As if we weren't already excited enough about the next version of Google's Android mobile OS, Google has now announced that Android 2.0 devices will offer GPS navigation with 3D views and turn-by-turn directions. Google Maps Navigation looks great, and it's a smack in the face to Apple, who seem to been distancing themselves from Google after buying their own mapping company. The iPhone is cool, but it's hard to beat Google Maps at its own game.

It's especially hard when Google's offering practically everything you get from a pricey GPS navigation unit, right in your Android phone. 3D maps, live traffic updates, and voice directions are all included, along with Google's Street View and Satellite view. When it comes out next week, the Verizon Droid will be the first phone to support the new navigation features. For right now, it'll only work in the United States, but other countries with Google Maps should get it eventually.

If nobody told you, you might not even notice it, but the team at Google Maps just introduced some subtle visual improvements that make their maps easier to read. Worldwide changes include narrower roads, better contrast between text and the rest of the map, and colors that don't conflict with traffic and other overlays. You'll also start to see road detail at a slightly more distant zoom level. In short, the map view just became more like the hybrid map-satellite view.

How much this matters to you depends partly on where you live. Some cities received specific changes to the appearance of their maps. For example, Beijing's subway line is now marked in colors that match the local subway map, and London's rail lines are easier to see. To really appreciate how much clearer the new look is, take a look at some of the before-and-after shots on the Google Maps blog.

[via AppScout]

Google has built Street View into a fairly comprehensive collection of images from city streets around the world. The problem is that Google's iconic street view vans can't get into every tight nook and cranny. That's why the big G is introducing a new camera-equipped vehicle: the Street View Trike. The trike is coming to a walkable space near you, if you nominate your favorite spot.

The trike is actually a bike with a camera-equipped cart attached to it. It looks a lot like one of those ice cream carts, except that instead of ice cream, it's carrying thousands of dollars of photo equipment. Locations the trike has already visited include Legoland, California. Check out the video after the jump for more fun trike action.

[via Lifehacker]

Huzzah! Google Street View has finally been released in Canada (and the Czech Republic). This Canadian blogger is pretty excited, since it has been a long time coming. There's something surreal about finding your own house in Google Maps, then actually looking at your front door.

For people who have never used Google Street View, the functionality isn't immediately obvious. To enable it, you have to drag the icon of a man that is above the zoom slider to a place on a street. The experience is pretty surreal the first time you do it.

Though this might just seem like a whiz-bang feature that looks cool but doesn't have a real-world application, imagine you're trying to get to an important appointment in an office building you've never been to before. Imagine how much easier it would be to find your way if you already know what the building looks like.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

For the last few months I've been working on a small side-project away from Download Squad that requires the use of GPS co-ordinates. Whilst the system I'm using has some default co-ordinates built-in, I really needed a way to find out the latitude and longitude for a few other locations around the world to give my little project a test. After wrangling with Google Maps URLs, and trying to extract the GPS data from their URLs - admittedly a little unsuccessfully - I finally came across Get Lat Lon - a super-easy mash-up that lets you search for (or locate on a map) the place you're wanting the location data for.

It's arguably a niche tool - however if you're looking for a quick and easy way to find out the latitude or longitude of a place on the globe, Get Lat Lon is just the ticket.

Twitter Trends, whether you find them useful or not, are a rich and interesting set of data to work with. The problem is that you can't narrow it down much: trend data comes Twitter users around the world, with no way to filter by region. Trendsmap combines Twitter Trends with Google Maps to add that ability.

You can zoom in and out on the map to narrow your view of trends to the area you're interested in. Clicking on an individual trend gives you more info, including how often people are tweeting about the trend, and additional links and media that might explain why it's popular. Trendsmap even pulls information on each topic from the Twitter Trend explanation site What The Trend.

[via Mashable]

Monopoly is a beloved board game classic that's sold plenty of copies thanks to licensed city-specific editions of its game board, and there are also various electronic and online versions of the game, but none of that compares to Monopoly City Streets. For City Streets, Parker Brothers has used Google maps to create a live, global game of Monopoly with real cities as the game board. Yes, that means that you can own (almost) any street in the world.

The building possibilities are also beefed up, with castles and skyscrapers. Chance cards have changed a bit, too: now they're used to build hazards on your competitors' property. To counteract hazards, you have to get a bulldozer card. With all of this building and demolishing, Monopoly City Streets sounds more like a hybrid of Monopoly and Sim City than a straight-up Monopoly game. Maybe, as the game's website claims, this will be epic fun. If nothing else, this is one time Google can be glad to hear its name in the same sentence as "monopoly."

The game opens today at 6 p.m. GMT / 1 p.m. EST, so you'd better be ready if you want to be one of the first players out of the gate and snap up your favorite property.


[via AppScout]

Have you ever wondered why smartphones like Blackberries and iPhones don't provide turn-by-turn directions in their Google Maps programs? The answer is probably not what you think. It turns out that the map imagery that is used in Google Maps has licensing restrictions against it, preventing it from being used for turn-by-turn directions. Although it's easy to find various mapping sites online that provide free access to geographical information, it's very hard to find actual maps that can be used in applications that aren't extremely expensive or who's use is heavily constrained by license restrictions.

Open Street Map is a project that was started to create a completely free set of maps that could be used by anyone in any creative way they can imagine. The site operates like a wiki, where users are encouraged to contribute information when they can. If you've never been involved in making maps before, that's okay; the site includes a beginner's guide and a very comprehensive map making reference.

While the site isn't as slick as Google Maps, there's something satisfying knowing that the maps are unencumbered by heavy license restrictions. If you like it, you can use it in your own application - how you want. A quick comparison between Open Street Map and Google Maps looking at my neighborhood showed some apparent differences of scale, though either would work well for driving directions. Interestingly, Open Street Map is more up-to-date in my area, including a road that was only completed a few weeks ago as part of a new shopping centre.

Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google!

In this edition:

• Google SearchWiki lets you customize results
• Google adds new features to BlackBerrys and iPhones
• LIFE Magazine's photo archive comes online
• GrandCentral App comes to Mac
• Google plans to work with OEMs to pre-install Chrome
• Access Google Docs within Gmail

If you have friends who live across town from you, it can be a constant tussle over who is going to drive to whose neighborhood. Sometimes the best answer is to find an agreeable place to meet in the middle, and now you can do that quickly and easily on a site called Meet InBetween Us. It uses the power of Google Maps to suggest places to meet, and then gives you the driving directions.

Using Meet InBetween Us only involves a few steps. First, put in the starting locations of everyone who's meeting, and then adjust the "middle ground" according to your needs. The halfway point between a friend and me was in the middle of a river, for example, so I moved it onto land. Potential meeting places are divided into categories, to make sure you don't get a bar when you want a coffee shop. Once you find one you want, just click "meet here," and it will come up on the map and show you driving directions. If popular restaurant recommendation sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon added this as a feature, it would be phenomenally useful.

Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google!

In this edition:

• Find your polling place with Google Maps
• My Location comes to Wi-Fi
• Gmail gets emoticons and canned responses
• Create a neighborhood Trick-or-Treat map with Google Maps
• Androidaholic round-up

In this edition:

• Docs spreadsheet is getting a facelift
• More admin controls for Google Apps Gmail
• Project 10^100
• Map Maker launches in 17 more countries
• Google and perpetual beta
• Google Grab-Bag

If you've ever wanted to drive the Autobahn in Germany, tool around London in an 18-wheeler or do doughnuts in the Googleplex parking lot, the Geoquake 2D driving simulator will help you out. The simulator uses Google Maps for its driving courses.

You can choose to drive through Tokyo Station, London, Las Vegas and several other locations. You don't even have to be a very good driver, since the 2D format allows you to just drive all over everything - quite handy when you keep forgetting which side of the road you should be on in London.

I had the best luck in Tokyo Station. In other locations I had frequent instances of driving over a plain gray screen as the frames per second weren't keeping up. That could be from my old computer or slow internet connection though, and not an issue for those of you with better connections.

It's certainly not a slick video game by any means but it is kind of cool to see what is possible in the future. Grand Theft Auto in your own neighborhood perhaps?

[Via CNET]

Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google.

In this, yes, we're alive edition:

• Google tests automatic Blogger support for Google Reader
• Gmail adds "never send it to Spam" filter
• CalDAV support comes to Google Calendar
• Multilingual Google
• Google Maps transit directions come to more phones

Welcome to Googleholic, your bi-weekly fix for everything Google!

In this edition:

• Gmail fights PayPal and eBay phishers
• Protocol Buffers go open source
• Walking directions for Google Maps
• YouTube Screening Room, round two
• Viacom v. YouTube and what it means for your privacy