not only show the world what you saw, but exactly when and where you saw it. It’s a magical combination, and with GPS modules finding their way into point-and-shoot cameras — not to mention external dongles like Solmeta’s magnificent N3 (our review here) — there’s plenty of opportunity to start adding location data to your photos. For more on the “Why would I want to?” and “How would I best display ’em?” inquiries, let’s meet up after the break.

Continue reading Embracing geotagging: how to journal your trips (and contribute to Google Earth) with snapshots

Filed under: Digital Cameras, GPS

Embracing geotagging: how to journal your trips (and contribute to Google Earth) with snapshots originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 12:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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