Mapping

Aggregators are good not just for things like news, movie, and game ratings, but also for local knowledge. Yelp, Gowalla, and Foursquare have all made a business out of this, but up until now you've had to spend time bipping back and forth among them to glean knowledge from each service's members.

That's changed now with Fourwhere, a service that launched during South By Southwest, which now combines reviews and check-ins from all three services in one place. The end result is a single page you can visit to see the most recent local user activity at … Read more

Last week, TomTom announced its intentions to support Apple iOS 4's new multitasking function with its turn-by-turn navigation app. This week, we find Navigon, manufacturer of GPS devices and provider of the Navigon MobileNavigator app for iPhone, joining the chorus of developers singing praises of the iPhone's new ability to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. However, Navigon's announcement comes with a video demonstration of the feature in action.

In the clip below, our guide Ben starts by jumping between the MobileNavigator app and Safari on an iPhone 3GS. Next, he moves on to … Read more

Google made a few tweaks to Google Earth on Monday, adding new GPS details and a way for the Web-oriented company to feel better about developing for the desktop.

Google Earth 5.2 is ready for the public, Google announced Monday. It's not a major release like the Google Earth 5.0 release from last year, but the free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux has a few interesting new features for the geographically obsessed.

Travelers were able to connect their GPS devices to Google Earth to view trip data with the 5.0 release, but they can now … Read more

Travel search site Kayak launched a new feature earlier this week called Kayak Explore, a visual search engine that starts with the basic question of, "I have X amount of money to spend. Where can I go?"

The map interface of Explore lets you select a price range, a time of year to travel (this year or next), whether you're looking for attractions like beaches or casinos, and whether you have a maximum flight time in mind. Then it'll display the lowest fare available for a pretty extensive range of destinations--but mostly just to major global … Read more

Apple's unveiling this week of its new iOS 4 has developers' scrambling to support the operating system's new features in their apps. First out of the door is TomTom with its announcement that the its app for iPhone will be updated to support multitasking.

On Apple devices that support the multitasking function--the third-generation iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS, and the upcoming iPhone 4--you will be able switch to another app while navigating and continue to receive their turn-by-turn directions from the TomTom app in the background. While the thought of sharing the road with multitasking drivers scares us, there … Read more

What began as a $35 its life as app is now costs $5. ALK Technologies has announced CoPilot Live USA, one of many--and sometimes confusing--versions of its CoPilot navigation app for iPhone that distinguishes itself with its $4.99 introductory price tag.

For your crisp digital fin*, you get voice guided GPS turn-by-turn navigation, street-level 3D and 2D maps of the United States stored locally on your iPhone, access to the free ALK MapSure service that provides monthly map improvement updates downloaded directly to the iPhone, and a completely new updated map of USA every quarter of the year, through … Read more

I've definitely come to rely on Google's turn-by-turn voice navigation to guide me through some twists and turns of California's coastline. Starting Wednesday, Canadians and some Europeans will similarly be able to ditch their satnav systems and fire up their Android phones instead.

Google Maps 4.2 with Navigation will pop into the Android Market apps in Canada, and in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland--as long as your smartphone runs 1.6 of the Android operating system or higher.

That's not all the localization love Google has in store. … Read more

A third-party review of the code used by Google that collected personal data during its Street View Wi-Fi analysis project didn't produce a smoking gun but didn't put Google in the clear either.

Stroz Friedberg produced the 21-page report, a copy of which we've hosted on our site (click for PDF). Google paid for the report through its law firm, Perkins Coie, as part of an internal investigation into how Google Street View cars were allowed to collect data from unsecured wireless networks for three years, which has Google in hot water all around the globe.

The … Read more

Google has changed a single search page to prepare us all for the FIFA World Cup, which is slated to begin in just two days.

When users type "World Cup" into Google Search, they will find a different header at the bottom of the page where Google allows users to click on the desired page in results. Instead of the familiar "Goooooogle," the page says, "Goooooooal!."

Wondering if the change occurred on every search page related to the World Cup, I started trying other queries out, like "soccer," "world cup soccer,&… Read more