Google Maps: How Late Your Bus Is?

Waiting for your bus can sometimes seem like slowly dying in a desert as you watch vehicle-shaped mirages glimmer on the horizon. As a remedy for that transit-parched feel, Google is integrating live transit updates into Maps for mobile and desktop.
 


 
Before you get all excited, the update is only available in four U.S. cities (Boston, Portland, San Diego and San Francisco) and two European cities (Madrid and Turin), and for Google Maps for mobile on Android devices (although it will work on mobile browsers, and it doesn’t require any downloads to access).

Citizens of those cities will be able to see delays and alerts when clicking on transit stations or planning routes, as well as “live departure times.”

Google Wallet: Make your phone your wallet


Today in our New York City office, along with Citi, MasterCard, First Data and Sprint, we gave a demo of Google Wallet, an app that will make your phone your wallet. You’ll be able to tap, pay and save using your phone and near field communication (NFC). We’re field testing Google Wallet now and plan to release it soon.



Google Wallet is a key part of our ongoing effort to improve shopping for both businesses and consumers. It’s aimed at making it easier for you to pay for and save on the goods you want, while giving merchants more ways to offer coupons and loyalty programs to customers, as well as bridging the gap between online and offline commerce.
Because Google Wallet is a mobile app, it will do more than a regular wallet ever could. You’ll be able to store your credit cards, offers, loyalty cards and gift cards, but without the bulk. When you tap to pay, your phone will also automatically redeem offers and earn loyalty points for you. Someday, even things like boarding passes, tickets, ID and keys could be stored in Google Wallet.
At first, Google Wallet will support both Citi MasterCard and a Google Prepaid Card, which you’ll be able to fund with almost any payment card. From the outset, you’ll be able to tap your phone to pay wherever MasterCard PayPass is accepted. Google Wallet will also sync your Google Offers, which you’ll be able to redeem via NFC at participating SingleTap™ merchants, or by showing the barcode as you check out. Many merchants are working to integrate their offers and loyalty programs with Google Wallet.
With Google Wallet, we’re building an open commerce ecosystem, and we’re planning to develop APIs that will enable integration with numerous partners. In the beginning, Google Wallet will be compatible with Nexus S 4G by Google, available on Sprint. Over time, we plan on expanding support to more phones.
To learn more please visit our Google Wallet website at www.google.com/wallet.
This is just the start of what has already been a great adventure towards the future of mobile shopping. We’re incredibly excited and hope you are, too.

Fwix’s API “help big companies and developers produce local products”

Google, Foursquare and SimpleGeo are separately working to build a definitive database of places. Now you can add location-information startup Fwix to that list; it’s releasing a developer API toolkit Tuesday to provide app makers with a wealth of data on places.

Fwix’s API toolkit consists of three key components — places, content and monetization — meaning that developers can not only turn to Fwix as a place database provider, but can use the startup’s geodata pool to grab content associated with places, and tap into its ad network to add plug-and-play ads to their apps.

The primary reason for the release, Fwix CEO Darian Shirazi explains, is to “help big companies and developers produce local products.”

For developers and app makers, the API offering provides free and unrestricted access, with read and write functionality, to location data that they can mix up, mash up and transform as they please.

So, what makes this API standout from the rest? “It’s the marriage between places and content,” Shirazi explains.

The content he speaks of, as indexed by Fwix, includes photos, reviews, status updates, events, news, Foursquare and Gowalla checkins and other mobile or social activity happening around places. The startup’s strength has long been its ability to parse out the places, people and things buried inside web content and match those data points up against places.

“Entity extraction,” the formal expression used to describe this process, “is the core of the company,” Shirazi says.

Shirazi speaks of app makers being able to use Fwix’s data set to uncover the top 10 nearby bars or restaurants based on checkins or reviews, serve up all nearby deals or even create a video application that hinges around local data.

Fwix has partnered with Factual on the places database piece of the puzzle. The two are attempting to create an open platform by allowing developers to write back data on places — developers can edit or delete place data and contribute to the evolution of the database. In doing so, Fwix will also be fighting with SimpleGeo,Foursquare and Google for developer attention, all of which have made significant investments in their respective databases and APIs.

“Our belief is that there is never going to be one agreed upon open places database,” Shirazi says.

He does, however, want Fwix to connect the dots between disparate place identification numbers across multiple services. The startup is collecting and matching the place IDs from other providers with its own IDs, and allowing developers to request back those ID numbers in their API calls. Not every Fwix place will have associated place IDs from other providers on day one, but this is the eventual goal.

Fwix, which has raised a total of $6.7 million since 2008, has the grand vision of eliminating text input in location queries, and instead replacing the search query with a user’s location, Shirazi says.