Hasta La Gadget!

We’re honestly surprised it took this long, but Google is finally employing a social hook that so many of its peers (Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp, and so on) have long embraced: the location-based check-in. Coming to Google Latitude with today’s Maps 5.1 for Android, the company hopes to set itself apart from the competition with features like check-in notifications (disabled by default), automatic check-ins for your most frequent establishments (case-by-case activation), and “check out” that detects when you leave a location.

So what’s the incentive to use the service? Not much at this point — no badges, no sharing through third-party services like Twitter (Latitude-only at the moment), no support for simultaneous check-in with other services, no special vendor discounts (Google told us there’s nothing to announce yet), and no ability to create a venue like your apartment (Places only). What it does right is a tiered system of special statuses based on check-in frequency — you can become a regular, VIP, or Guru (Google says it’s not definite yet on how many check-ins each status bump will require). iOS Latitude users will be able to see where their Android friends check in, but at this point the option to pimp your specific location is for Google’s platform only. If you’re a fan of Latitude already, this is probably a no-brainer, but for everyone else, don’t expect mayoral coffee discounts just yet.

Google Latitude joins check-in game with Maps 5.1 for Android originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 13:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on March 19, 2008 by CyberNet.

Google has decided that they want their users to help make Google Maps as accurate as possible and so they have bestowed upon them editing rights. Now any user who is logged in to their Google account will be able to edit a place on the map, including move the marker. At this point, only those living in the United States, Australia and New Zealand can make edits. To me, this is an open invitation for vandals to come and wreak havoc on the maps, but Google says they’ve taken steps to protect accuracy.

To make editing changes to the maps, just go to http://maps.google.com and search for any type of location whether it be a street name or a complete address. From there you’ll notice a new link that says “Add a place to the map.” Clicking that will bring you to the page where you can add a place, move a marker on the map, or edit details.

The editing details page looks like this:

As you enter the type of place that it is, a drop-down menu will appear with different examples of what you could enter. Read Write Web noticed that while you can enter in any information you’d like, that doesn’t mean Google will accept the changes. They tried to change the web address for a location to something totally unrelated and it wouldn’t allow the change. This must be part of what they’re doing to help protect accuracy.

Speaking of accuracy, Google says that you’ll always be able to see the original listing information. Additionally, users will be able to view the history of changes that were made. If something didn’t seem quite right, a quick look at the history could explain a lot. At this point we’re a little skeptical about how this is going to work, but if people don’t abuse the system and Google has enough checks and balances in place to prevent abuse, it could turn out to be a great tool.

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Buckled early and sprung for TomTom’s iPhone GPS app, did you? If so, that very app just got a lot better today, as version 1.6 has brought TomTom’s Map Share — a crowdsourcing aspect that’ll keep your maps more up-to-date than you ever thought possible. Map Share enables iPhone users to make changes instantly to their own maps and to benefit from free map updates made by the TomTom community and verified by the company itself. That means that users will now be able to edit street names, set driving directions and block / unblock streets directly on their maps, and if you’re kind enough, you can share those updates with the rest of the TomTom community. Furthermore, the app will automatically check for new verified updates (including turn restrictions, speed limit changes and crossing changes), so the previously tried-and-true “my maps were old!” excuse will sadly no longer work. Give and take, as they say.

Continue reading TomTom’s Map Share update brings crowdsourced navigation to iPhone GPS app

TomTom’s Map Share update brings crowdsourced navigation to iPhone GPS app originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 02:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If Grandma tends to wander off in fits of forgetfulness, you should probably buy her an Android phone. Tell My Geo is an Android app for sufferers of Alzheimer’s, which acts a lot like Apple’s Find My iPhone service, only it’s for people, not phones.

Send Granny off with the app installed and you can track where she wanders. Her phone can be set to report its position every 15, 30 or 60-minutes, so you can go pick her up. The app also stores her medical information and history, and the app comes with a pair of stickers – one for the phone and one for the car – to tell the emergency services that it is installed.

But what about poor Granny when she suddenly finds herself in the middle of, well, where exactly? Tell My Geo has that covered. On the screen are some big, easy-to-read buttons: First, there’s a Call For Help button, which dials a pre-programmed phone number. Second is the Where Am I? button. When Granny finds herself lost, she hits this button and the app pulls up a satellite map with her position clearly marked.

The tracking part is the really useful application, though. After all, if Granny can’t remember where she is, or how she got there, is she going to remember that she has a smartphone with her?

Tell My Geo requires two phones to work properly, one for you and one for Granny, and you’ll need to pay $10 per month for each of them. Available now in the Android Marketplace.

Tell My Geo product page [Iconsys. Thanks, Andrew!]

See Also:

• GPS to Track Alzheimers Sufferers
• Microsoft Digicam for Alzheimer's Relief
• Cognitive Computing Project Aims to Reverse-Engineer the Mind …

Microsoft just released — or should we say, Apple just approved — version 2.0 of the Bing search app for iOS devices. In addition to several other new features including integrated Facebook Likes on search results (really!?) and in-app checkins to Facebook and Foursquare, Bing now comes packing Streetside, something that first blew us away as Street Slide when it was still in the labs at Microsoft Research. Unlike Google’s Streetview that requires a lot of forward- and back-clicking and turning in order to get a feel for a location, Streetslide provides a more comprehensive view of the shops and businesses in an area by letting you strafe down the sidewalk while zooming in and out of the buildings located on each side of the street. We took it for a brief spin (literally) and came away impressed. You won’t find Streetside implemented for all locations yet (for example, San Francisco’s Make-out Room was found on Streetside but the Slanted Door restaurant wasn’t) but they do seem to have large swaths of major cities covered based on our brief testing of Chicago, Seattle, New York, and San Francisco. Sorry, nothing yet in London and Amsterdam but maybe you’ll have better success searching your own neighborhoods. See the full list of what’s new after the break in addition to a Streetside demo from Bing’s architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas — unfortunately, we’re not seeing the impressive Panaroma feature he mentions in this release.

Update: We’ve been told that Facebook Likes, like Panaroma, like totally didn’t make it into the app release. It’s a web search results feature only for the time being.

Continue reading Bing 2.0 brings better Facebook integration and the impressive Streetside to iPhone (video)

Bing 2.0 brings better Facebook integration and the impressive Streetside to iPhone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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