There’s Google Street View for mountains and museums, but one thing Google still hasn’t managed to neatly chronicle is the inner workings of your digestive system. The company may not be getting into the medical business any time soon, but a new colonoscopy tool from a Canadian university was actually inspired by Google Street View. Shall we call it… Google Street Poo? (Ugh sorry.) Read More
The NORAD Santa tracker, a cute little tool that helped kids everywhere track Santa’s trip around the globe on Christmas Eve, has been around for ages, first starting as a phone service and then transitioning to the web in the late ’90s. For the last five years, the service has been using Google Maps to display Santa’s progress, but this year it seems that Google may have been bumped to the naughty list. Read More
Google chairman Eric Schmidt recently sat down for a brief chat with the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps hoping for a bit of good old off-the-cuff Schmidt, the Journal inquired as to how the relationship with Apple was faring these days. But it seems it was elder-statesman Schmidt who showed up. Read More
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? Read More
Google’s Crisis Response Map for Hurricane Sandy, which has been updated systematically with information about power outages, traffic advisories and emergency shelters in the wake of the storm, has now published satellite imagery illustrating the magnitude of devastation Sandy wrought on coastal communities in New Jersey and Maryland. Read More
Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the meeting when Tim Cook decided a product he’d overseen was terrible enough to warrant a public apology. The (faux?) humility, the palpable disappointment.
In a letter published to the Apple website and addressed to customers, Mr. Cook apologized for the frustration that the widely-panned Apple maps has caused.
However, tech journalists everywhere are still waiting for an apology from Mr. Cook for having such a boring story dominate the news cycle, as well as giving Google a reason to act ever more smug. Read More
They Alley may think it’s got somethin’ on the Valley, but in California it’s now illegal for employers and universities to solicit your social media passwords. Damn hippies. [The Atlantic]
Speaking of California, General Assembly partnered with LaunchPad LA to open a branch in Los Angeles. [PandoDaily]
Google faked an address in its “iLost” Motorola commercial to make Apple Maps look bad. Come on, guys. You don’t need to lie to make Apple Maps seem unusable. [AppleInsider]
App.net is giving out $20,000 per month to developers that already have $50. Sigh. [App.net]
Kittydar uses Javascript to detect cats in photos. Sadly, when we uploaded a picture of our cat hanging out in our fridge’s crisper drawer, it could not locate him. [Github]
If there’s one thing the Great iOS6 Map Crisis of ’12 has taught us, it’s to appreciate the mapping function we have, or rather had. Google Maps isn’t perfect (just try finding the High Street station), but at least it’s never turned any highways into roller coasters, unlike Apple’s new offering. And so Read More
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. Read More
Google Maps updated its transit layer and now has scheduling info for more than a million public transportation stops, but that still won’t make the F train come any faster. [Google]
Speaking of Google, its Mountain View campus has a 3D pasta printer for its employees. We’re not jealous or anything… [TechPP]
What’s the deal with Obvious Corporation’s new publishing platform, Medium? Nieman Lab breaks it down for you. [Nieman Journalism Lab]
Fresh off the heels of his amusing lawsuit debacle with Charles Carreon, The Oatmeal is putting his efforts into building a museum for Nikola Tesla. [The Oatmeal]
People pirate because it takes three years for Avatar to come out on 3D Blu-ray, apparently. [Gizmodo]
