March 29, 2024

Bits Blog: Major Redesign of Google Maps Is Unveiled

Google is introducing more personalized maps that will recommend places to go based on their preferences and those of people with similar tastes. Google is introducing more personalized maps that will recommend places to go based on their preferences and those of people with similar tastes.

Google is taking on a new challenge in mapping — creating real-time, personalized maps for everyone on the planet.

At its annual I/O developers conference on Wednesday, Google announced a new Google Maps, rebuilt from the ground up, by far the biggest redesign since it introduced Maps eight years ago.

When users who are logged in to Google visit Maps, they will see highlighted the places they frequently visit, like restaurants, museums and their home and office. Google learns the places they go by drawing information from all of Google’s services — including search and Maps history, Google Plus posts and information in their Gmail in-box. (A search on the new Maps revealed, for instance, that Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, likes State Bird Provisions, a restaurant in San Francisco.)

When users visit a new city, Google will recommend places to go based on their preferences and those of people with similar tastes.

The maps will change in real-time, so if you click on a museum, the other museums in the city will pop up. Choose a museum, and the map will shift so that the small roads and landmarks needed to navigate to that museum appear, and other street names fade away.

“Everybody gets their own map, every time,” said Jonah Jones, the lead designer for the new Google Maps, in an interview before the conference.

The new Google Maps looks different in other ways. The maps now fill more of the screen, including space on the top and sides. If you search for cafes nearby, for instance, results are labeled on the map (they are not in the old version) and cards with relevant information appear on the map. These can include ads, which are labeled in purple, and offers like a coupon for a local business.

Google Earth, which shows satellite 3-D imagery, was previously available only as an app to download. Now, it will be incorporated in the online version of Google Maps, so users can zoom in and explore a city’s landmarks in 3-D. They can zoom out and see the planet, with real-time weather, and the Milky Way.

While Google engineers were testing the maps in recent weeks, they noticed a black smudge on the Earth and the sun. At first, they thought it was a problem with the map, but then discovered that they were seeing an eclipse on the other side of the world, off Australia, in real time.

Google can do this because of a technology called WebGL that renders graphics inside a browser, as opposed to downloading images from a server, a process that takes longer and does not allow graphics to be as complex.

People can also view users’ photos from various places and see inside hundreds of thousands of local businesses. And the new Maps has improved public transit directions, including a schedule of departure times, a comparison with driving times and personalized directions from a user’s home.

Google plans to slowly introduce the new Maps to users, starting with conference attendees and then people who sign up online. It is only for desktop computers to start, but Google will also be updating its iPhone and Android Maps apps soon.

Article source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/major-redesign-of-google-maps-is-unveiled/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Media Decoder Blog: The Breakfast Meeting: Debating Torture in ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ and a Food Blogger Breaks Out

Zero Dark Thirty,” about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, won’t open in movie theaters until Wednesday, but it is already dividing screening audiences for its depiction of torture by the United States, and its suggestion that brutal treatment may have produced useful early clues to catching Bin Laden, Scott Shane reports. A new Senate report on C.I.A. interrogations, which has been criticized by the Republican minority, has found that brutal treatment was not “a central component” in finding Bin Laden; the film’s screenwriter, Mark Boal, explained that he was “to compress a program that lasted for years into a few short scenes.” Those scenes, he said, attempted “to reflect a very complex debate about torture that is still going on” and showed that brutal treatment produced both true and false information.

After enduring Apple’s own flawed map service, iPhone users on Thursday were able to download an app for Google Maps, which used to come installed on iPhones. The rare stumble by Apple as it attempted to supplant Google in an area it excels at offered both companies a chance to play for an advantage, Nick Wingfield writes. Would Google purposely withhold its app in order to weaken the iPhone and thus help smartphones that work on its own Android operating system? Would Apple delay the introduction of Google Maps in order to keep a hold on a critical, and potentially lucrative, feature of its phone? In the end, both sides saw the advantage in making the user’s experience better, Mr. Wingfield writes.

  • In his review of the new app, David Pogue calls it a “home run” and is blown away by the many new features that have been incorporated into the app, including Street View, which lets you see a picture of an address. He also praises its emphasis on walking directions and public transportation options, in addition to driving:

It’s a lot of features. The big question: How well did Google cram them in without sinking the app with featuritis? This, it turns out, is the best news of all. The brand-new, completely rethought design is slick, simple and coherent. Google admits that it’s even better than Google Maps for Android phones, which has accommodated its evolving feature set mainly by piling on menus.

There was more news from Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper holdings, Amy Chozick reports, including the decision of the editor of The Times of London, James Harding, to step down to clear the way for a new editor. Under the leadership of Mr. Harding, who is considered a golden boy of British journalism, the newspaper took a relatively unstinting stance against its parent company’s handling of the hacking scandal, and speculation arose that this decision may have lead to his ouster.

  • Also on Wednesday, it was revealed that Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Mr. Murdoch’s News International who has been charged in the phone-hacking scandal, had received a $17.6 million severance package.

The French actor Gérard Depardieu was criticized by his country’s government for moving to nearby Belgium, apparently seeking the warmth of a lower tax rate, Scott Sayare writes from Paris. The recently elected Socialist government has imposed a 75 percent marginal tax rate for incomes above 1 million euros, or $1.3 million. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault linked Mr. Depardieu’s move to the tax rate, saying in a TV interview that the decision was “rather pathetic,” adding “He’s a great star, everyone loves him as an artist,” but that “to pay a tax is an act of solidarity, a patriotic act.”

Joe L. Allbritton, who built Allbritton Communications, which owns TV stations in Washington and a half-dozen other cities, died in Houston on Tuesday, Robert D. Hershey Jr. reports. His son, Robert, now heads the company and in 2007 founded Politico, the news Web site and newspaper devoted to politics.

In nine years of running a food blog, SmittenKitchen.com, Deb Perelman has built up a devoted following, Leslie Kaufman writes. They appreciate her conversational, self-deprecating writing style, and her coping with a cramped, urban kitchen, all of which can resonate with  young women learning to cook. In October, she took the next step, releasing a cookbook — and though she never trained as a chef or even worked in a restaurant, her “The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook” debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times’s best-seller list for hardcover advice and miscellaneous. She has stayed in the Top 5 ever since, where she is accompanied by Ina Garten of “Barefoot Contessa” fame and the chef Thomas Keller.


Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/the-breakfast-meeting-debating-torture-in-zero-dark-thirty-and-a-food-blogger-breaks-out/?partner=rss&emc=rss

State of the Art: Google Maps App for iPhone Goes in the Right Direction

As everybody knows by now, Apple got lost along the way. It was like a 22-car pileup. Timothy Cook, Apple’s chief executive, made a quick turn, publicly apologizing, firing the executive responsible and vowing to fix Maps. For a company that prides itself on flawless execution, it was quite a detour.

Rumors swirled that Google would create an iPhone app of its own, one that would use its seven-year-old, far more polished database of the world.

That was true. Today, Google Maps for the iPhone has arrived. It’s free, fast and fantastic.

Now, there are two parts to a great maps app. There’s the app itself — how it looks, how it works, what the features are. In this regard, few people complain about Apple’s Maps app; it’s beautiful, and its navigation mode for drivers is clear, uncluttered and distraction-free.

But then there’s the hard part: the underlying data. Apple and Google have each constructed staggeringly complex databases of the world and its roads.

The recipe for both companies includes map data from TomTom, satellite photography from a different source, real-time traffic data from others, restaurant and store listings from still more sources, and so on. In the end, Apple says that it incorporated data from at least 24 different sources.

Those sources always include errors, if only because the world constantly changes. Worse, those sources sometimes disagree with one another. It takes years to fix the problems and mesh these data sources together.

So the first great thing about Google’s new Maps is the underlying data. Hundreds of Google employees have spent years hand-editing the maps, fixing the thousands of errors that people report every day. (In the new app, you report a mistake just by shaking the phone.) And since 2006, Google’s Street View vehicles have trawled 3,000 cities, photographing and confirming the cartographical accuracy of five million miles of roads.

You can sense the new app’s polish and intelligence the minute you enter your first address; it’s infinitely more understanding. When I type “200 W 79, NYC,” Google Maps drops a pin right where it belongs: on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Apple’s Maps app, on the other hand, acts positively drunk. It asks me to clarify: “Did you mean 200 Durham Road, Madison, CT? Or 200 Madison Road, Durham, CT?”

Um, what?

And then there’s the navigation. Lots of iPhone owners report that they’ve had no problem with Apple’s driving instructions, and that’s great. But I’ve been idiotically misdirected a few times — and the trouble is, you never know in advance. You wind up with a deep mistrust of the app that’s hard to shake. Google’s directions weren’t great in the app’s early days either, and they’re still not always perfect. But after years of polishing and corrections, they’re right a lot more often.

The must-have features are all here: spoken driving directions, color-coded real-time traffic conditions, vector-based maps (smooth at any size). But the new app also offers some incredibly powerful, useful features that Apple’s app lacks.

Street View, of course, lets you see a photograph of a place, and even “walk” down the street in any direction. Great for checking out a neighborhood before you go, scoping out the parking situation or playing “you are there” when you read a news article.

Along with driving directions, Google Maps gives equal emphasis to walking directions and public transportation options.

This feature is brilliantly done. Google Maps displays a clean, step-by-step timeline of your entire public transportation adventure. If you ask for a route from Westport, Conn., to the Empire State Building, the timeline says: “4:27 pm, Board New Haven train toward Grand Central Terminal.” Then it shows you the names of the actual train stops you’ll pass. Then, “5:47 pm, Grand Central. Get off and walk 2 min.” Then, “5:57 pm, 33rd St: Board the #6 Lexington Avenue Local towards Brooklyn Bridge.” And so on.

Even if public transportation were all it did, Google Maps would be one of the best apps ever. (Apple kicks you over to other companies’ apps for this information.)

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/technology/personaltech/google-maps-app-for-iphone-goes-in-the-right-direction-review.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

You’re the Boss Blog: Has Google Reported That Your Business Is Closed?

Today’s Question

What small-business owners think.

“Help! My business is listed ‘PERMANENTLY CLOSED’ on Google Maps even though it has always been open! Help!”

This type of message, according to a New York Times article by David Segal — “Closed, Says Google, But Shops’ Signs Say Open” — is becoming increasingly common. As Mr. Segal reported:

On Google Places, a typical listing has the address of a business, a description provided by the owner and links to photos, reviews and Google Maps. It also has a section titled “Report a problem” and one of the problems to report is “this place is permanently closed.” If enough users click it, the business is labeled “reportedly closed” and later, pending a review by Google, “permanently closed.” Google was tight-lipped about its review methods and would not discuss them.

Have any of you had this experience? Any advice on dealing with Google? (Here’s our small-business guide to managing your online reputation.)

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=93c8c741218daf49159fe01909fe092c