Say goodbye to the best-ever excuse for lateness. (Photo: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps)

John McAfee is back in the U.S. Where he goes now is anyone's guess. The Vice offices, maybe? [Washington Post]

Google Maps is available once more on the iPhone, so please adjust your excuses for lateness accordingly. [Google]

Also, before you download the app, please take a moment to enjoy this video of Apple Maps getting Bilbo Baggins lost in L.A. [Daily Motion]

Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates will now be helping advise Khosla Ventures' portfolio companies on government affairs. [TechCrunch]

NBD, North Korea's new satellite is just careening around space right now. [Gizmodo]

Rural England is now getting government-subsidized broadband, a tidbit you can trot out next time your ISP disappoints you in any way. [BBC]

lol. (Photo: Social Times)

Apple has redrawn a portion of Maps to keep Australians from being led astray into the middle of nowhere. [The Guardian]

Despite the fact that 88 percent of respondents voted to keep the voting structure, Facebook has decided to nix it anyway. Democracy on Facebook is dead, not that it ever really existed to begin with. [TechCrunch]

Here is a rock musical about the life and times of John McAfee. [PandoDaily]

Children's apps are still fooling parents about what kind of data they collect, including phone number and precise location. [New York Times]

Here's Twitter's 2012 week in review. Sadly it doesn't mention how annoying all those parody accounts got. [Twitter Blog]

(Photo: Vic Police News)

After getting rid of Google Maps on iOS 6, Apple's own attempt at maps was so terrible it inspired a mocking Tumblr and even an apology from CEO Tim Cook. Now, it seems, the police are getting involved.

According to a release published to the Victoria Police Department website, several people have gotten stranded in the middle of a national park without food or water after attempting to follow Apple Maps' directions to Mildura, a regional city in Australia. The city is actually located almost 45 miles away from where Apple Maps lists it.

The park reportedly has no water supply and can reach temperatures up to 115 degrees, so it's not exactly the spontaneous camping vacation you might imagine. Police have intercepted several people, some of whom have been stranded for over 24 hours, wandering the park aimlessly trying to get a signal.

The Victoria police have told anyone traveling to the area to just give in and get an Android phone.

Ex-Apple VP Scott Forstall (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

All teenagers know that the best way to dethrone the popular kid is to not invite him/her to your party. Anyone needing proof of this needs only to look at the climax of Mean Girls, when Cady Haron doesn't invite Regina George to her house party. Following that principle, it comes as no surprise that Apple, the akward new kid, might not give app store approvalto a new Google Maps app that works with iOS 6. Apple Maps is the newer and less popular kid at school and it wouldn't want the homecoming king to come back anytime soon.

iPhone users can still bookmark the Safari page for Google Maps, but a standalone app would be better than any mobile web version, and definitely better than Apple's flawed offering.

Keeping Google out might be good for Apple’s popularity, but is its inferiority complex hurting users?

Apple recently opened a new featured page in the app store called "Map Apps" that gives you a list of helpful apps that aren't Apple Maps to try to help their users find their way. However, Apps that use Google's Maps or Places APIs like Maps+ app and Quick Route are conspicuously missing from the list.

Meanwhile, Apple continues to make helpful changes to their Maps app. Just this week, they improved search strings in their MapKit API to help users find local results (like searching for "coffee"). But Scott Forstall, the leader of Apple's Maps initiatives, just left the company after refusing to apologize for Mapocaplypse, so they're obviously in a bit of a transition right now.

Apple's next maps leader could learn a thing or two from Mean Girls and work with Google, not against it. After all, you can’t dethrone the prom queen without first becoming her frenemy.

Social web billionaires have resorted to playing poker with dogs for cash. (Photo: Facebook Poker Chip News)

Poor social web billionaires are losing some of their millions. [Forbes]

Read the awkward IM conversation of some guy whose feelings were hurt by Mark Zuckerberg. [Business Insider]

Apple Maps got a makeover on iOS6, but...[Macworld]

...it still sucks. [Anil Dash]

The Philippines has outlawed cybering, which sounds funny at first, but actually it's to protect millions of young women forced into working as cam girls. [BBC]

Moo, a business card startup, has acquired all of the assets of New York-based Flavors.me. [TechCrunch]

The inevitable tech backlash in San Francisco has begun. Hey Bay Area engineers, we hear there are tons of companies in NYC desperate for your skillz. [San Francisco Magazine]

(Photo: Amazon)

When you think of Amazon, what comes to mind? Ebooks, next-day delivery and the Kindle probably float to the top, but what about maps? Not so much. But it turns out the online retailer wants to also nudge its way into the map game.

Today Amazon announced the release of the Amazon Maps API in beta, which allows select developers to integrate Amazon's mapping technology into their own apps on the Kindle Fire.

Amazon is hoping its new API will lure devs away from Google Maps by providing a "simple migration path" to switch from the native Google Maps API on Android. According to the post, Amazon's API will feature:

• Interactive Maps. You can embed a Map View in your app for customers to pan, zoom and fling around the world. You have the option to display a user’s current location, switch between standard maps and satellite view, and more.

• Custom Overlays. You can display the locations of businesses, landmarks and other points of interest with your own customized markers and pins.

Amazon's play for its own maps API seems to date back to at least a few months ago, when it acquired 3D mapping startup UpNext. Google Maps has never been built into the Kindle Fire--in order to access it, users have to open it in the browser or download a third-party Android app. By building its own API, Amazon can effectively skip Google altogether.

A few weeks ago, a rumors of a cooperation with Nokia also swirled, further pumping up the notion of Amazon's potential move into maps. "Cooperating with Nokia may help Amazon develop integrated, or 'native,' mapping functionality for the Kindle Fire without relying on Google Maps," the Chicago Tribune wrote.

From today's announcement, it's unclear if Nokia was involved in the release of the Maps API, but it seems like Amazon has finally gotten its own native map app. Sorry, GOOG.

Ew, no. (Photo: twitter.com/DiarioLaPrensa)

Our Apple overlords finally announced the arrival of the iPhone 5 this morning and we couldn't be more excited to shell out another $200 for the privilege of owning an annorexic version of something that we already have. But there's a major problem with the iPhone 5 that's much sadder than ending your press conference with an acoustic Foo Fighters performance. Google Maps is going away with the introduction of iOS 6 and will be replaced with Apple Maps.

Oh, what's that? Everything Apple makes is perfect and works seamlessly into your life? Not if you've enjoyed using your phone to get around the city.

A Hacker News commenter who's been beta testing Apple Maps in New York reports Blackberry-esque functionality:

To talk about the software, I've been using Apple Maps in beta for the past couple of months, and having no transit directions while living in NYC is enough for me to consider a switch to android.

Trying to take the subway to unfamiliar parts of the city forces me to use google maps in the browser. Addresses seem to be hit or miss -- I've often spent time searching for an establishment or address just to give up and use google maps in the browser.

I've basically had to revert to how I got around the city prior to having a smartphone -- use my computer and remember how I need to get there before I leave.

Apple Maps is potentially a huge fail for anyone living in a major city.

Steve Cheney, head of business development at GroupMe, is practically quaking at the (lack of) possibilities.

Living in NYC, I am terrified of iOS 6 / iPhone 5 for this one reason news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4512316

— Steve Cheney (@stevecheney) September 12, 2012

For all of the iPhone 5's upgrades and improvements, mapping (a primary use case for a computer in your pocket) has taken a turn for the way worse. Buzzfeed John Herrman, who has been testing the service for awhile, says:

But it's actually worse, in a lot of ways? Like it doesn't do public transit directions. It uses Yelp for restaurants and stores and points of interest, which seems to be missing a lot. I've been using it for a few months and it's been pretty frustrating.

Besides switching to Android, your options are downloading a bunch of apps to make up for the lost functionality: HopStop for subway directions, AT&T for Navigator for walking directions, and Foursquare for better location based recommendations.

If not, there's always a compass. No rapture required.