Hasta La Gadget!

Indian Railways has just made it a little easier for rail travelers with a new web app called RailRadar, which uses Google Maps to track trains on a real-time basis. This is certainly welcome on one of the largest rail networks in the world — it operates more than 10,000 trains everyday — though the service is only available on 6,500 trains for now. To find out where your train is, simply search for its name or number and RailRadar will spot it for you. You can also find trains by entering the name of the station. Blue highlights indicate trains that are on time while red means it’s behind schedule. If you click on a train, it’ll show its entire route from start to finish. The logical next step would be for this to be on smartphones like how it is in Japan, though we’re not sure if that’s in the cards just yet.

[Thanks, dil]

Filed under: Transportation, Internet

Indian Railways launches RailRadar, lets you track trains via Google Maps originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Oct 2012 02:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Uh oh. Apple Maps, for all of its blurry, melting world faults, was actually a little too clear in one area: it revealed a top-secret, $1.23 billion ultra-high-frequency radar of Taiwan for everyone to see. Um, that’s not good. More »

Apple Maps is the subject of complaints again, this time from the Taiwanese defense ministry which has voiced its frustrations that secretive military sites are clearly visible in the iOS 6 mapping app. “We’ll ask Apple to lower the resolution of satellite images of some confidential military establishments the way we’ve asked Google in the past” ministry spokesperson David Lo said this week, though Apple is apparently yet to have formally received a request to blur out the installations.

Concerns about the quality of the satellite imagery were raised after local newspapers used Apple Maps graphics to show radar bases the Taiwanese military would rather were not discussed publicly. The base, in Hsinchu in the north of the country, is the site of a long-range radar currently under construction, and is intended – once fully functional – to give Taiwan earlier notice should China launch a missile attack.

The inclusion of photo information that some would rather wasn’t included has been a long-standing issue with mapping products, such as Google Earth and Google Maps. “Regarding images taken by commercial satellites,” Lo said, “legally we can do nothing about it.” However, Taiwanese authorities have worked with Google before to reduce visibility of certain parts of the country for security purposes.

The same concerns around privacy have seen Google’s Street View product come under fire, with privacy advocates critical of how much personal information can be gleaned from the street-level photography. Google blurs out individual faces as well as identifiers like vehicle license plates.

[via PhysOrg]

Taiwan asks for Apple Maps censorship over military bases is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

All signs point toward the impending general availability of Windows 8, what with the upcoming OS launch event, the Surface RT finally hitting the FCC, and Paul Allen letting the world knows what he thinks of it. In light of this, the Redmond company has announced a final update push to the built-in apps you’ll find in Windows 8. The Bing update will be first out the gate tomorrow — it promises richer search results for local content — with the rest rolling out through October 26th. Also of note is Music, which touts “expanded music services” as an update (Xbox Music, anyone?). If you’re itching to know what built-in apps will be updated, you can get the full and extensive list after the break.

Continue reading Microsoft announces updates for Windows 8 built-in apps, just in time for October 26th launch

Filed under: Software, Microsoft

Microsoft announces updates for Windows 8 built-in apps, just in time for October 26th launch originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TomTom has launched its Navigation app for Android, with offline driving directions, 2D/3D views, voice guidance and the promise of mapping updates for the lifetime of the software. TomTom Navigation for Android – available in North American, European, UK & Ireland, and other geographical versions – also includes TomTom HD traffic data, for mapping out routes on less busy roads, using live and historical traffic trends. However, the mapping app still isn’t perfect – you may well find you can’t actually use it at all.

The big issue at the moment is compatibility. TomTom has apparently built Navigation for Android to suit screen resolutions of up to WVGA; Google Play tells us that it’s incompatible with many recent, high-profile devices. If you’ve a Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7, Galaxy S III, as well as many other tablets or phones, you won’t be able to use the app at all.

Hopefully that will change soon, as Navigation for Android looks like it ticks plenty of boxes. As well as the live traffic data, there’s support for multi-stop routing, having the most economical journey prioritized, automatic fading of music so that spoken instructions can be heard, and support for TomTom Places and POIs.

Since all of the maps are stored on your phone, not downloaded when needed, it’s a big app – the UK and Ireland data comes in at 367MB, for instance, while the US & Canada is a whopping 2.3GB – but you can turn off roaming data while traveling. TomTom promises up to four map updates per year, for the lifetime of the app.

TomTom Navigation for Android is available now, priced at $49.99 for the US & Canadian maps, £30.99 for the UK maps, and £49.99 for the full European maps.

[via Paul O’Brien]

TomTom Navigation for Android released (with a compatibility catch) is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.