Google Maps has just announced that they launched a beta verison of Turn by Turn navigation software for the Android 2.0 platform!

Features highlighted are :

• Search in plain English
• Search by Voice
• Traffic view
• Search along route
• Satellite view
• Street View
• Car dock mode

The first phone to be supporting the application will be the motorola droid. More info in the video!

via: mashable

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Google Maps Turn-by-Turn navigation for android 2.0

I was just reading through Miriam’s Solas webdesign blog and read something I didn’t knew was there before. Here goes the story:
If you encounter some incorrect business information for Emergency Services in Google it is possible to use a special contact form to notify Google of these errors.

If you’ve discovered incorrect business information for an emergency service, a police station, a fire patrol, a hospital, a shelter, or a similar service, please complete and submit the form below. Google Maps gathers information from a variety of sources, including websites and Yellow Pages directories. Occasionally, this information may be incorrect or outdated.

I wanted to share this information to those reading my blog as I thought this is quite important, and we all want accurate information – especially when you need it the most

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Fixing incorrect business information

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Google Street View also in Italy!

Spain is now the second country in Europe to have StreetView available, in 4 cities, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville. This was the announcement made yesterday on the Google LatLong blog. The first country to have StreetView available was France, soon after the Tour de France took place.
So now you will be able to view the city I live in, Barcelona, by using the StreetView option. The LatLong blogs shows some examples of the architecture in this city, including the famous Sagrada Familia and the Casa Milà.
The imagery available in StreetView was quite recently taken, this seems to correspond with when I blogged about StreetView visiting Barcelona at the beginning of August.
As reports were made of seeing StreetView vehicles in other countries in Europe including Germany and the Netherlands I suspect these will be available soon.

Local Barcelona tip: This is the coffee shop (cafe mono) around the corner where we usually go. They serve good Italian coffee!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

Spain second country to have Google StreetView

Good to hear that the Google LatLong blog just reported that France is the first country in Europe to be launching Google Streetview, right after they already featured this service during this summer’s ‘Tour de France’.

Now some major cities have been added to StreetView in France and Google is looking forward to add more European cities and countries in the (perhaps near?) future. Hopefully these features will also be available in the Mobile Maps version of StreetView in the near future.
I’ve already reported seeing streetview in Barcelona, Berlin and Amsterdam and looking forward seeing the feature introduced here as well!

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

StreetView kicks off in France – Rest of Europe Soon?

I was searching for some documentation about on site embedded Google Maps implementations and geocoding features of the Google Maps API. Many times, I have to remember myself, to look into the google code pages. Because they turn out to be a very helpful resource of information. So, with some help, I ran across this dynamical spreadsheat containing lots of information about availability of Google Maps services per country, including geocoding service, quality of maptiles, availability of driving directions / itinerary, Local Business Center availability and Language availability.

I haven’t really checked if all information is up to date, but it seems that most of it is. (let me know if you notice some flaws, like the availability of Ireland for example. )

So my tip for the day is; check out the Google Code pages; often, developers know more about the capabilities of a service and it helps you to sell a better product.

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

The research Quest