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Google draws 25 million new building footprints in Maps, shapes up your neighborhood
The fine, well labeled lines of Google Maps may show a clean layout of your neighborhood, but without buildings, it looks too much like a two-dimensional spread of undeveloped tract housing. Google's finally filling in the gaps, outlining 25 million building footprints in cities all across the United States. Residents of Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Detroit and other cities can now see the familiar outlines of their local stomping ground on the services' mobile and desktop maps. Most of these buildings were algorithmically generated from aerial photographs,locals can pen in their own content by using Google Map Maker to add new buildings or tag their favorite local eatery. The tweak sounds minor, but it certainly makes the standard map's criss-cross of roads look more familiar. Check out the official Google Lat Long blog below for more details.
Footprints tracks your movements and who they're shared with
Although Apple has caught a lot of heat lately over the location-tracking issue that was recently resolved with the iOS 4.3.3 update, there are several apps out there that do track where you are with amazing detail. They range from Find My iPhone to apps such as Footprints. Footprints for iPhone and iPad runs in the background with minimal battery drain and tracks your movements in real time. Once you go through a quick setup process and permit someone to see your movements, they can trace wherever you go. There's a parental control feature that prevents kids from disabling the tracker. Using Google Maps, you can see where the person you're tracking is and how long they've been at that location. Call it Google Latitude for the very paranoid. However, unlike the location-tracking data issue with Apple, you must grant permission to people who want to view your data. The app's developers tout it as not only a way to keep track of kids and spouses, but employees as well. Footprints is a free download, and the first 60 days of the service are free. After that, you can do a 3-month subscription for USD$0.99, yearly subscription for $2.99 or 2-year subscription for $4.99.
Heart Story: One player's quest for iconic affection
The first character I ever made in WoW was a rogue named Lockette. She was an adorable little gnome with green pigtails who I played for 5 minutes while my boyfriend (who'd left himself logged in on the character selection screen) was in the shower. I don't recall much of what I did in the game during those few minutes, but I remember being fascinated by the sight of my character's footsteps on the snowy terrain of Dun Morogh. Looking back on it now, I know it probably sounds like a strange thing to be impressed by, but my gaming experience at that time was limited to sprite RPGs that didn't have those kinds of little details. I wasn't used to being able to affect the environment of a game. So I ran in circles, squiggles, and zigzags, then finally made a small effort at drawing something simple: a heart. That's when I realized the prints fade quite quickly.
HTC Legend still looking good -- as a render, anyway
We got a pretty good glimpse of HTC's rumored Legend back in that huge roadmap leak a few days back, but now we're circling back for a better shot (and a few more details) of the probable Hero successor in all its roughly-rendered glory. High-end aficionados are probably still going to want to set their sights on the Bravo (or the Google Phone, Nexus One, Passion, what have you), but this sucker won't be a slouch, either -- it looks like it's signed up for a 600MHz MSM7227 and, more importantly, a WVGA display (turns out it's only HVGA). We'd already known this from the last leak, but what's new here is the presence of HTC People II and Footprints II, suggesting that Sense is going to get some sort of refresh to commemorate the launch. Add in the alleged metal casing, and we bet this thing's gonna be a looker in the flesh; needless to say, March can't come soon enough. Update: As friendly tipster M. Schmidler points out, since the time of writing the source has corrected the resolution to be HVGA instead of the previously thought WVGA. Frowny face.
HTC's Footprints app making tracks to other devices
Look ma, users at XDA-Developers are up to shenanigans again, and this time NFSFAN has posted up a new version of his Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM with some of HTC Touch Cruise's (Iolite) magic in it. The list of goodies added -- this is still Beta -- is long, but high on the list are Footprints, HTC's geotagging app, and some TouchFlo2D. So if you're an HTC Vogue user on Sprint, Alltel, Verizon, Bell, or Telus, get to it (but make sure to stay safe by reading, reading, and reading!) and do let us know how it turns out for you.[Via wmpoweruser]
HTC debuts new Touch Cruise phone with 'Footprints' geotagging
HTC's got an all-new version of its GPS-centric Touch Cruise handset, with a thinner, slicker design and a new HTC Footprints app for integrating that location data with photos and notes. Of course, the phone doubles as a traditional in-car navigation system, cradle included, with GPS and a-GPS, but there's plenty else to love here, including quad band GSM, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, a microSD slot and a 3.2 megapixel camera. The 2.8-inch QVGA screen betrays this phone's consumer-bent, but the truly notable functionality here is actually in the software: HTC Footprints takes geotagging a step further, allowing to to take notes and audio clips and embed them in a "postcard" of sorts, all still tied to that GPS location data -- the cards are even auto-named by their location. Footprints also works outdoors and indoors, which isn't quite explained, but we're guessing it just remembers where you were when you lost a signal. There's a world-friendly WCDMA / HSPA 900 / 2100MHz version, of course, but us North Americans will be getting the 850 / 1900MHz flavor as a unlocked handset for $500 to $600 in Q2. Check out the read links below for the full PR and some early hands-ons, and there's video after the break.%Gallery-42893%[Via Phone Scoop; thanks to everyone who sent this in]Read - HTC PRRead - Touch Cruise hands-on (in Russian)Read - Touch Cruise hands-on (in English)
