The Garmin Forerunner 110 GPS watch is the easiest-to-use GPS watch in history. Sccurately track your speed and distance plus download your information to Google Maps. This is the coolest new GPS product in a long time.
The new Garmin Rino 600 series
The new products in our Rino 600 series of GPS-enabled, touchscreen two-way radios offer more navigation features, mapping options and communication capabilities than anything else available for hiking, hunting, camping, geocaching, skiing and all of your other favorite outdoor activities. Here are two quick videos to teach you about the top features and the three different methods of communication. And you can learn more about which Rino is best for you at garmin.com/rino.
The Spammy Closed Listing Labels on Google Maps
The New York Times published a story about business listings on Google Maps that are incorrectly being labeled as closed as a result of spam. We thought it’d be helpful to share our view about this recent issue and directly assure business owners and Maps users that we’re actively working on a solution.
Every year, millions of businesses open, close, move, change their hours, get a new website, or make other types of changes. Because we can’t be on the ground in every city and town, we enable our great community of users to let us know when something needs to be updated. The vast majority of edits people have made to business listings have improved the quality and accuracy of Google Maps for the benefit of all Maps users.
For example, when there is a pending edit that indicates that a place might be closed, our system currently displays the label, “Reported to be closed. Not true?”. Only when that pending edit is reviewed and approved does the label change to, “This place is permanently closed. Not true?”.
About two weeks ago, news in the blogosphere made us aware that abuse — such as “place closed” spam labels — was occurring. And since then, we’ve been working on improvements to the system to prevent any malicious or incorrect labeling. These improvements will be implemented in the coming days.
We know that accurate listings on Google Maps are an important tool for many business owners. We take reports of spam and abuse very seriously and do our best to ensure the accuracy of a listing before updating it. That being said, we apologize to both business owners and users for any frustration this recent issue of spam labeling has caused, and we’re committed to making sure that users and potential customers continue to have the most up-to-date and accurate information possible.
Google Maps Mashups 9
Google Maps meet Maori Maps
This Google Map displays the locations of the tribal marae of Aotearoa New Zealand. A marae is a communal or sacred place, the centre of Maori identity and activity.
Maori Maps is a nationwide map of Aotearoa marae, with photos of each marae, contact and background information, and photographs. Currently the map displays marae in the Tai Tokerau (Northland) and Tamaki (Auckland) regions. Eventually the map will show all of Aotearoa’s more than 800 ancestral marae.
Google Aquires Dealmap
Dealmap’s biggest deal of today was selling itself to Google.
Websites offering daily deals and coupons have been one of the biggest trends in the location sector for a couple of years now. Google has been pretty keen to get into this market, which has so far been dominated by Groupon.
However Google has, until now, been painfully slow in rolling out its own Google Offers site. Google Offers launched in April promising daily offers – but the deals were initially only available in Portland, Oregon. Since then Google have rolled out the service to other areas but it is still limited to New York, San Francisco, Oakland and Portland.
By acquiring Deal Map Google can now access Dealmap’s deal exchange distribution network and presumably hopes to tap into Dealmap’s over 2 million users.
Google is not the only big player to have had an eye on Dealmap. Back in March Dealmap signed a deal with Bing to display deals on the homepage of m.bing.com.
For now Dealmap says it will continue as a distinct service. However my guess is that at some point in the future Dealmap and Google Offers will morph into one product (probably called Google Offers).
Google Maps at the Fringe
The world’s largest art festival the Edinburgh Fringe is due to start on Friday.
With over 2,000 different comedy, musical and theatrical shows taking place in over 250 different events what is needed is a Google Maps guide to the Fringe.
Enter stage right – Gigglemaps.
Using Gigglemaps you can click on any Edinburgh Fringe Festival venue and view the next five performances. The map includes a menu that allows you to filter the venues by category, such as comedy, cabaret etc.
The Google Maps Guide to Hiking in Norway
UT.no is a complete guide to hiking in Norway. The site features hiking routes, cabins, a calendar of events and a hiking map built with the Google Maps API.
As well as the usual Google Map views the map features detailed topographical map tiles. Using the menu in the map sidebar you can select to view cabins, summer trails, winter trails, videos, articles and even current skiing conditions.
Boston’s Buses Live on Google Maps
With TransitSpy you can follow Boston’s MBTA buses live on Google Maps.
Using the sidebar you can select any combination of MBTA bus routes and view in real-time the position of the buses on those routes. As well as the live buses all the stops on a route are displayed on the map. If you click on a bus-stop’s map marker you can see how long you will have to wait until the next bus arrives.
Loads More Birds Eye View
Google Maps today has a lot more aerial view imagery. The update includes new 45° imagery in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Argentina and Spain.
Here’s a list of the updated cities:
Augsburg, Germany. Barstow, CA. Bartlett, TX. Big Bear, CA. Blackstone, VA. Catalina Foothills, AZ. Córdoba, Spain. Delano, CA. Desert Hot Springs, CA. Richmond, VA. Elgin, TX. Healdsburg, CA. Helendale, CA. Hemet, CA. Houston, TX. Mendoza, Argentina. Midlothian, VA. Napa Valley, CA. New Braunfels, TX. Ojai, CA. Ottawa, Canada. Pensacola, FL. Porterville, CA. Plant City, FL. Rancho Del Lago, AZ. Rosario, Argentina. Santa Clarita, CA. Sarasota, FL. Taylor, TX. Temecula, CA. Treasure Island, CA. Troy, IL. Twentynine Palms, CA. Wakefield, VA. Yucca Valley, CA.
googlemapsmania
Google Apps
This week we have news from the Gmail and Google Docs teams, which both made interface changes to streamline how you use those applications. We also introduced some new keyboard shortcuts and made improvements to spreadsheet charts and functions.
New preview pane in Gmail Labs
The Gmail team has heard requests from many of you for an inbox preview pane, and last Thursday we introduced this option as a Gmail Lab. Now you can quickly scroll through a list of messages and see their contents, marking mail as “read” as you go. Once you enable this feature from the Labs area in Settings, you can choose between a vertical or horizontal split in your Gmail window.
Sharper, smoother Gmail mobile interface
Last week we also brought a higher-resolution Gmail interface for people who access their inbox through a mobile browser on a high-resolution display, like the iPhone 4. We also simplified the process to check for new mail—just pull down on the Message List. Transitions between different pages in the interface are also smoothly animated now.
New look and keyboard shortcuts for the documents list
Google Docs also got some big interface improvements to the documents list last week as part of a Google-wide project to streamline and simplify many of our applications. You can switch to the new design by clicking “Try the new look” under the gear icon in the upper right. We’ve also added dozens of new keyboard shortcuts to navigate through the documents list, create new files, share items and more. Just type ? to see the keyboard shortcut cheat sheet.
Automatic spreadsheet function snippets
There are spreadsheet functions you probably know by heart, and others like GoogleTranslate where you might need a tip now and again, so on Tuesday we introduced spreadsheet function snippets. When you start typing a function into a cell, we’ll instantly show you a list of matching functions. Hovering over a function displays its proper syntax and the function’s purpose. We hope this feature saves you trips to the Google Docs Help Center.
New chart types, and chart improvements for documents and drawings
We also made spreadsheet charts more powerful and easier to work with. After you create a chart, it’s now simpler to copy an image of your chart and embed it into a document or drawing. There are more chart types to choose from now, too—from candlestick and combo charts to GeoMaps and TreeMaps.
Who’s gone Google?
At the end of July, we opened our doors in Japan to more than 1,500 business technology leaders from the region for a lively discussion about the future of business technology. At the event, we heard from Softbank Group, Casio, Nortiz and Toda Corporation, who have all decided to switch to Google Apps from their legacy solutions. More than 60,000 other businesses around the world also switched to Google Apps since our last update here too, including Cox Schepp, Journal Communications, Crown Partners and ITV.
In the government sector, we were pleased to see that the U.S. General Services Administration completed their transition of 17,000 employees and contractors to Google Apps, an impressive feat considering it’s been just six months since they decided to “go Google.”