Digital Trends
There’s more to Google Street View than entertainment and not getting lost, it seems. Authorities have used it, along with GPS tracking from a cell phone, to locate a nine-year-old girl reportedly taken by her grandmother.
The problem began after Rose Maltais collected her granddaughter Natalie from her guardians for a weekend away.
Athol, Massachusetts, police chief Timothy Anderson told the BBC that Rose Maltais "said that she wasn’t going to return Natalie and then left the state."
Nokia has unveild a beta version of Maps 2.0, a new digital mapping application for its Series 60 and Series 40 mobile devices that aims to make those awkward paper maps a thing of the past for pedestrians, just as in-vehicle GPS systems have eliminated awkward paper-folding for drivers. The new services puts step-by-step, turn-by-turn directions on mobile phone screens just like in-vehicle systems, with the twist that Maps 2.0 offers a pedestrian focus, along with city guides, satellite imagery, and a sleek user interface.
Google has officially launched its Mapplets add-ons to Google Maps, a new collection of tools and mini-applications which enable users to layer third-party data—like real estate listings, events, photos, gas prices, and even YouTube videos—directly onto Google Maps. Originally announced in May when Google debuted street-level photography in Google Maps, the new tools are directly accessible within Google Maps—click the “Add Content” link in the My Maps tag in Google Maps—and users can save the customized maps in their own personal library.
At the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, Google announced new enhacements to its Web-based Google Maps which add street-level panoramic view to selected locations, plus Mapplets, which enable developers to create mini-programs which operate within Google Maps.
Google’s new Street View feature adds 360° street-level panorama photographs to selected locations, enabling users to get a ground-level understanding of an area directly within Google Maps. Although Google plans to roll out Street View photographs for additional locations over time, initially Street View is available for selected portions of San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York, Denver, and Miami.
Internet giant Google has added a new feature to its Google Maps offering: MyMaps is intended to let users quickly create custom maps via a simple point-and-click process, using Google Maps as a basis for their own creativity and map-making needs. "With this release, creating maps mashups is now as simple as pointing and clicking," said Google in a blog posting.
Yahoo yesterday said they had enhanced their Yahoo Maps service with a focus on improving ease of use and personalization. The new features are currently in beta and can be accessed here.
The new Yahoo Maps, the online portal said, offer features including multi-point routing with drag and drop reordering, a larger main map and new mini map, drag and drop points of interest and expandable turn by turn directions and a “My Locations†function which auto completes addresses from previously entered locations including saved map locations and Yahoo Address Book listings.
Online photo-sharing service SmugMug has announced that subscribers can now associate their photos with global locations using Google Maps. Users can enter an address associated with any photo, or upload data embedded in EXIF data from Global Positioning System (GPS) devices integrated into some cameras, phones, and camcorders. Visitors viewing photos with mapped locations will be able to zoom in on those locations using Google Maps.
SmugMug integrates with Google Maps using Google’s published API (Application Programming Interface). Google does not currently charge other companies for tying into Google Maps using the API, but reserves for itself the right to put advertising on the maps accessed through the services by third parties.
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