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(Credit: Google)

One of the highlights of Android 2.0 has been the Google Maps Navigation app that delivers voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation on your phone for free. Until now, only Motorola Droid owners could take advantage of this sweet perk, but times they are a-changing.

On Monday, Google announced that its navigation app is now available for devices running Android 1.6 and higher, including the T-Mobile G1 and T-Mobile MyTouch 3G. While still in beta, the app provides voice-guided directions between two points, traffic information, and business searches.

This release also includes a new Layers feature that lets you overlay more information on the map, such as transit lines and Wikipedia articles about places, but it does not support the "Navigate to" voice command feature found on Android 2.0, so you'll have to input all your destinations using your phone's keyboard.

Google Maps Navigation for Android 1.6 is now available for download from the Android Market. Unlike other navigation apps or location-based services from the likes of TomTom, Garmin, and TeleNav, you don't have to pay a one-time fee or monthly subscription to use Google Maps Navigation. All you need is a data connection and you're good to go.

Don't try this on game day, but the new Google Maps Navigation application will show you how to take a spin past Boston's Fenway Park.

(Credit: Google)

You can almost hear the portable navigation industry swearing already.

Google is announcing plans Wednesday to release a new Android application called Google Maps Navigation. When combined with a GPS-equipped mobile phone running Android 2.0, it provides turn-by-turn directions powered by Google Maps and a slick user interface that combines features such as voice recognition and Google Street View. Google Maps Navigation, like seemingly everything that emerges from Google, will be free.

"Mobile platforms--Android and others--are so powerful now that you can build client apps that can do magical things connected to the cloud," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a briefing for reporters at Google's headquarters on Tuesday.

The standard Google Maps Navigation view.

(Credit: Google)

Companies in the cell phone navigation industry have seen this day coming for quite some time. Right now, the beta application only works on phones that will use the Android 2.0 software, which is scheduled to be available very soon with the expected arrival of Motorola's Droid phone on Verizon's network.

Google's Vic Gundotra appeared to demonstrate the application on the Droid: he wouldn't confirm it, but it was a shiny black Android 2.0 phone running on Verizon's network and bearing Motorola's stamp, so we're probably not going too far out on a limb here. (Update, 7:24 a.m. PDT: Says Google's Wednesday morning press release: "The first phone to have Google Maps Navigation and Android 2.0 is the Droid from Verizon.")

However, Google is working with Apple on bringing it to the iPhone, and it's not ruling out licensing the software to makers of portable navigation devices used in cars throughout the world, said Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google for mobile and developers. The process involving Apple is slightly different from the usual App Store submission process, because Maps is a built-in iPhone application, he said.

The application works like any navigation system that you may have used, but it combines Google Search and Google Maps functions that are normally only available on the desktop and brings them to the smartphone. Perhaps the most interesting and useful feature comes from Google Street View, allowing Google to provide a Street View image at every turn that the application suggests during your journey.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Hickey)

For most people, Sir-Mix-A-Lot is synonymous with his hit "Baby Got Back." But for his real fans, or fans of early hip-hop in general, the greatest song Mix ever did was "My Posse's On Broadway," an homage to my home neighborhood in Seattle. It's a detailed step-by-step trek with Mix and his posse as they hit up local landmarks like Dick's Burgers and generally have a good time.

It's a great, fun song, and Google Maps user Adam Cohn has done fans a favor by making a map of Seattle that details every stop along the way. This is one of the most fun things I've seen in Google Maps in a long time.

An image of the map is above, but for a more interactive version you can check out Cohn's map for yourself. To make it more fun, below is the video for the single so you can follow along while you follow along. Try not to get the song stuck in your head.

(Credit: DVDTown)

Plenty of news to talk about, but first we recap our weekends. We all used the holiday weekend differently: Jeff sailed a boat (in the sun!) on the Potomac river; Wilson became the only Asian Agent Double Oh Nothing for Her Majesty's Secret Service, and I had the unfortunate experience of actually laboring at work on Labor Day. Hear all the juicy details on the first half of the show.

Next up, we talk about Google's latest product, a version of the popular Monopoly real estate game that uses Google Maps as a giant playing board! Turns out that this isn't the first role-playing game to incorporate the popular online mapping Web site: users found a way to play RISK using Google Maps when it first debuted in 2005!

(Credit: Film.com)

Speaking of things to come, we always like taking a look into the future, so this week in time travel, we bring you Boondock Saints 2! Every male born after the year 1970 should be well aware of the original Boondock Saints, which featured two brothers on a mission to cleanse their city of scumbags--classic story, but something about the theatrical gunfights and archetypal characters made it into a cult classic. We're excited about the new one, even though it doesn't feature Willem Dafoe.

Finally, in typical Monday show fashion, we delve off into a trip down memory lane and rediscover our love for Beavis and Butthead, who recently made a short comeback to promote Mike Judge's latest film "Extract." Surprise! Wilson hates it. All that and more on today's episode of The 404!

Google Maps will let you get on the track at Laguna Seca.

(Credit: Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca)

Editors' note: Google has just informed us that the launch of this new feature will be delayed, and is not occurring on March 26. Google would not specify a date when the new feature will be launched.

On March 26, Google lets you get in the path of American Le Mans racers on the track at Mazda raceway Laguna Seca. Specifically, Google was able to roll one of its Street View trucks, which use a spherical camera to take 360-degree photos, around the track in front of the cars preparing for the final race of the 2008 American Le Mans season. You will be able to go to Laguna Seca on Google Maps, and place the Street View icon to see track features such as the famous Corkscrew, and get a sense of why it's so tricky.

Currently, you can get a few good vantage points, like this view of the entry to the Corkscrew.

(Credit: Google Maps Street View, taken by Wayne Cunningham)

Currently, you can use Google Maps Street View on the roads around the racetrack, and get some decent views of a few of the turns. But the new addition will let you get right on the track, in front of the Le Mans racers.

For reasons of privacy, we have blurred the faces and license plates in this photo. Google will be doing the same.

(Credit: Crave Asia)

Take note, you heard it first from CNET Asia--Google's Street View is coming to Singapore. An eagle-eyed CNET Asia reader named Andrew sent us a picture of this silver Opel Astra complete with cameras doubling its height and the Google logo pasted on the side door. This was spotted at the junction between Dorset Road and Kampong Java Road.

We contacted Google, and the search giant confirmed that the service will be coming to Google Maps Singapore in the coming months. Street View launched in Japan earlier this year.

For those unfamiliar with Street View, this feature of Google Maps gives the user a photographic view of the location being searched. It has attracted controversy, with some residents of Street View-enabled cities complaining of loss of privacy. In some cases, men have been caught entering places like adult book stores, while others have been captured while inside their own private property. To address these concerns, Google will be blurring faces and license plate numbers before uploading the images.

Tools for users and authorities to report on images they are uncomfortable about will also be put in place, similar to what the company has done in the U.S., Australia, Japan, and France.

In any case, watch what you do or where you go, Singapore--Google is watching.

(Via Crave Asia)

If you missed last week's news about Google's feature-honing update for its native BlackBerry app, here's your chance to see it in action.

As part of a few well-appointed changes, the new Google Mobile App for BlackBerry does away with its predecessor's penchant for hogging space on the home screen and has rearranged its resources to pack a greater wallop with search. Tune into the video to see what we mean.

Who would have believed Google's geographic Web services could actually get your adrenaline going?

Granted, these aren't real video games, but two Web sites are pushing what can be done with interactive interfaces to Google Maps and Google Earth.

The first, taking advantage of Google Maps' new ability to work with Flash applications, lets you drive a car, bus, or truck around Google Maps. It won't bat an eye if you drive through a building or into the ocean, but Katsuomi Kobayashi, the programmer from Osaka, Japan, who wrote it, was happy to note that the software can display images at 40 frames per second vs. 20 at best for JavaScript. And it uses less CPU power, too.

This rudimentary game lets people drive various vehicles around Google Maps. Here I'm taking a semi through Tokyo traffic.

(Credit: Geoquake)

Another novelty is a flight simulator for the browser plug-in version of Google Earth announced at Google I/O a week and a half ago. (This is different from the flight sim that works with the Google Earth standalone software.) It works with recent versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Flock, but on Windows only.

This basic flight simulator works with the Google Earth browser plug-in.

(Credit: Barnabu.co.uk)

Again, the software is crude by gaming standards, but it does illustrate what can be done these days inside a browser. I'm among those who are interested to watch Google Earth abilities gradually pop up in Google Maps and in the browser. It's easily conceivable to me that we'll soon be seeing all manner of games that run on the 3D models of the real world that Google and Microsoft are building. Lower network latencies, faster server responses, and higher network data capacity all point in that direction.

(Via Google Geo Developers Blog and Google Maps Mania.)

We Tell Stories is a new alternate-reality game that tasks players with finding their way through six story lines based on classic Penguin novels and a seventh story that ties them all together.

(Credit: Penguin Books/Six to Start)

The alternate-reality game genre has a new friend, and a new format, thanks to Penguin Books, the famous British publishing house.

On Tuesday, Penguin and startup Six to Start launched their new ARG, We Tell Stories, a new-style game that its creators say is a hybrid of traditional story-telling, Web 2.0-style mashups, interactive games and classic novels.

We Tell Stories is actually a seven-part adventure, said Jeremy Ettinghausen, the digital publisher for Penguin. It will begin with six weekly installments, each of which is based on a classic novel--and written by a different Penguin author--and which tasks participants with finding their way through the story using tools developed for the game.

After the six installments, We Tell Stories will continue with a seventh weekly piece that will be a game tying the six stories together.

"There is a seventh story, where the game element exists," said Etthinghausen, "and it links the other six stories."

Added Adrian Hon, the chief of creative for Six to Start, "the seventh story is a more traditional ARG, and it sort of feeds into the other six stories and binds them together. The seventh story gives you motivation to read all six stories, and explains why they're written."

Six to Start was founded by veterans of Mind Candy--a UK company that produced the well-regarded but ultimately financially unsuccessful ARG, Perplex City--including Hon and Mind Candy's former COO Dan Hon and

In the case of the first installment, which went live Tuesday morning, players will use a Google Maps mashup to work their way through a brand-new story line based on John Buchan's famous novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps.

Ettinghausen explained that the story incorporates Google Maps in such a way that participants can work their way through the narrative not only through the text but also by using the map mashup.

"We knew when we came up with the idea that using Google Maps (would allow) lots of movements," said Hon, "like running down streets and driving down roads. It's a bit like The Bourne Identity."

Hon explained that the game's creators imagine players using Google Maps as a way of locating themselves in the larger narrative. So, for example, at a moment in the story arc where the protagonist finds himself locked in a shipping container and doesn't know where he is, a player could turn to the maps mashup and see dozens of points where he might be.

But while We Tell Stories uses Google Maps for its first installment and will continue to leverage Web 2.0-type tools in the following chapters, players shouldn't expect those tools to be the same.

Further, the entire body of work, while derivative, was created strictly for Web users.

"Each of the six stories has a completely different mechanism for telling them," Ettinghausen said. "But as a whole, these are stories that couldn't have been written (in the past). They're native to the Internet."

"What we tried to do here," Ettinghausen said, "is create a native Internet experience. The stories couldn't exist on paper. But it's not a gimmicky thing. We pushed our authors to look at how viewers and readers are going to view them, thinking about different points in the story, and about how the mechanism in the story is going to effect their writing."

At the end of the game's rainbow is a prize that any erudite player would certainly desire: Penguin's complete library of 1,300 books.

And while the game is based in England, the organizers expect thousands of players from all around the world. They said they expect a third of participants to be American, a third from the UK and a third from other countries. However, only UK residents are eligible to win the library grand prize.