Hasta La Gadget!

After visiting the Grand Canyon and capturing imagery using nifty Street View camera backpacks, Google is taking a trip to the Galapagos Islands to capture the scenery and wildlife and is partnering up with the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) and the Galapagos National Parks Directorate (GNPD) in order to make it happen.

The imagery isn’t available yet for the public eye, but Google gave is a sneak peek at what we’re in for. The company posted a few photos of Googlers walking around with “Trekker” backpacks that include a big Street View panorama camera attached to it that extends up from the backpack itself. Apparently they weigh around 40 pounds, so we commend those who were tough enough to carry them around all day.

If you’re not familiar with the Galapagos Islands, they were made famous by Charles Darwin, who’s theory of evolution was thought up thanks to the help of studying various animal species on the islands. The set of islands are located well off the west coast of northern South America and southern Latin America.

Google says that not only will these images be cool to look at, but they will also act as an “important visual record” for the CDF and GNPD to use in order to “study and protect the islands by showing the world how these delicate environments have changed over time.” The Galapagos Islands are constantly under threat by invasive species, climate change, and other human impacts.

It took ten days total to get all the imagery needed on the islands, and they even went underwater to capture sea life near the islands as well. Ten locations in total were captured by Google, averaging out to one location per day. Google has captured other unique locations in the past, including the Great Barrier Reef and even Antarctica.

Google Maps Street View visits the Galapagos Islands is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the folks at the development studio known as Instrument have brought a virtual reality demonstration to Google I/O 2013, complete with a multi-display drop from the upper atmosphere down toward the earth in freefall. What this demonstration consisted of was seven 1080p displays, each of them run by their own Ubuntu PC working with a full-screen version of Chrome version 25. A motion tracker works to track the user, their arms, and the angle at which they’re standing – or leaning and falling, as it were.

This system was developed by Instrument to track user input and motion tracking with a custom C++ app built with openNI as well as an ASUS Xtion Pro 3D motion tracking sensor camera. As the motion tracker sees and understands the angle of the human playing the game’s torso and location of each arm, so too will their avatar on the display array move as they fall.

The 3D game content is rendered with WebGL using THREE.js, the WebGL layer being rendered with a totally transparent background. This setup allows the map layer underneath to show through, this map layer being generated by Google Maps.

What the user sees below – the earth they’re plummeting toward – is a completely live HTML Google Map instance. It’s accurate – meaning you could potentially be diving toward your house, a national landmark, or perhaps somewhere that’d be useful for real-world training.

In addition to this setup being live and ready to roll here at Google I/O 2013 as a playable demo, Instrument has created a Dive editor. With this Dive editor, an editor is able to build directly into the control node administrative console, each of these changes reflected instantly – live in the scene.

The editor user interface exists as a Google Map, the person editing it able to use draggable markers that act as game objects. With this interface, developers and savvy users will be able to utilize geocoding to center the map view on locations of their choice – anywhere Google Maps can see. Think of the possibilities!

Google Maps-driven Map Dive 3D-tracking hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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At Google I/O, Google discussed its Maps service, and they’re coming out with an updated version for Android and iOS devices (go figure), as well as a completely new Google Maps user interface. They’re previewing the new version on stage, and have announced a slew of new features coming to both mobile and web versions.

The new Google Maps includes a new search experience with the results labeled right on the map in real time, as well as Google+ integration. However, a big feature of the new Google Maps is personalization. Google wants to cater Maps towards every user, and give them the ability to create custom maps of sorts that highlight places of interest and other establishments that users frequent.

There’s a new five-star rating system in place now, so when you search for a place, it will now show you a review score out of five stars, based on reviews from friends and other users who have been there. There’s also an improved Zagat interface complete with full editorial reviews and Zagat scores.

Navigation is also getting some updates as well, with an improved view of real-time incidents, including re-routing. So when you approach a closed road or slow traffic, the app will serve a pop up and suggest that you change your route in order to get to your destination quicker.

Google also announced Google Maps for iPad, as well as an enhanced interface for Android tablets, which will be releasing at some point this summer, and will include some new features such as Explore, where it provides a self-explanatory experience for looking around a map, and even looking at indoor maps of malls and airports, just like on the smartphone and web versions.

Overall, Google announced that they’ve reached 200 countries covered thanks to their own data, as well as crowd-sourced data, with North Korea being the 200th country added on to Google Maps. Street View also reached 50 countries recently, with 5 million miles of road covered already. Furthermore, Google Maps is on over one million websites, which results in over a billion people visiting Google Maps every week.

Google Maps mobile experience expands with five star rating system is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google’s Hugo Barra is on stage right now at Google I/0 2013, and he’s talking about Google Play Services, with the Google Maps API being one of the first to come into fruition. The company just launched even more location APIs for Google Maps that come with faster and more precise location awareness and geofencing capabilities.

The first location API they discussed is what they’re called Fused Location Provider, which aims at providing faster and more accurate location data, as well as low-power mode where less than 1% of the battery is used per hour, according to the search giant. After all, if battery power is a huge concern for a lot of users, this should certainly smooth things over a bit.

The second API that Google announced is called Geofencing. This lets you define certain areas around different locations in order to trigger events, something that we’ve seen before in location-based reminder apps, such as Checkmark and Apple’s own Reminders app. Google says that many users have asked for this feature, and finally they’re delivering.

The third API is called Activity Recognition, which helps to track your physical activities such as running, walking, biking, etc. The API uses data from the phone’s accelerometer and can even work without the GPS if you don’t happen to get a signal. It will also learn learn different activities to figure out when you’re walking, running, biking, and driving.

No word yet on when we’ll see these new APIs become available, but they’ll most likely release the APIs this week for developers to get started on as soon as possible. Stay tuned for more coverage of Google I/O, as the keynote has begun!

Google Play Services expand with Maps leading the pack is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.