TravelTime maps API lets users search by time rather than distance
Time and distance aren't always synonymous.
Topic: Geographic information system
Apple reportedly hiring dozens of new mapping experts and engineers
Apple Maps could be the beneficiary of the company's push into augmented reality and "autonomous systems."
Google retiring Map Maker to speed up the Maps editing process
Company says that new process, using Google Maps app and Google Search, will expedite publication of changes and additions.
Google Maps adds more ways to add or edit locations
Google Maps now lets users add, change, supplement and check the details for venues listed on Google Maps in a new way.
Is Apple About To Launch A Competitor To Google Street View?
Google Street View is a dramatic and sometimes useful feature of Google Maps that helped set it apart from competitors such as Nokia Maps and Bing Maps a few years ago. Now, there’s evidence that Apple may be seeking to create its own version of Street View. The following posting appears on Apple’s site: It […]
Google About To Reopen Map Maker, Largely Outsourcing Moderation
After the recent rash of map vandalism and other map mischief that caused Google to shut down Map Maker, the company is getting ready to reopen it. Simultaneously Google is instituting a new moderation procedure that will rely more heavily on community moderation than on in-house Google personnel. Google observed in support of the new […]
Report: Apple Using Camera-Equipped Minivans To Capture Map Data
It’s a very safe bet that Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Google Maps and Street View. While many people regard Street View as eye candy, it has actually served a more important function: capturing real-world geo-data for Google Maps. Now Apple appears to following in Google’s tire tracks. According to an article in […]
Bing Maps Shows Super Bowl Spirit With New Venue Map, Streetside & Hi-Res Venue Imagery
Recent image updates show University of Phoenix Stadium being prepped for Sunday's Super Bowl.
From Novelty To Foundational Product: The Evolution Of Google Maps
Until Android came along Google’s most important product after search undoubtedly was Google Maps. I know it sounds heretical to say this but in some ways Maps is more strategic to Google than search today. That’s because Google Maps bridge the physical and digital worlds and because Maps are more “useful” to mobile users than […]
Report: Apple Accelerating Crowdsourced Maps Improvements
According to a couple of reports (Reddit and MacRumors), Apple has stepped up the pace of map-data corrections and improvements. The MacRumors report, from a couple of weeks ago, says that changes are being implemented weekly. The Reddit thread says they’re happening nightly — at 3 a.m. Eastern: Over the past month, Maps were being […]
Founder: OpenStreetMap Already As Good Or Better Than Google Maps
Steve Coast founded OpenStreetMap (OSM) in the UK in 2004. It’s 10 years old this year. He was inspired by the Wikipedia model and compelled by a lack of available map and location data in the UK at that time. Coast now works for GPS navigation company Telenav, which owns location-based mobile ad network Thinknear. Not long ago […]
Google “Mapping” Real World With Incredible Precision For Self-Driving Cars
A fascinating article in the Atlantic appeared this weekend. It’s mostly about Google’s self-driving cars and how they operate technically. But it’s also about something much bigger: how Google is now effectively “crawling” the real world as it has crawled the web for years. The analogy or insight isn’t mine it’s the Atlantic’s. But it’s […]
Bing Brings Enhanced Mapping To Windows 8.1
Yesterday Microsoft announced “Bing Maps Preview” for Windows 8.1 (including tablets). The new mapping app offers a range of enhanced features and capabilities. It seeks to bring highly realistic, 3-D imagery together with a more intuitive UI. Google Earth and what used to be called Microsoft Virtual Earth have always been a bit slow and […]
Google Maps Launches Ground Truth Initiative In Russia & Hong Kong
Google Maps announced new updates to their Russia and Hong Kong maps today, launching a “Ground Truth” initiative to build more thorough maps for Hong Kong and a number of Russian cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg. According to Google’s announcement: Ground Truth enables us to update a country’s map at a faster […]
Apple Beefing Up Maps With Crowdsourcing, “Ground Truth” Hires
Apple Insider points out that Apple is hiring for dozens of positions in its mapping group. There are more than 80 positions that respond to the keywords “Apple Maps” on the company’s jobs site. Among a range of other positions, Apple has been seeking “ground truth local experts” for various cities. Here’s one such job […]
Google Maps Expands European Biking Directions, Adding Hundreds Of Kilometers Worth Of Bike Paths
Originally launched in beta mode for a number of European countries last year, Google Maps has enabled biking directions for Germany, France, Poland, Ireland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. By working with partner organizations, as well as adding hundreds of kilometers of bike paths via Google Map Maker, Google Maps offers European cyclist a number of biking […]
Irish Politician Calls Apple’s New Maps “Dangerously Misleading” After Farm Is Labeled An Airport
The new iOS 6 Maps is out and users are starting to get their feet wet with the app. The reviews are not all that stellar. In fact, Ireland’s Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, said Apple’s new maps app in iOS 6 is “dangerously misleading.” iOS 6 labels Airfield Garden as an airport! Minister Alan […]
Google “Opens The Kimono” On How It Builds Maps
The Atlantic published an article about what Google calls “Ground Truth,” its allegedly top-secret map-development process. As the name implies, the idea is to create digital maps that more accurately reflect the ground truth of the real world vs competitors’ offerings. The trigger for the article is undoubtedly Google’s desire to expose the complexity, layers […]
Google Updates Earth For iOS With More 3D, Adds Default City Location To PC Maps
In early June, at its “next dimension” mapping event, Google promised more complete 3D coverage in Google Earth. Yesterday it rolled out new versions of Earth for iOS devices. The list of fully rendered 3D cities includes: “Boulder, Boston, Charlotte, Lawrence (Kan.), Long Beach (Ca.), Los Angeles, Portland (Ore.), San Diego, Santa Cruz, Tampa, Tucson, […]
Google Maps Enters Mobile Workforce Management
There are a number of companies that operate in the enterprise segment offering products for fleet and mobile workforce management, such as Telenav. Now Google is getting into the game with a new product descriptively but somewhat awkwardly called “Google Maps Coordinate.” (Don’t they know about branding consultants?) The new enterprise tool, which will apparently […]
Emergency In Your Area? “Public Alerts” On Google Maps Shows Warnings
Google announced a new layer of data being added to Google Maps for public alerts. If there are emergency alerts in your area, Google will show them to you on the map, with more details on the alert. You can access it over at google.org/publicalerts. The map will load with a layer of data on […]
Google Maps Now Highlighting Borders Of Cities, Postal Codes & More
Google Maps has added a feature where it will highlight in a pink color the borders of a city, postal code or other borders based on your search. To see it yourself, go to Google Maps and search for a city name or even a zip code. You will see a pinkish highlight around the […]
Google Drops Tele Atlas & Uses Their Own Maps Data For UK Maps
Google announced on the Google Maps blog that they are now powering their own map data in the UK, Germany, Finland and Sweden. Google maps data in the U.S. and many other countries is powered by Google’s own data. But this week, Google dropped their third-party map data provider, Tele Atlas, and switched their map […]
Google Offers Goes National, Still Makes Me Feel Excluded
Google Offers hasn’t rolled out yet to your city in the US? Google’s solution is its first “national” offer that came out today, $25 to spend at REI for $15. But as a person in a non-Google Offers city, I found the promotion just alienated me even more. Offers & The OC I live in Newport Beach, […]
Catholic Priest Advises Engaged Couples: Don’t Use Google Maps
You know it’s rough going when even the clergy can’t recommend your service. That’s what’s happening to Google Maps, which is listing a Catholic church/school in Short Hills, NJ, at the wrong location. The church is located at 50 Short Hills Ave., but when you search Google for that address, it instead shows a similar […]
Google Releases Alabama Tornado Destruction Images & Maps Of Tornadoes
Google has posted before-and-after images of the terrible devastation left behind by the tornadoes that hit the South and parts of the East Coast of the United States earlier this week, with close-up views particularly of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The easiest way to see the images is through a Picasa album that the company has posted. […]
Why Google Latitude’s Check In Deals Is A Few Degrees Off
In the past month, Google’s +1 has been the most hyped Social feature that Google has launched to date, as it has the potential to compete with Twitter and Facebook. A less noticed launch during this same time included social changes to Google’s Latitude product, which have also been launched to help Google compete with Foursquare. […]
Bing’s Read/Write World: An Ambitious Project To Bridge Maps With Movies, Photos, Local Data & More
It’s probably not something that you can wrap your head around pretty quickly. It’s also not something you can describe in quick, easily digestible terms. “It” is a new Microsoft Bing effort called Read/Write World that has some pretty lofty goals: things like indexing and connecting all of the world’s “geo-linked media.” And not just […]
Google Updates Maps In 10 Countries, TeleAtlas Going Away?
At some point during the course of the past couple of years, perhaps catalyzed by the shock of Nokia’s roughly $8 billion acquisition of Navteq, Google decided it needed to “own” maps top to bottom. Since that time the company has been making a systematic effort to collect and improve the base data for this […]
Louisville, Kentucky: The City Without A Name (In Google Maps)
Here’s another Google Maps oddity, tipped to us by “emallaich” earlier this week: Louisville doesn’t appear in Google Maps. The city is there — Louisville, Kentucky — but you won’t see the name “Louisville” used anywhere to identify the city.
Sunrise, Florida, Reemerges From Google Maps’ Bermuda Triangle
The city of Sunrise, Florida, is back on the map. On Google Maps. It mysteriously vanished more than a month ago, making it impossible to find anything in Sunrise via a Google search. Some local businesses have reported significant declines in online sales. The city’s mayor, after contacting Google and failing to get a call […]
Google Realtime Search Gets Home Page, Conversation View, Alerts & Geosearch
Google Realtime Search has finally gained its own home page, as well as some new tools including “conversations view,” Google Alerts for real time content and the ability to see tweets filtered by geography. New Home Page Back in June, my Can Google Real Time Search Have Its Own Home Page Now? covered how frustrating […]
OpenStreetMap Layer Added To Bing Maps
Bing announced they have added a new layer to the Maps data. The new layer is from Open Street Maps, a free editable map of the whole world. This layer is a lot like the Wikipedia concept, where anyone can “view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.” You […]
Google Looks To Improve Maps With 300 New Staffers
Problems in Google Maps are well known by now. From spam to bugs to its lack of support for local businesses, we’ve chronicled (as have others) the bumpy road for the number one maps site on the web. Today, TechFlash is reporting that help may be on the way. Google is using staffing agencies to […]
UK Site Yell.com Gives Google Maps A Run For Its Money
Bing Maps recently introduced “Street Side” photography in the US, to match Google’s Street View. But Bing Street Side doesn’t yet exist in Europe. However, Amsterdam-based directory publisher De Telefoongids offers street-level photography (with store interiors) and in France Pages Jaunes has had store-front photography for many years. Now in the UK directory publisher Yell […]
Google Making Changes To Canada Maps, Now “Owns” The Data As In US
After the search box, perhaps no other Google product is so synonymous with the company as Maps. Over time Google has come to see its mapping offering — now extended to mobile — and the underlying local data as more and more strategic. To that end, last October in the US Google replaced maps data […]
Geo Data Added To Google Search Results
It was just a couple weeks ago that Google confirmed the addition of breadcrumb information in place of URLs for some search results. Today, Google has announced another change to the green URL line: In some cases, “region tags” — geographic information about the web site — will appear next to the URL. Google shares […]
Google Earth iPhone App 2.0 Available Soon
A new version of Google Earth for the iPhone is due soon, and among its new features is one with a personal touch: the ability to see maps you’ve created and/or saved in Google Maps. To make this happen, the new Google Earth iPhone app will add the ability to login to your Google account […]
Google Flu Shot Locator Shows Where To Get Vaccines Near You!
Looking for where to get a seasonal flu shot or that hard-to-find vaccine against H1N1 swine flu? Google has a new flu shot locator that can help. When the locator loads, you many need to manually enter your location. Do so using the “Change Location” option: After doing your search, a red needle icon shows […]
Google Continues Crowdsourcing Its Map Data
Google has announced a new tool called Google Building Maker that lets you make 3D buildings using aerial photos and 3D shapes. Google says early testers felt it was more toy-like than tool-like and suggests that teachers might use it to help teach geography. And at this point you might be wondering … 3D buildings? […]