Google Maps 5.7 for Android introduces Transit Navigation (Beta)

Google releasing Google Maps 5.7 for Android. From Bangkok to Baltimore, they added Transit Navigation (Beta), updated access to directions, better suggested search results, and a photo viewer to Place pages—all of which can help you whether you’re traveling to an unfamiliar part of town or visiting a city across the world.

Transit Navigation (Beta)
Google Maps Navigation (Beta) currently provides over 12 billion miles of GPS-guided driving and walking directions per year. Now, GPS turn-by-turn (or in this case, stop-by-stop) navigation is available for public transit directions in 400+ cities around the globe with Transit Navigation.
Transit Navigation uses GPS to determine your current location along your route and alerts you when it’s time to get off or make a transfer. This is particularly helpful if you’re in a city where you don’t speak the language and can’t read the route maps or understand the announcements. After starting your trip with Transit Navigation, you can open another application or put your phone away entirely and Google Maps will still display an alert in your notification bar and vibrate your phone when your stop is coming up.

Left: Transit directions without Navigation. Right: with Navigation

Navigation alerts appear even if you switch to another app
Now you can spend more time enjoying the sights out the window and less time worrying about how many stops are left, where you are along the route or whether you missed your stop. Since Transit Navigation relies on GPS signals, we recommend using this feature for above-ground transit.

Updated Directions
Now that we’ve improved our directions services, we wanted them to be incredibly easy to pull up on your screen. If you select the driving or walking icon and your route is supported by Google Maps Navigation, the Navigation icon will automatically appear so you can get access to step-by-step directions in one click. Note: this change is currently only in place for driving and walking and does not appear for public transit.

One-click access to Navigation from directions
We’ve also streamlined how you access directions from within a Place page. Before, clicking directions in a Place page would bring up options for “Driving Navigation,” “Walking Navigation” and “Directions.” Now, you’ll be taken straight to the map and see the new directions box shown above.

Improved Search Suggest
We’ve made two changes to search suggestions that improve their quality and speed. First, we’ve added category icons, so instead of all search suggestions displaying the same icon, the icon next to the listing will reflect the type of result. You’ll see a pin for a Google Places listing, a star for a starred Place or location, a clock for a previously used search term, a person for contacts and a magnifying glass for “anything else.”

Two examples of search suggest with new icons
Also, any place you got directions to or called directly from its Places page will be included as a suggestion for a relevant search. For example, if you recently received directions to the U.S. Post Office on Wilshire Boulevard, afterward, when you begin a search with [p] or [bou], that U.S. Post Office would appear as a search suggestion.

Photo viewer for Place pages
Since we released business photos for Place pages last October, millions of photos have been added to Place pages around the world. To enable you to view these photos on the run, a slick new photo viewer has been added so you can browse photos while deciding where to go.

Left: Business photos in Place pages. Right: New photo viewer
To start using Google Maps 5.7 for Android, download the update here. This update requires an Android OS 2.1+ device and works anywhere Google Maps is currently available.

Google Street View soon in Bulgaria

http://vbox7.com/play:65a1def9e8&ef=1

Bulgarian cities and towns will be visible through Google Street View as Google executives have already notified the Bulgarian authorities of their intention to launch the product for Bulgaria.

Bulgaria’s Commission for Protection of Personal Data has been visited by Google officials from offices in Ireland and the Czech Republic several days ago, Commission head Veneta Shopova has announced.

The Google representatives, Simon Miechen from Ireland and Eva Martinikova from the Czech Republic, have notified the Bulgarian authorities of their intention to photograph all cities, towns, and villages in Bulgaria in order to launch the images in their Google Street View application.

Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views from various positions along many streets in the world. It was launched on May 25, 2007, originally only in several cities in the United States, and has since gradually expanded to include more cities and rural areas worldwide, to include 27 countries at present.

The Google executives have told the Bulgarian authorities they will probably complete the task of photographing Bulgaria in two months because they need sunny weather. They plan to use Bulgarian drivers as well for their specially adapted cars that make the 360-degree images of each street.

Google has told the Bulgarian government that they no longer gather Wi-Fi data, and dim the license plate numbers and people’s faces that get in the images. Google also plans to carry out an information campaign in Bulgaria before the photographing begins.

“We cannot ban them to do that if they have obeyed the notification rules, and have gotten a registration as an administrator of personal data,” Shopova has told the Trud daily.

Google has hired a Bulgarian law office for their Google Street View work in Bulgaria but is yet to decide if it will register a firm in Bulgaria, or will work through their office in Ireland. If the latter is the case, that will force the Bulgarian Personal Data Protection Commission to refer any inspections to their counterparts in Ireland.

The Google representatives have stated that the launch of Google Street View in Bulgaria will help boost tourism.

The Snippets Gone From Google Results

Sometime over this past weekend Google stopped showing any review snippet with either Blended or the Branded One Box Results in the main search results view for many results. It appears that snippets are still visible in restaurants, hotels and possibly other heavily reviewed areas

New view (from 6/27):
 

 


 
View from last week (taken 6/23)
 

Review snippets have also been removed from most typical blended results (again with the exception of restaurants/hotels). This change seems consistent with the recent change to remove the images from the Blended results that occurred earlier in the month and effectively moves more information above the fold. Review snippets were first seen in the Google Blended results tests that ran last summer and were a regular part of the results since the Blended results were formally released in late October of last year. For me, they were a salient feature that dramatically changed the role of reviews in reputation management bringing a “typical review” front and center for all to see. The review snippets were derived via algo and were intended to provide a representative flavor of the review corpus. As in my example above, the snippets were not always accurate.  While I don’t think that was a reason in their demise, I am sure some businesses will be grateful they are gone.