Ever wonder why the World War II British slogan "Keep Calm and Carry On"
has surfaced some 70 years later to become today’s most ubiquitous meme? Not
only has the Internet been cyberventillating variations on the theme online for
over a year now, one can find t-shirts and other memorabilia easily
accessible for purchase in the real world.
Just one year after its Zagat acquisition, Google has made a move on another trusted lifestyle brand. John Wiley & Sons Inc., the current owner of the Frommer’s network of travel sites and guide books, confirmed the Mountain View acquisition, with a closing expected shortly. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google hasn’t made a call concerning Frommer’s printed guidebooks, which don’t necessarily fall in line with the company’s otherwise online-only model. It’s also unclear whether or not the new content arm will fall under Zagat’s leadership, though a department executive did comment on the acquisition in an interview, saying that Google planned to keep Frommer’s on its current path for the time being. Neither company was able to confirm pricing for the buyout, which could help Google boost its reviews portfolio, backing user-submitted travel content with professional credibility. Full details are at the source link below.
Update: As it turns out, Google will reportedly be keeping the print staff on board, moving the team to its NYC offices. Online editors are less fortunate, however, with layoffs having already begun.
Filed under: Internet
WSJ: Google set to acquire Frommer’s from Wiley, add trusted travel reviews originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google is buying travel brand Frommer’s, according to The Wall Street Journal. The search engine is reportedly purchasing the brand from John Wiley & Sons in order to bolster its search results regarding local places and attractions. In case you’re not familiar with Frommer’s, it provides a detailed database of places to visit in various cities across the world, as well as hotel, restaurant, and store listings.
The price for the deal hasn’t been disclosed, and it’s not entirely clear if Frommer’s will continue to publish its material or if it will be exclusive to Google, but the deal will be finalized soon. The Frommer’s brand could be integrated into Zagat listings, however. Google purchased Zagat back in September 2011 in order to display the Zagat ratings on search results for hotels and restaurants, so adding additional venues into the mix with Frommer is a smart move.
When asked to comment on the sale, the managing director of product management for Zagat, Bernardo Hernandez, said: “Our commitment is to keep things as they are today and once we combine operations, we’ll know better what the future looks like.” He went on to say, “Consumers need fresh accurate information. When you add information you can trust to phone numbers and addresses as part of the Google search experience, it enables users to convert their intentions into actions.”
Google looks to be stocking up on travel related information and listings in an effort to keep competitors such as Foursquare and Facebook at bay. The company has been displaying its own user submitted reviews for services and places for some time, but has recently made an effort acquire additional services to display more detailed scores and reviews. Google has also promoted travel as a part of Google Now, with the predictive search assistant displaying information for local transportation and flights.
Google tipped to acquire travel brand Frommer’s is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
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BikeCharge Dynamo from Hong Kong-based iBikeConsole has updated the bicycle wheel-mounted DC generator of your childhood. It’ll fully charge most brands of mobile phone over the course of a 2- to 3-hour bike ride.
Airlines might claim the seats in their planes are designed to maximize passenger comfort, but that always plays second fiddle to capacity. If squeezing you in gives them enough room to add another body, you better believe they won’t mind cramping passengers. So who would want to drop over $2,000 on a living room chair designed by someone responsible for those awful airline seats? More »
You lost your wallet in Jakarta. You got hit by a car in Paris. You need to get online in a sketchy internet cafe in Reno. More »
Yes, tweets are known for their brevity. 140 characters or less is the
constraint Twitter imposes on the Twitterati’s bon mots. However if you
look closely at their terms of service, they’ve never restricted the
actual size of a tweet, nor how far it could be thrust into space. And
this summer, Iberia Airlines has used those loopholes to not only issue
the world’s biggest tweet but also to show to the world, the skies the
limit as to how far a tweet can go.
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.
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.
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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You want to run around like some wilderness badass. Climbing in the Rockies. Surfing in the Rockaways. Whatever. You can do it all if you’ve got some warm, dry gear to slip into when the adventure is over. Can this waterproof backpack make it happen? More »
I’ve sung praises about it for years, but it seems like only now the industry is getting on the same train of thought. It could be my unnatural adoration of travel, or just an entirely healthy fear of getting lost, but offline navigation has long since been a top priority for me when choosing a mobile device. Or, more importantly, a mobile operating system. For the longest while, iOS forced my hand to Android due to Google Maps Navigation being available only on the latter, and while even that wasn’t offline, it still far surpassed any other routing app in terms of system integration, map updates and general silkiness.
Even dating back to our 2010 mobile GPS shootout, Nokia has been a player. At that time, it was the outfit’s Ovi Maps leading the pack, offering the only legitimate offline solution amongst a legion of ho-hum alternatives that required bits of data to keep you on track. But frankly, there wasn’t a Symbian device in Nokia’s stable that could show up my Nexus One in terms of overall utility, so begrudgingly, I pushed it aside. Eventually, Google came around and added caching to routes, which effectively downloaded all routing guidance along your path as soon as you plugged in a destination. The killer, however, was that it wouldn’t take too kindly to veering far from that path should you ever drop signal. Close, but no cigar.
Fast forward to today, and we’ve got Google Maps already working in offline mode for Android 2.2+ devices. Furthermore, the company’s Brian McClendon confessed to us at its June 2012 ‘Maps’ event that it’s “committed” to bringing all of the app’s features to iOS (and potentially other platforms). But in my haste to find something in the here and now, I recently turned to the Lumia 900 for guidance. Literally. Back in late March, the Lumia-exclusive Nokia Drive application gained full offline access, and I sought to use the handset exclusively to navigate a 1,900-mile trek through some of America’s most remote locales. How’d it go? Join us after the break to find out.
Gallery: Nokia Drive navigation on Lumia 900
Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Software
Nokia Drive offline navigation review: taking the Lumia 900 for an off-the-grid spin originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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