Hasta La Gadget!

It looks like the shakeups at Google this week aren’t over yet. Following Andy Rubin’s departure from the Android team and some “spring cleaning” that stuck a fork in Google Reader, The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that the company is breaking up its mapping and commerce unit. According to the paper, maps will now be a part of Google’s search unit, while commerce will fall under the advertising group. What’s more, the WSJ also reports that the head of that soon-to-be-former unit, Jeff Huber, will be moving to Google X, the lab responsible for projects like Glass and Google’s self-driving car.

Update: Jeff Huber has now posted a brief statement on both Google+ and Twitter. He says, “finishing up my first decade at Google, and excited to return to my startup roots and begin the next one at Google X!” A Google spokesperson has also issued the following statement:

“Jeff is an extraordinary executive. He just finished his first decade at Google — having worked on some of our most complicated issues like ads, apps, payments and geo — and now he is eager to work in more of a start up like environment.”

Filed under: Mobile, Google

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Source: The Wall Street Journal

What’s the best method of finding your way in a foreign land? Just ask the locals, and that’s exactly what El Goog is doing in India with its Mapathon 2013 competition. The contest is running from February 12th through March 25th, and is asking residents of the Asian nation to add additional detail or update information in Google Maps using Map Maker. Working for Google without actually working for Google isn’t very alluring, so to compensate participants for their knowledge and effort, the search giant is offering prizes — slates, phones, vouchers (presumably for the Play store) and other merchandise — for the top 1,000 contributors. If you’re willing and able to get involved, head to the source link for the lowdown on how. When you finally get round to seeing the Taj Mahal in person and check your phone for the nearest watering hole, remember to raise a toast to Mapathon 2013 for getting you there.

Filed under: Google

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Source: Google India Blog

Google’s just flipped the switch on updates for its maps of ten European countries and regions: Andorra, Bulgaria, Estonia, Gibraltar, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. As part of Page And Co.’s Ground Truth project, the refresh increases the accuracy and detail of maps by combining human input with a wide array of data, such as satellite and Street View imagery. With the refresh, Google’s cartography has been spruced up with building outlines, walking paths, ferry lines, park boundaries, new highways and more. The update brings the number of countries mapped as part of the search titan’s Ground Truth initiative to 40, and pushes the total number of miles of road cataloged in Google Maps to 27.9 million.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Official Google Blog

Was it submerged after the satellite made its sweep? Did those volcanic-black pixels crumble and drown under their own weight? Have military censors deliberately obscured the truth? Australian explorers who sailed the South Pacific for 25 days in search of the landmass known as Sandy Island, after spotting it on Google Earth, have returned none-the-wiser. And it’s not just Google that is apparently inaccurate — a Coral Sea island in the same position also appears on Yahoo, Bing and even iOS maps, as well as on the Times Atlas of the World under the eerily appropriate name of Sable Island, which could be interpreted as “Very Dark Black Island.”

The depth of the ocean is around 1,400 meters at these coordinates (-19.225583, 159.938759), which is precisely why the the University of Sydney’s maritime researchers went looking — it would be an extremely unusual outcrop if it actually existed. One down-to-earth explanation is that the entity is the cartographic equivalent of a watermark, allowing the mapmaker to tell if his work has been pirated, but no doubt there are other possibilities. Dr Maria Seton, fresh from a fruitless month on the waves, insists she plans to “follow up and find out.”

Filed under: Misc, Alt

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Source: PhysOrg / AFP

Nokia has announced that it will make its HERE mapping SDK available to Android handset manufacturers who want to integrate Nokia’s mapping service into their upcoming devices. Nokia’s demo of HERE in San Francisco was impressive and did a good job at highlighting the company’s proficiency at mapping. Nokia has reminded the audience that it is one of the few companies in the world to be so proficient at it. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Nokia HERE Maps for iPhone, Android tablet gaining share, thanks to low-cost devices [study],