Much more appealing than the inside of your colon. (Photo: Google Maps)

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.)

The Star reports that a new scope developed at McMaster University allows doctors to get a more accurate view of the colon and potentially detect cancer at an earlier stage. "Unlike conventional colonoscopy, which only looks straight ahead, this new method can be likened to Google Street View, giving us a panoramic view of the colon and helping us identify the exact locations of suspicious growths or lesions," one doctor told The Star.

Luckily, the pictures of your colon will not be displayed in a searchable map. Who says privacy is dead?

(Screencap)

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.

For the first time, NORAD has chosen to partner with Microsoft Maps, proving once and for all that Steve Ballmer is not, in fact, the Grinch. This means that Santa's progress as tracked by NORAD will be displayed on Bing's home page, giving users a reason for the first time ever to navigate to Bing.

Of course, Google has decided it doesn't really need NORAD, anyway. The company built its own Santa tracker, and it's as adorably Google-ish as expected. You can also track Santa's trip via a specially-built Android app.

Apple Maps were reportedly never considered by NORAD because "Santa don't mess with that shit."

Mr. Schmidt. (Photo: flickr.com/jolieodell)

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.

"It's always been on and off," Mr. Schmidt admitted of relations between the two companies. But rather than publicly reveling in his rival's disgrace re: maps, he made the very mature point that tiffs between massive companies aren't really the simple barroom knife-fights that those of us in the tech press so dearly love depicting. Think along the lines of a disagreement between the U.S. and China:

The press would like to write the sort of teenage model of competition, which is, 'I have a gun, you have a gun, who shoots first?'

The adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they've actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They're not sending bombs at each other.

Very mature! However, just a few lines later, he slips in a bit of baiting:

It's extremely curious that Apple has chosen to sue Google's partners and not Google itself.

There's that trollface!

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.

Atlantic City (Photo: Google Maps)

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.

The map shows satellite imagery for Atlantic City to Cape May, NJ as well as Assawoman Bay, DE to Assateague Island, MD. Users can compare and contrast the images from before and after Sandy. You can also download a KML file to view the images in Google Earth.

Aerial views of the Eastern seaboard provide further insight into just how wide-sweeping the damage from Sandy was. Whole towns are rendered a flooded, sand-ridden collection of battered houses. It's a devastating sight.

Sorry y'all. (Photo: News.au)

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.

In the letter, Mr. Cook wrote:

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.

Mr. Cook said the team is working furiously to improve maps, but suggested alternatives while they're working on them. This has to be the first time an Apple CEO has recommended using a competitor's product. "While we’re improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app," he wrote. Awkward.

Meanwhile, Mr. Cook has yet to address iOS 6's reported wifi issues, which have left some customers unable to connect to networks. The Verge pointed us to a long thread on the Apple help forums where many users lament their newly upgrade device's inability to get wifi. No word on when that will get fixed.

Hear that? It's the rattling ghost of Steve Jobs preparing to haunt Mr. Cook forever.

(Photo: Github)

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]

Whoops. (Photo: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps)

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 as the initial disbelief faded, the question became: When the hell are we getting a version of Google Maps available through the App Store?

The New York Times has an answer for you: "by the end of the year." Hopefully.

The Gray Lady reports:

"Google is developing a maps application for iPhone and iPad that it is seeking to finish by the end of the year, according to people involved with the effort who declined to be named because of the nature of their work."

We can already hear you whining, "But whyyyy?" Well, Google wasn't exactly prepared for Apple to boot its maps off the iPhone, as the companies' existing contract still had some time left on the clock.

And according to at least one of the Times' sources, Google wants whatever it releases to include 3D imagery, but all of Google's 3-D imager is trapped in Google Earth, "which is a separate app with a separate code base from Google Maps, so it would take some time to combine the two." Sounds like there'll be a lot of all-nighters happening for the GOOG's resident cartographers. At least they won't be bored anymore, right?

Meanwhile, Google chairman Eric Schmidt is basically rubbing Apple's face in its terrible faceplant. Reuters relays a few of his choice comments:

"We think it would have been better if they had kept ours. But what do I know?" Schmidt told a small group of reporters in Tokyo. "What were we going to do, force them not to change their mind? It's their call."

We're starting to suspect Mr. Schmidt might have been an eccentric mafia enforcer in a previous life. In fact, we can't help but wonder whether Google is even in any rush to get this app out the door, or whether the company is taking its sweet time, under the theory, "That'll teach them to appreciate us properly."

UPDATED: The headline has been altered to more clearly reflect that Google has not confirmed that an iOS 6 version is in the works.

(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.

Hey girl. (Photo: Tumblr)

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]