Hasta La Gadget!

Maps is one of the most useful features in Android, and today at Google I/O 2013, Mountain View announced a trio of new location services APIs to help devs to better leverage that strength. Fused Location Provider is the first, and it brings faster, more accurate location signals and delivers a low-power location mode that sips less than 1 percent of your battery while in use. Next is Geofencing, which will allow devs to set up to 100 location-based triggers for app events. The third API is called Activity Recognition, which uses accelerometer data and machine learning to figure out when you’re walking, cycling or driving.

Filed under: Mobile, Google

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Google has launched a new project called Timelapse that allows users to see the history of the Earth all the way back to 1984 and view how our planet has changed over the past 28 years. You can view any part of the world, just like in Google Earth, except that Timelapse automatically creates an animated timelapse GIF based on what you’re looking at.

The project was created in HTML5, and it’s a result of the efforts between Google partnerships with the US Geological Survey (USGS), NASA, and Time Magazine. The satellite images collected over the years are from Landsat, which is the longest-running satellite program ever when it comes to snapping photos of the Earth, with over two million images taken so far.

Of course, not every image was used. Google actually had to sift through those couple millions of images to find the best ones (909 TB of data to be exact). After that, they created a huge image of the Earth (one for each year), which rings in at 1.78 TB per image. With 28 years, that’s a total of 49.84 TB of imagery in this project.

Google was kind enough to offer up some animated GIFs ready to view right away of various hot spots on Earth, including Dubai, Las Vegas, and the Columbia glacier retreat. And yes, Timelapse will allow you to visit your hometown to see what it looked like from the sky back in 1984. It’s certainly surprising to see how much the Earth has changed over the last 28 years.

Google Timelapse shows a changing Earth in animated form is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Anyone who uses Google Maps regularly will be familiar with the sidebar, which has been a staple part of the design for quite some time. That is about to change, however, according to a couple previews leaked ahead of a planned interface update that we may very well be seeing next week or some time in the near future.

The updated user interface will eschew the traditional sidebar for a series of boxes above the map, which will fill the entire screen after the update if the screenshots are to be believed. The interface is called “more immersive,” and suggests that those on mobile devices will find that it works better than the interface that is currently in place. The moved sidebar won’t be the only change users see, however.

According to the preview, the current interface is one that is focused on the navigational components of Maps, such as the sidebars and buttons and sliders. That design theory will change with the update, with the new redesigned interface instead featuring a focus on the map itself with the various elements building on top of it rather than taking up its valuable space.

Along with the design’s change in focus will be some visual changes, which includes updates to the service’s icons, text styles, and the colors of the map itself. When can users expect to see these changes in place? A date isn’t provided, but it is worth mentioning the I/O event is coming up, and we may very well see it rolling out then.

[via Google Operating System]

Google Maps update previewed ahead of launch is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It seems like only yesterday when Google Street View was only available in a small number of areas around the world, but now Google has announced that Street View has creeped its way into 50 countries, and the Street View cars have covered over 5 million miles of roadway — that’s a lot of fuel.

Google launched Street View in 2007 in five cities in the US, but the service has spread to 50 countries, Hungary and Lesotho being to the two most-recent additions. The search giant also announced that they have expanded Street View coverage in Poland and Romania, as well as “other locations around the world.”

Google says that today’s update is also the “largest single update of Street View imagery” that the company has ever pushed out, and it includes both new and updated imagery for “nearly 350,000 miles of roads across 14 countries.” Existing Street View coverage in France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore, and Thailand all received updates.

We’re guessing that Google isn’t stopping here, and we can expect more Street View updates to come in the future. Thanks to several new Street View additions, like the Street View Trike and the Trekker backpack, you can expect to explore off-road locations from the comfort of your own computer very soon.

Google Street View spreads to 50 countries is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

There are plenty of choices to meet your mobile mapping needs, from feature-rich offerings from big names like Google, Apple and Nokia to crowd-sourced services like Waze. Telenav’s Scout app falls somewhere in between, and today the company announced that it’ll get both 3D buildings and landmarks and crowd-sourced traffic reporting (backed by TomTom’s database) later this year. Graphically, Scout in 3D looks similar to Google Maps and will initially be available for major metro areas in the US.

As for traffic reporting, Telenav will be asking its 34 million subscribers to report accidents and traffic jams, and will update its database in real-time. That means that as road conditions change, Scout’ll suggest faster alternate route options to get you from point A to point B hassle-free. No word exactly when these new capabilities will make it to users, but when they do arrive later this year, both premium and free users will get ’em. In the meantime, check out the video of the new 3D maps in action after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Software, Mobile

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