Hasta La Gadget!

Apple quietly purchased Placebase, an online-mapping company, earlier this year. The acquisition could indicate the Cupertino, California, company’s plans to reduce its dependence on Google services, such as the Google Maps application currently built into the iPhone operating system.

The news of the acquisition broke unofficially on Twitter in July, but the buyout was only recently confirmed by ComputerWorld’s Seth Weintraub with some online sleuthing.

Jaron Waldman, former Placebase CEO, is now part of the “Geo Team” at Apple, according to his LinkedIn profile. Waldman does not disclose a description of his duties or the role of the Geo Team, leaving the tech community guessing over the purpose of this buyout.

Why would Apple purchase a mapping company?

The most obvious reason would be to buy the maps, of course. The Maps app included with the iPhone pulls geographic data from the Google Maps service, but the app itself was coded by Apple. Apple’s iPhoto ‘09 organizes photos based on where they were taken, also using data from Google Maps.

Purchasing Placebase could enable Apple to incorporate its own mapping technologies. Perhaps the company will also embrace the opportunity to innovate around mapping and add a dash of exclusive geo-savvy features to its Macs, iPods and iPhones.

Apple’s desire to wean itself from dependence on Google would not be surprising. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently resigned from Apple’s board of directors due to “conflicts of interest” between the two companies. The resignation followed Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app for the iPhone, which led to an FCC investigation.

“As Apple and Google’s interests diverge, expect Apple to find ways to rely less and less on Google services,” said Michael Gartenberg, a tech strategist at Interpret. “It’s happening already.”

Of course, the Placebase acquisition was very recent, so it could be some time before we see what Apple has in store with mapping.

Here’s a clue of what Apple might deliver: In February, software developers tinkering with Mac OS X Snow Leopard said they discovered evidence that the operating system would support triangulation to approximate the latitude and longitude of a Mac. But when Snow Leopard released, that feature did not appear. Perhaps Apple is waiting to develop its own mapping technologies with Placebase before unlocking this new tool.

What are your ideas about what Apple could do with this buyout? Please add your thoughts in the comments below.

See Also:

• Apple Envisions iPod as GPS Substitute
• Apple’s Snow Leopard Will Triangulate a Mac’s Location
• Apple Patent Details GPS-Equipped Nike+ Shoes

Photo: SteveGarfield/Flickr

Last month, when Zack Ajmal was planning a vacation to Italy, he set out to find the first thing that a traveler would need in a foreign land: a map. But digital maps of Rome and Venice for his Garmin GPS device cost almost $100. So instead, Ajmal turned to OpenStreetMap, a community-driven maps database.

“It worked out pretty well,” the Atlanta-based engineer says. “I found Open MTB, which had outdoor hiking and cycling maps with not just roads information, but also trails, short cuts and little known routes.”

Ajmal is among roughly half a million users who are eschewing proprietary maps information from GPS companies and instead going with crowdsourced versions, which they then load onto their GPS devices and smartphones.

The key to these map hacks is OpenStreetMap. Founded in 2004, OSM is to maps what Wikipedia is to encyclopedias. The site offers maps that can be edited, customized and loaded on to devices for free. Want to go whitewater rafting but need to know where the rapids are? There’s a map for that. Or to know all the interesting points along the river Nile? There’s a map for that. And it’s all based on the OpenStreetMap data.

“The value is that it is richer map with more up-to-date information because anyone can fix things,” says Steve Coast,  founder of OpenStreetMap. “Users get access to the underlying data and not just a picture of the maps.”

Consumer map data is currently a duopoly split between two mapping providers: Nokia’s Navteq and TomTom’s Tele Atlas. The two provide the mapping data that powers almost all commercial map applications and devices. But maps from these providers are extremely restrictive in how they can be used. Want a map of the best hiking trails in the country or a walking tour of Rome? Traditional GPS services can’t offer that. For adventurous geeks that calls for a DIY fix.

“OSM maps are a little new on the scene,” says Rich Owings, who runs the GPStracklog.com website and is the author of the book GPS Mapping. “Most people in the U.S. were not using them until recently, but now there are iPhone apps based on it.”

Getting OpenStreetMap is easier on some devices than others. In Garmin systems, it’s as simple as taking one of the available maps and dropping it into a folder on the device.

“It’s really hard to mess up your GPS doing this,” says Owings. “And if you have questions you can always ask the community to help you out.” Owings says he loaded maps of Ecuador on his Garmin unit in about 30 minutes. “It’s not as clean of a map as one you can get from the Garmin store but they are pretty wonderful and have very good coverage.”

For TomTom systems, getting OpenStreetMap can be a more difficult process. TomTom uses a proprietary mapping format, says Coast. That means a tricky process of converting OpenStreetMap into a TomTom-compatible format.

OpenStreetMap has also been used to create iPhone apps such as MotionX, which is targeted at hikers, skiers and bikers; B.iCycle, a cyclometer that shows burned calories, trip distance and trails; and ATM@UK, which shows all ATM locations in Great Britain.

The OpenStreetMap project is a cartographer’s dream come true, says Randal Hale, who has a GIS consulting business. Hale has created custom maps for a few clients using OpenStreetMap and has put OSM-generated maps on his Garmin unit.

“With the professional mapping software, I have to purchase a license to use their version, which is expensive and I can’t use the data for analysis,” says Hale. “With OpenStreetMap, I download it, make cartographic edits and hopefully I have made it better for the next user.”

Meanwhile, traditional navigation companies are also reaching out to users for help on data. For instance, Nokia kicked off a pilot project at the University of California at Berkeley to collect traffic information through GPS-enabled cellphones. Users could download the software for free and use it to check on road conditions on their phones. At the same time, the software would report data about its users’ positions to a central database, enabling the researchers to assemble traffic data in real time. Google has also said it will add nationwide real-time traffic data to its maps by collecting anonymous location data from Google Maps users.

Still, community-created maps and navigation information remains a small niche, appealing only to “GPS techies” who are willing to take risks, says Owings. “There’s not a lot of public awareness because many people don’t even know they can do this with their Garmin or cellphone,” he says.

But if you are planning to go to Berlin later this year, take a look at the OpenStreetMap site. Germany is expected to become the first country in the site’s database to be fully mapped by contributors.

See Also:

• LimeWire Creator Brings Open-Source Approach to Urban Planning
  
• Navigation Companies Crowdsource Maps, Traffic Services
• Map Mashups Get Personal
• City Governments Map Trends

Photo: Garmin GPS showing an OSM cycle map (Pete Reed/Flickr)

Google has updated its Maps app for Android — perhaps the most vital, central app in the platform outside of the dialer itself — and fortunately for G1, Dream, and Magic users around the world, they’ve made the update available through the Android Market. That’s a really big deal and a major departure from basically every other mobile platform, because it means that folks won’t be waiting for carriers and manufacturers to get off their rumps and release firmware updates — instead, integrated components of the operating system can be pushed out through the Market just like any other app you’d install. The new version’s a doozy, too, featuring voice search, more comprehensive support for Latitude, detailed business information, and pedestrian / mass transit navigation, arguably making the Android version of Maps the most robust on any phone. Seeing how Android is Google’s own, seems fitting, doesn’t it?

[Thanks, Justin]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Google updates Maps through the Android Market originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The current Swine Flu pandemic headlines read like those flashing through the intro sequence of a post-apocalyptical movie. Now you can see the cases spreading in real time—as the WHO declares them—in Google Maps. Updated

In case you have not been paying attention to the news during the last few days, there’s a pandemia going on. A spike of infections of the H1N1 Swine Flu—a mutation of a pork virus that jumped from pigs to humans—happened in the city of Mexico (103 dead already) and it is quickly spreading through the world now, thanks to airline connections.

Reading the map is very simple: We are all going to dieThe pink markers are suspect, the purple markers are confirmed, and deaths don’t have a black dot in the marker. The yellow markers are negative, but I don’t see any.

Have fun watching. While you can (added another map, which is getting updated faster.)

View 2009 Swine Flu (H1N1) Outbreak Map in a larger map

View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map

P.S. Stupid Apophis can’t reach us in time! Hahahaha. Ha. But it looks like pigs are getting their revenge for all these centuries of crispy bacon and pork buns. [Google Maps]

Bonus post soundtrack:

Looks like offline Gmail on the iPhone wasn’t the only trick Google’s Vic Gondotra has up his sleeve during his talk at MWC — he also gave a quick demo of Google Maps running as a web app on the Palm Pre. Of course, what’s interesting there is that the Pre’s HTML-based SDK means that web apps can act like first class citizens on the device — which is probably why Vic called the Pre “arguably one of my favorite devices.” Hopefully that means we’re going to see a lot more Pre devs really blur the line between local and cloud-based applications, but for now we’ll just settle for the short demo video after the break.

Continue reading Google demos HTML5-based Maps on the Palm Pre

Filed under: Cellphones

Google demos HTML5-based Maps on the Palm Pre originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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