mapping
Latest
iPad gets approval from FAA to replace paper flight charts and maps
The Federal Aviation Administration is moving with the times, it would seem, as it has just granted the first approval for the use of iPads instead of paper charts for informing airline pilots while on duty. There are already a number of EFB (electronic flight bag) devices in use, however the iPad is by far the cheapest and most portable one that's been validated yet. Executive Jet Management, a charter flight operator, went through three months of testing with the iPad, wherein it was used by 55 pilots on 250 flights, in order to obtain its FAA license to rely exclusively on the Apple tablet for its in-flight mapping data. Other airlines will have to go through the same process in order to dump their big stacks of paper charts for a slinky slate, but the important thing is that the precedent has been set. As to redundancies in case of failure or a software crash, the likeliest scenario is that pilots will carry a spare iPad with them, though there wasn't even a single (software) crash during the trial period -- which also included rapid decompression and electronic interference testing. So there you have it, the iPad's found itself a grown-up job just in time to retire from its throne as consumer sales leader. [Thanks, Andrew]
Visualized: Android activations mapped geographically, chronologically, breathtakingly (video)
Do you ever wish for an easier way to show your uninitiated friends what you mean when you say Android is growing? Well, here's the video for you: a Google-produced map of the world that throbs with Android activations over time, highlighted by some truly eye-opening flourishes in the immediate aftermath of marquee handset launches. The Google guys have even given us handy countdown timers -- "Droid launch in 3, 2, 1..." -- and broken things down by continent for easier viewing. Only thing missing is a soundtrack, so just have your Tron: Legacy OST loaded up and ready before jumping past the break. [Thanks, Leo Z.]
United States gets a National Broadband Map, finds much of its nation doesn't have broadband
The FCC of the Obama administration has been very keen to highlight the fact that many Americans today still aren't riding the information superhighway, a mission of awareness-spreading that was advanced a little more yesterday with the introduction of the National Broadband Map. Mostly the work of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, this $200 million project provides broadband data for thousands of providers with over 25 million searchable records -- all of which can be visualized in map form, categorized by connectivity type, or downloaded in full to your computer. APIs have been made available for anyone interested in remixing / using the NBM elsewhere, while information updates are promised every six months. In terms of the maps' content, we're still seeing unsatisfactorily wide swathes of broadband-free countryside, but we suppose the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one.
MapQuest for Android brings free turn-by-turn navigation, OpenStreetMap support to Google lovers
Oh, sure -- iOS had it first, but the Android flavor of MapQuest's mobile app has OpenStreetMaps. How d'ya like those apples ? The aforesaid app has just found its way into the Android Market, and as with the iPhone version, it's 100 percent free to download. Unlike most other alternatives, this one provides gratis voice guidance / turn-by-turn navigation, voice search, a map toolbar, walking / driving directions, live traffic flow information and a couple of "major" new adds. Those are OpenStreetMap (OSM) data -- useful for allowing consumers to use the app internationally -- as well as the ability to directly report errors onto the map. Check out the source link to learn more, and head on over to the Market (if you're rocking v1.6 and up) to get your download on. Happy trails, as they say.
New York subway schedule turned into a beautiful, musical visualization (video)
HTML5, JavaScript and a tiny pinch of Flash. Those are your ingredients for building one of the neatest, simplest websites we've come across in a long time. Conductor, as its maker Alexander Chen dubs it, is a visualization built on New York's publicly available subway schedule API. It shows the progress of the Big Apple's underground carriers throughout the day and garnishes the experience with a delightful musical trick every time two lines cross. You can see it on video after the break or just hit the source link and experience it for yourself.
China's Map World now providing maps and POIs within the Great Firewall
Who needs a state-sponsored online mapping service? Why China, of course. We know that particular government doesn't exactly trust the Googles and who knows how far astray its Google Maps service might lead those impressionable citizens. So now there's Map World, created by the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping and deemed to be "authoritative, credible and unified." The service has been out since last year but has only recently lost its beta tag. We've spent a few minutes clicking around and it certainly seems reasonably comprehensive, offering map and satellite views plus 120,000 POIs and even 3D views of some cities, which could make finding your way to den of KIRF all that much easier.
TomTom's Map Share update brings crowdsourced navigation to iPhone GPS app
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.
Google Latitude makes brief appearance in App Store, gets yanked post-haste
Ah, the games that grown-ups play. It's a situation that's beginning to feel an awful lot like the Google Voice fiasco that made the rounds in mid-2009, but if it ends in a similar fashion, you won't find us kvetching about the teases. As the story goes, a bona fine Google Latitude app made its appearance in Japan's App Store hours ago, only to be yanked before it could sashay over to any other nation. TechCrunch reckons that it was El Goog doing the pulling -- it's quite possible that the folks in Mountain View weren't quite ready to publicly reveal it, and with all that Chrome action going down yesterday, it's not hard to imagine how an impending launch was overlooked. At any rate, the description of the app as well as most of the screenshots were in English, so we're cautiously optimistic that it'll resurface in the near future once a few Is are dotted and Ts crossed. With iOS 4 supporting background location, there's hardly a reason to wait any longer, right?
Google Maps causes border dispute between Nicaragua and (army-less) Costa Rica
Here's a interesting bizarre one. There's only one highway that connects Costa Rica and Nicaragua (I walked across it, shown above), but you can totally swim from one country to the other if you aren't afraid of circumventing authority. But if you're planning to traverse the San Juan over on the Caribbean side... well, who knows where you'll start and end. It's bruited that the Nicaraguan military recently invaded Costa Rica, lowered a Costa Rican flag and hoisted up a Nicaraguan one. Why? 'Cause Google Maps said so. Seriously. Nicaraguan commander Eden Pastora actually used a slightly inaccurate Google Maps portrayal as justification for invading land that's clearly shown as Costa Rican on official maps of both nations. In fact, this whole mess has grown into quite the debacle, with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla proclaiming that its northerly neighbor had "forgot where its border is." Moreover, Costa Rica is worried that dredging done by Nicaraguans on the river's edge is both altering the border in Nicaragua's favor and damaging vital flora and fauna in the surrounding area. We're hearing that Organization of American States Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza will soon meet with officials in both nations to get this ironed out peacefully, and considering that Costa Rica hasn't had a military in over three score, we know who's hoping that the guns stay holstered. So much for Pura Vida, huh? [Thanks, Ignacio]
Google's Street View goes worldwide, Antarctica and all
Google's Street View still needs to add a lot more data on the lesser traveled roads of the world, but there's no denying that the virtual vacation assistant has evolved quite nicely since launching in May of 2007. Back then, only five US cities were programmed in; today, there are street-level views of locations on every single continent, including Antarctica (shown above, as if you couldn't tell). The additions of Ireland, Brazil and Penguinland allow Google to make the claim, and we couldn't be happier about it. Though, we still aren't canceling our scheduled reader meetup at McMurdo -- details coming soon!
Bing Maps' Taxi Fare Calculator keeps your lollygagging cab driver in check
We've all been there -- you step into a cab in a foreign place, ask your driver to head to your destination, and then he / she asks you if you'd rather take the highway or go direct. Or, worse still, senses your innocence and proceeds to head the wrong direction for two or three miles. In an effort to give desperate travelers a better sense of how much it'll cost to get from point A to point B D in a cab, Bing Maps' new Taxi Fare Calculator was created. Turns out, this add-in for the mapping service was built by someone hankering to win the King of Bing Maps competition, and while it's only capable of calculating routes around a few dozens cities right now, we get the impression that this could soon grow into a monster of its own. Hey Microsoft, when's the (badly needed) optimized-for-mobile version coming out?
Apple acquires web mapping firm Poly9, probably has something up its sleeve
Per usual, it seems as if this deal has happened in the dark of the night, but thankfully for the curious among us, it's a bit difficult to disguise a caravan of humans escaping Québec and fleeing to Cupertino. According to a report in The Sun as well as an independent confirmation on our end, Apple has picked up a small Canadian firm by the name of Poly9. As of now, every last employee has been relocated to California, with the couple who declined left to find other work in the Great White North. Poly9's official website is also blanked out, but in the past, the company has been credited with developing loads of web-based mapping programs (primarily in Flash, crazily enough) as well as APIs for a handful of monolithic clients like Microsoft, Yahoo!, NORAD and MSNBC. Generally speaking, Apple tends to integrate its purchases into the workflow at a rather rapid clip, so we're actually expecting something to come of this in the not-too-distant future. What, exactly, remains to be seen. [Thanks, Anonymous]
Artist uses GPS to map things the old-fashioned way: walking around
Back in the day, our homeboys Magellan, Lewis, Clark, Rand, and McNally didn't have anything better to do than walk around, look at stuff, and make some maps. Then along came people like Google, hell-bent on semi-automating via satellite what used to be a really down-to-earth task. In 2010, mapmaker and artist Jeremy Wood has found a way to get his kicks via satellite and pedestrianism. His latest project Traverse Me is a simple enough idea: walk around in the defined area with a GPS unit and end up with a 1:1 scale map of where he walked. Wood traversed the University of Warwick (avoiding paths and roads when possible) over 17 days and ended up with a plot of a very human-looking 238 miles. While they certainly aren't very useful for getting from point A to point B, Wood's maps unveil a weird new kind of topography. They don't particularly want to make us visit the University of Warwick, but we certainly wouldn't mind hanging prints of some of these bad boys on our living room walls.
Zoomable 8-bit city maps make navigation seem so simple
Brett Camper, we salute you. We were downright enamored with your 8-bit version of an NYC city map back in March, but now that you've had time to crank out a handful of others (including Detroit, Berlin, Amsterdam, Austin and Seattle), we feel it's time to give credit where credit is obviously due. We've seen a fair amount of 8-bit gear in our day, but a zoomable map? Crème de la Crème. Hit the source link if you're up for wasting a few hours.
Google Maps Navigation could come to iPhone, other platforms soon
Ooh, goodie! Try as we may, we've yet to really find a (good) free alternative to Google Maps Navigation on the iPhone, and while Navigon's MobileNavigator gets our highest recommendations in the paid GPS department, Google's own turn-by-turn option is just about enough to make any iPhone-toting traveler jump ship and snag an Android handset. Thankfully for us all, it seems as if this predicament won't be nearly as trying in the near future, with the company's own Steve Lee confirming to TechRadar that Google Maps Navigation would be coming to "other platforms" in due time. MacUser specifically mentions the solution coming to iPhone OS, and frankly, we couldn't think of a better app to ship alongside version 4.0 than this. You're good at taking hints, right Goog?
LIDAR-equipped robot maps dangerous areas in 3D so you don't have to
Looks like the kids at MIT might have a little competition for their LIDAR-equipped 3D mapping drone. Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology have teamed up with the University of Missouri-Columbia for a prototype robot that uses light detection and ranging (similar to RADAR, but with lasers) to map areas and send the 3D data to a nearby laptop. The technology not only provides detailed info on floor plans and physical structures (such as possible structural damage) but it can also "see" people inside a space. There are many possible applications for this, from spotting terrorists hiding in caves to seeing if your new internet girlfriend really looks like her profile pic, or -- and this is especially important in the modern era -- seeing if your new internet girlfriend is actually a terrorist (we wondered why she wanted that first meeting to take place in a cave). "Once you have the images, you can zoom in on objects and look at things from different angles," says Dr. Norbert Maerz, associate professor of geological engineering at Missouri S&T -- an ability that we wish we had while browsing PlentyofFish.com.
Navigon keeps MobileNavigator iPhone app fresh with 3D terrain views, Facebook / Twitter integration
Hey, software engineers of all shapes and sizes -- are you keeping an eye on this? Navigon is releasing yet another significant update for its continually improving MobileNavigator iPhone GPS app, and at this point, we reckon these guys and gals should get some sort of medal for pursuing innovation on an existing product rather than leaping to "the next best thing." The latest refresh adds in three primary features: 3D terrain views, a 3D panorama view ($9.99 extra) and in-app connectivity with Facebook and Twitter. As you'd expect, the latter enables users to broadcast current position, destination and ETA to social media outlets, which should make existing Foursquare addicts overwhelmed with joy. Version 1.5.0 also throws in MyRoutes, which is said to analyze your driving habits, patterns, location and time / day in order to provide "up to three routes clearly displayed in-map with ETA, distance and driving times for each." Best of all? It's just $69.99 ($20 less than normal) until February 15th, while the real-time traffic add-on is reduced $5 to $19.99 for the same duration.
Siri for iPhone is like the proverbial Genie in a bottle
We're getting closer and closer to some of the stuff we see it science fiction literature and films. Siri [iTunes link] is a small Silicon Valley startup with a really breakthrough product that for now only works on the iPhone. Here's the deal. You download the free app, start it up, and tell it what you want. It could be "Will it snow in Des Moines today?" or "Where can I find the nearest burger" or it could be "Find the nearest parks". It parses your comments, runs out to the web for a few seconds and comes back with a lot of suggestions. It gives you buttons to call the places you've found, or to show them on Google Maps and get you directions. I tried to get a bit fancier saying "Make me a reservation for 2 at the nearest Olive Garden tonight at 7." The app figured out Olive Garden didn't take reservations through their service, but it provided me a number for the nearest Olive Garden and offered to map it.
3D maps demoed on Sony Ericsson X10, Snapdragon paying off
Ericsson Labs is showing off an API for navigating through a three-dimensional interpretation of the world based on real imagery powered by Saab spinoff (the defense firm, not the car company) C3 Technologies on Sony Ericsson's upcoming X10 -- and in a word, it's looking impressive. The buttons for controlling the action are a bit hokey, of course, but don't worry too much about that -- this is strictly a proof of concept, and the important thing is that no matter how much panning, tilting, and swooping through the cityscape the demo-giver does, video output stays above 30 frames per second. Thank goodness for Snapdragon, eh? There's no indication that we'll see a shipping version of this app on retail X10s out of the box, but let's hope something awesome comes of this. Follow the break for video.
NAVTEQ, Microsoft team up for better 3D maps
Microsoft already uses NAVTEQ maps in its products, and now it's going to start helping to make 'em better: the two companies have agreed to work together on new ways to collect, create, and store 3D map data and visuals. The basic idea seems to be for Microsoft to help NAVTEQ create better 3D mapping tools in return for supplying the data for Bing Maps, but NAVTEQ says whatever improvements are made will be rolled out to all its clients, so this should pretty much benefit everyone. P.S.- This is a pretty wonky note, but remember that NAVTEQ is wholly owned by Nokia (although it operates independently) so this is technically the second Microsoft / Nokia alliance announced in the past four months. Ah, young love.
