Stalqer locates even friends who don't use the service.
(Credit: Stalqer)The developers of the iPhone app GasBag, which helps iPhone users find the cheapest gas for their cars, are working on a new mobile friend locator service, Stalqer. This clever and aptly named service has two technologies that are unique, as far as I know, to help it get around two of the big problems found in other friend locators like Foursquare, Loopt, and Google's Latitude.
Problem 1: On the mobile platform that matters, the iPhone, there's no way to do real-time location reporting without running an app all the time, and the iPhone doesn't allow background processes. And even if it did, it would draw down the battery. The Stalqer solution is to create a dummy e-mail account that pings the Stalqer servers whenever the phone polls for mail, which is, by default, every 15 minutes.
When the phone hits the Stalqer e-mail servers, it sends along Internet gateway data, which can be used to locate the phone. It only works when the phone is connected via Wi-Fi, not GSM. It also doesn't get data from the phone's GPS sensor, but it's a clever hack on the way to the creation of more robust location reporting features.
Competing mobile social apps require the app (Foursquare, Loopt) or site (Latitude) to be open for the user's location to be reported. Or they require a phone that supports background processing, like an Android device.
CEO Mick Johnson told me there is another company that has this idea, but nobody has yet released a product based on it.
... Read more
Google is notoriously slow and calculating about changing it the user interface of its services.
In fact, Google hasn't made any major changes to the look and feel of Google Maps since its launch in 2005.
On Friday, the company launched several refinements to Maps--the biggest changes to its look since launch. While you might not notice these changes immediately--unless you are a hardcore Google Maps user--they are designed to enhance the readability of the maps.
As seen above, the thick street outlines that can make maps harder to read have been eliminated.
Google describes the update here:
(L)ocal and arterial roads have been narrowed at medium zooms to improve legibility, and the overall colors have been optimized to be easier on the eye and conflict less with other things (such as traffic, transit lines and search results) that we overlay onto the map. Hybrid roads have gained a crisp outline to make them easier to follow, and the overall look is now closer to an augmented satellite view instead of a simple overlay.
A first shot from DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 satellite shows the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas.
(Credit: DigitalGlobe)
The Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center San Antonio, Texas, where DigitalGlobe is showing off its first images for the GeoInt 2009 conference.
(Credit: DigitalGlobe)Twelve days after it launched WorldView-2 into orbit, DigitalGlobe has released its first images from the satellite, which will supply high-resolution photography for Google's and Microsoft's online mapping services.
The first images are of two locations in San Antonio, Texas, where the company is showing off its work at the GeoInt 2009 Symposium this week, and of Dallas Love Airport.
The quality of the images should improve over these first shots, taken Monday. "More refinements to early-stage images can be expected as the ongoing check-out and calibration continues," DigitaGlobe said.
Microsoft and Nokia sponsored the WorldView-2 launch, but the former's Bing and the latter's Navteq won't be the only services to get the imagery. They'll share it with Google, which has been the sole online beneficiary of images from GeoEye-1, a satellite launched last year by DigitalGlobe rival GeoEye.
The new satellite is able to capture imagery with a resolution fine enough to detect features as small as 0.46 meters, or 1 1/2 feet, on the ground, though federal regulations permit DigitalGlobe to offer images with only a maximum resolution of 0.5 meters for general commercial use, the Longmont, Colo.-based DigitalGlobe said. Other DigitalGlobe satellites with sub-meter resolution in orbit already are QuickBird and WorldView-1.
"WorldView-2 is expected to improve the speed and rate of imagery delivery to the government and commercial markets with large-scale collection capacity and daily revisit rates," meaning that the satellite can photograph the same site multiple times during the same day, the company said. The satellite can capture multispectral imagery--eight bands of light, or more than what's visible to humans--though at a lower resolution of 1.8 meters.
Dallas Love Airport as photographed by WorldView-2.
(Credit: DigitalGlobe)
A Boeing Delta II 7920 launches DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 satellite.
(Credit: Bill Hartenstein, Boeing)In 2008, Google got its logo on the rocket launching the GeoEye-1 satellite for collecting space-based imagery. This year, it's Microsoft's turn.
The Bing logo appeared on the side of a Boeing Delta II 7920 rocket that launched DigitalGlobe's new WorldView-2 satellite last week from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But where Google got sole online rights to the GeoEye-1 imagery, Microsoft will be sharing access to WorldView-2 images with Google, a Digital Globe representative said.
Bing and Nokia sponsored the rocket launching DigitalGlobe's newest imaging satellite.
(Credit: Bill Hartenstein, Boeing)Another sponsor of the rocket is Nokia, whose Navteq subsidiary also supplies digital maps.
Bing today offers aerial and satellite imagery that looks straight down on some locations and a birds'-eye view that gives an angled view. Still, Microsoft touted its DigitalGlobe partnership as greatly expanding what's available online.
"We now have access to one of the highest resolution global satellite imagery and aerial photography collections (460 million sq. km. + 1 million sq. km. per day moving forward) through a deal we've just struck with DigitalGlobe," said Microsoft's Chris Pendleton in a blog post. "We'll finally be able to backfill areas around the world where people have come to my blog and complained about Virtual Earth not having good imagery or photos in their countries--Poland, Hungary, Russia, Taiwan, Mexico, to name a few--I've heard you loud and clear. And, now, we're fixing that problem."
Google, which already had a DigitalGlobe partnership, was more understated, merely offering congratulations on the launch in a blog post Monday.
In the last year, though, Google slurped up a lot of GeoEye-1 imagery--about 500,000 square kilometers, according to Google spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo. By comparison, Texas is about 678,000 square kilometers.
Among new areas in Google Earth and Google Maps photographed by GeoEye-1 are Zhangye, China; Perth, Australia; Tangier, Morocco; Como, Italy; Dublin, Ireland; Curitiba, Brazil; Leduc, Canada; Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo; and the formerly closed city of Sevastopol, Ukraine.
DigitalGlobe expects WorldView-2 will double the company's capacity to collect imagery. The satellite's top resolution can detect features as small as 0.46 meter, though U.S. government regulations permit general commercial sales of imagery only of 0.5-meter resolution.
Ball Aerospace built the satellite and, as with GeoEye-1, ITT's Space Systems Division supplied its image sensor.
Launching satellites is an expensive business, but there's at least some funding available: GeoEye secured $400 million in a sale of debt last week.
H1N1 influenza, better known as the swine flu, is guaranteed to make an impact across the U.S. and the rest of the world in the coming months. But knowing what to expect, and how to determine if H1N1 is impacting where you live, should be the first step in your evaluation of the swine flu.
And that's where this roundup comes in. Listed below, you will find several resources that will help you not only track the swine flu, but probably help you learn a little something about it as well.
Find out about that swine flu
Centers for Disease Control -- The Centers for Disease Control has some of the best information on the swine flu of any site in this roundup. Everything from its causes to its symptoms are available.
Information on the swine flu from the CDC is the best I've seen on the Web. The site offers basic information for those who want an overview. It quickly digs deep into treating family members afflicted with swine flu, why a vaccination might be useful, who the flu is most likely to affect, and more. It also produces videos and podcasts. Overall, I liked the CDC's presentation on the swine flu. It's extremely informative.
The Centers for Disease Control is a great resource.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)FluTracker -- Rhiza Lab's FluTracker app is one of the best ways to track the swine flu on the Web.
When you get to the site, you'll see several colored circles around a map of the world. The color of each circle denotes the severity of the outbreak in a given location. Inside those circles are numbers, giving you a tally of confirmed outbreaks in a particular country. Perhaps most importantly, the site allows you to zoom in to see how many outbreaks have affected your area. You can even see how many deaths have occurred. If you're looking for in-depth but easily understandable tracking of the swine flu, FluTracker is your best bet.
FluTracker tells you where the swine flu is.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
The Accuterra topo map will get a slide-out control panel in version 3.1.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)As a wannabe weekend warrior, I'm happy to see topographical maps for mobile phones gaining ground on decidedly consumer devices. Interactive trail maps like Accuterra for iPhone make a lot of sense, especially with cellular reception and baked-in GPS chips strong enough in so many local hills and national parks that you can actively record your steps, share photos, and track your stats.
At CTIA Fall 2009 (see all stories), we got a sneak peek at the next version of Accuterra that will hit the iPhone app store. Version 3.1, which is expected in a few weeks, doesn't layer on a ton of features, but there is a new slide-out panel we like that makes the controls much more accessible. With a well-aimed swipe and a tap, you'll be able to toggle between the Accuterra topo maps and Google's maps. The app will also contain a simpler library organized around a search bar up top and traditional iPhone tab menu buttons below.
By the end of the year, you should be able to purchase extra content within the app, such as a video of your location or a historical Civil War walking tour. Accuterra costs 99 cents in the App Store; with local maps selling for about $3 each.
Google's Street View is now live in Canada.
(Credit: Google)Google announced on Wednesday that it has launched its Street View service to 11 cities in Canada, including Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa, among others.
Google Street View, which originally launched in May 2007, allows users to virtually navigate neighborhoods in 14 countries around the world. When the service first launched, it was only available in five U.S. cities.
Street View has come under some fire since its debut for the service's alleged potential to infringe the privacy of those people found in its images. To address that issue in Canada, Google said in a statement that it "has gone to great lengths to ensure Canadians' privacy."
The company said that all the images in Canada's Street View are already visible from public roads. Identifiable faces and license plates were blurred to ensure no one in the images could be identified. As with its other Street View services, Google's Canadian Street View features a "Report a problem" link, allowing concerned users to request images be taken down.
Whether Google would ever be able to bring Street View to Canada was very much up in the air not too long ago. In September 2007, Canada's Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart wrote to Google saying that she was concerned that the service might violate her country's privacy regulations. She believed that Street View could infringe Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2004.
For its part, Google said in the statement on Wednesday that it "consulted with Canada's federal and provincial Privacy Commissioners in developing Street View and its privacy safeguards." Evidently, that has helped the company bring Street View to the country.
My Phone's Web dashboard resembles an in-box.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)In step with the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, Microsoft also graduated its My Phone syncing service for Windows phones (6.0-6.5) from beta to a full release. As we reported earlier this morning, most of the new features are premium additions to help you find your phone if it gets lost or stolen. We'll get to these later on. For the most part, the My Phone service acts as we expect it to--as a small app you download onto your phone, with the bulk of the management taking place on your dashboard online.
Sure enough, after downloading My Phone and signing in with your Windows Live ID (or signing up for a new one), you'll pick from a list of data types you want to sync. These include contacts, calendar items, notes, tasks, memos, photos, and videos, songs and text messages, and documents.
Syncing took over a half hour the first time around, but we were on a terribly weak EDGE connection. Let that be a lesson to all. In the style of our times, the online dashboard resembles an e-mail in-box. From it, you can view the contents of your phone, and to some extent manage certain aspects. for instance, you can add a new calendar item and comfortably edit contact info from the desktop keyboard, but we haven't found a way to add a contact or create a new text message. You can upload songs from any desktop to remotely load onto your phone, but My Phone missed the smattering of songs we already had on the phone. The photo sharing feature is more fleshed out, with options to publish images to Windows Live, Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace.
We're bummed that Microsoft hasn't broadened the syncing and sharing capabilities since My Phone's beta days. With so many other start-ups creating fuller featured in-boxes and management dashboards than My Phone, it seems to us that Microsoft has unnecessarily reinvented the wheel.
... Read moreGoogle updated AdSense this week, adding desktop-style ad support for high-end smartphones like the iPhone 3GS. The change led to Google's insertion of advertisements, alongside search results, into the iPhone Maps application.
Local iPhone map searches now display sponsored listings in the view and list modes of the Maps app.
We discovered examples of these ads on Monday, while searching for a Verizon Wireless store. We should also note that this is the first time ads have appeared within one of the iPhone's default apps, rather than in something we've downloaded for free or purchased from the App Store. Our search for "Verizon" resulted in the following list view:
Maps app search--"Verizon"
Tapping the white arrow in the top blue circle brought us to the "Sponsored Link" screen, which contained some additional information about the business under its name emphasized in italics, such as phone number, Web address, and physical address. In addition, there are options to get directions to or from the business, add it to one's contacts, share it with others, or bookmark it.
Sponsored Link results page.
Google made two significant enhancements to Google.com on mobile phones Wednesday.
The first, history sync, now makes it possible to carry over a record of your search queries when you switch between mobile and desktop versions of Google.com. Dubbed "Personalized Suggest," Google will now remember your searches and will add them into the list of search suggestions you see as you type into the search bar. The new feature saves you from browsing through your history to repeat a query.
Of course, you do have to be logged in to Google for this to work, and you've got to have Web History switched on. Enable it on a phone by selecting "save searches" in the Settings menu on Google.com. At launch, the feature is only available in the U.S. on Android, iPhone, and Palm WebOS phones.
Google Local on mobile.
(Credit: Google)The second addition today similarly gets the mobile and desktop versions of Google.com talking to one another. Google has redesigned local search to make finding places of interest while on the mobile Google site much more finger-friendly. Click or tap "Local" on the mobile browser and you'll see a Start screen with categories you can browse to find restaurants and other businesses nearby, similar to what you can do on Google Maps. You'll need to have the My Location feature enabled.
There's also a category for viewing the points of interest that you starred as favorites on a Google Map. Starring essentially bookmarks the location's Google Place page. Bookmarking isn't anything new, but the browsable layout is relatively new to Google, which generally favors bare links to graphical enhancements. This treatment has the mobile Google site looking like a mobile hot-spot-finding app you might find in an on-phone app store. We have to say, it's a nice change.
The rejiggered Local Search kicks off in the U.S. and China, with support for more regions in the works.
