Ever wonder how Google Maps gets surface street traffic data?

Lately, I started to take notice that Google Maps' traffic data is more accurate than the Garmin GPS (FM-based) traffic map and for that matter, Google seems to know traffic data even down to the local/surface street level.  I've always wondered how Google gets it so right... I had a hunch it was user-generated data but this article explains it all.  It is in fact, information collected anonymously via Google Maps for Mobile users who opted in to turn on the My Location feature.  Learn more here.

All I've got to say is if anyone still doubts Google/Android mobile is the future, think again.

Google Maps for Mobile 4.1 for Android 1.6+ Released

Google has update the Google Maps application specifically for the Android platform that run the version 1.6 or higher.In terms of new features and improvements of the new version of Google Maps, here is a small list:- better user interface that now includes an improved page of search results;- a home screen widget that can find your friends that are located nearby thanks to the Google Latitude

Use iPhone Google Maps to Add or Manage Contacts

When it comes to managing my contacts, I would say I am pretty obsessed. Because of my iPhones, I've been keeping my Apple Address Book up to date. The reason I am so obsessed with contacts management is because it really gives your smartphone that extra flexibility and reliability when you are on the go; as you are out and about, its absolutely important to have a person's phone, email or address handy and maximize your smartphone's built-in function to call, send mail and pin point their GPS destinations.

One of the handy little functions on your iPhone or iPod Touch's GMAP can help you add contacts to your address book quickly. Saves me quite a bit of time from copying/pasting or re-typing the contact info which is prone to error. Simply search for a person, establishment, restaurant or landmark and click on the arrow to expand to full detailed disclosure of their information. From there, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Add to Contacts". This will give you the option to "Create a New Contact" or "Add to Existing Contact" if you already have partial information. Either choices will give you the option to edit to your liking. Screenshots here is showing me adding one of my favorite Hoboken Sandwich joint Vito's to a group of contacts I created just for my favorite take outs!

Opera Browser w/ Skyhook Wireless Position Function

I have always been a big fan of Skyhook Wireless' technology. These guys powered the iPhone/Google Maps faux-GPS technology using WiFi address to triangulate your approximate location. I just received word today that Opera Browser will team up with Skyhook wireless to enable Geolocation API suuport which allows you to provide your location to websites; enabling customized content based on your whereabouts.

The first thing that comes to my mind was that how is this different than using my LAN IP address to get my geo-location? I am guessing Skyhook's technology differs in that it can hone in closer to your true location since there are way more WiFi IP addresses scanned in their DB. Take a look below for my comparison.

Using my Statcounter account, I can identify myself as being in New York when I visited my blog (first pic below), however, when using my first gen. iPhone's Google Map locate me service, it pin-pointed to the corner of 35th Street and 7th Avenue (where I am!).

This technology will enable some vendors or retailers to provide up to the minute inventory or location based services to help consumers make a sound decision on where to go.

Keep in mind that this is currently available for Opera's desktop browser. I hope to see this feature make its way to the Opera mobile browsers.

Correction: I was explained that this technology will be available on mobile browsers as well. Nice!

Google Maps Mobile Gets Streetview, One more Step Towards Mobile Domination

Google Maps Mobile application for BlackBerry and most Java-enabled phones can now support the famous street view, even on full screen. This is of no surprised since we knew the Android package would have this capabilities. However, seeing the demo video on the GoogleMobile blog is surreal. Having your entire mobile screen panning across in street view is definitely impressive. This just might convince me to dust off the old N95-3 and use it until iPhone supports it! Visit google.com/gmm for the latest update via your smartphone.

Transit Info Finally Availble to S60 & WinMo GMAPs

After weeks of waiting for Google Map's recently released feature of Transit update only to the BlackBerry applications, Google Mobile team finally released versions for Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile people. Apparently, Google has been working behind the scenes with various local transit agencies to sync up the transportation schedules. More information as well as trip planning tool available here. I'll check this out shortly on my N95-3.

BTW, where is the love for Palm OS?

Google Mobile Blog Hints New iPhone Location Features

In this blog entry posted by the Google Mobile team, they are suggesting more "location" based features will be available for iPhone starting this month. The exact quote says:

"Gears for Windows Mobile and Android already contain location APIs and we expect to see an explosion of mobile applications that use location technology, particularly on the iPhone starting this month."

With millions of 3G iPhone speculations for next week's WWDC event, this one is hinted by the Google Mobile team. If anything, one can expect iPhone firmware 2.0 to have more upgrades to the Google Maps application; I wouldn't be surprised if yesterday's Public Transit feature from version 2.2 will make it to iPhone firmware 2.0.

Google Maps Mobile 2.2 Adds Public Transit Status

As posted on the Official Google Mobile Blog, Google Maps for Mobile 2.2 rolled out more awesome features. It now includes public transit status for over 40 cities throughout North America including Chicago, S.F., Vancouver, and Seattle. This feature is not yet available to the desktop version and will be very handy for those waiting for public buses or trains that currently report their arrival time via wireless transmission. This update is available to BlackBerry handsets as well as a handful of Java-enabled phones and will be rolled out to more mobile devices later.

You can download the latest Google Maps for your phone by pointing your mobile device browser here: http://www.google.com/gmm

As of tonight, the latest Google Maps Mobile for Nokia N95 is only 2.1.0.14 which is an upgrade from the verion 2.0 that I had previously installed. No 2.2 for me yet!!!

However, the 2.1.0.14 upgrade does offer several improvements over the previous versions plus a new function to save your favorite locations. This is very nice for repeated locations. Search results is now being displayed right away with larger fonts instead of taking you back on the map. Google Maps for Mobile is evolving rapidly in the past months; it is in my opinion, the best mobile application, period. Its only a matter of time before they add all the desktop features like supporting mash-ups and "my maps" provided that you would login via the program. That would be the ultimate mobile experience!

Google Maps, Nokia N95 & GPS Make Great Mobile Experience

Given today's mobile technology (smartphones with EDGE/3G data, Java support, and basic application support), I would say that the integration between Google Maps, Nokia N95 GPS and 3G Data is one of the best mobile experience I've had.

Its a perfect marriages of functionality and usability. Google Maps application for Nokia is surprisingly robust. It offers the benefit of latest map data and POI over Nokia Maps. With "my location" function, Google uses cell signal and the integrated GPS receiver to approximate my location and provides navigation. Since it uses a similiar technology as the iPhone, I can be located even in areas where I have no GPS satelite exposure (indoors). Finally, if you are outdoors with GPS fix, you can use it to navigate to your searched destination. It does all three things very well and until I got my N95-3, none of my previous phones could do all of these together (ie. Apple iPhone or HTC/AT&T 8525).

Take a look at the screenshot for example. I used "my location" to identify where I am at (white dot) and searched for Starbucks nearby. It showed me a bunch of nearby locations. Now I can choose the closest store or the one on my way to another destination. Some may argue that ths is what a real GPS unit does; while I agree that it s what a good GPS unit should do, but having 3G data offers more benefits: 1). It can pin-point your location even indoors, great for pedestrians planning a walking trip in house, 2). With 3G data, it offers incremental information like traffic, and look up a store information via the mobile browser and 3). You will always have your phone with you, but not always will you carry a pocket-sized GPS unit. Considering my feedback on my OEM GPS system, you can see how I would rely on this solution while I am on to go.

PS - Nokia Maps offer some benefits as well. Having the ability to download the maps to your phone directly gives you even more flexibility when you are not able to connect to the web. I used it for my trip to Asia and it was great to use GPS w/ pre-installed map sets of Taipei, Jarkata and Bali Island. One time, I used it in a subway to check for the closest subway station I needed to get off the train. All because of the benefit of having pre-installed maps on my handset.

Google Maps Open to User Edits

Google has opened up the ability for users to help define its popular map contents. Now you can add, edit or remove pin-drops on Google Maps. This is absolutely genius, to leverage the public to help re-shape the accuracy of an already powerful map solution.

But what does this mean for smartphone users? if its anything like the past, mobile users are still receiving the short-end of the stick. The typical desktop GMAP functions such as My Maps or Send to My Phone are never available to the smartphone GMAP apps. With this new functionality, I find it ever more important to have full ability on a handset as it would grant users the power to provide real-time mapping edits. Perhaps Android will grant us more abilities.

Nevertheless, Google bunch are brilliant at launching great products and having users help improve upon it. Very cool news indeed.

Skyhook Wireless Powered iPhone GMAP

This week is the big Search Engines Strategy Conference 2008 here in NYC. I attended its first day today joining a roomful of online marketers trying to keep up to date with everything there is to know about search marketing. I couldn't help but wondered into a session called "Mobile Local Search: Finding the Way". In this session, a panel of four mobile technology firms talked briefly about their services and point-of-view on the mobile experience in local search.

I was surprised to learn about Skyhook Wireless and it's involvement of iPhone's "Locate Me" functionality. For those unfamiliar, iPhone uses one of their hybrid positioning system (XPS) which uses cell-tower IDs and WiFi locations of other iPhone users nearby to triangulate your location with GPS-like accuracy. I had assumed the technology was a by-product of Google-Apple partnership; in the mean while, it was the hard work at Skyhook Wireless deploying 400+ vans covering up to 1.7M miles scanning the streets of America to capture access points. To this date, they have pin-pointed 33M+ WiFi APs in order to give the precision of GPS navigator. They've shown a couple of slides on the APs-mashup over S.F. and Manhattan; basically the entire map is covered by millions of WiFi hotspots. They have plans to expanding this technology to other countries.

Ryan Sarver, Director of Consumer Products, during the conference noted that this technology still has more room to grow and improve. Today, we are able to find our exact location, tomorrow we should expect alerts and notifications for people around us (ie. if you child is wondering off a proximity, you can be notified). Personally, I've seen this technology in action over my iPhone and I think this company is going places!

Google Maps SMS, Google Maps SMS

Yes, I know, the title is repeating. Thats exactly my point. Did anyone else besides me notice that on Google Maps, whenever the "Send to Phone" function is used, it actually sends information as SMS to your phone, TWICE. Its happened to me a couple of times already and thinking back, its about one month ago this started to happening. Not sure if this problem is carrier specific, but I am using AT&T if anyone cares.

Google Maps Mobile - My Location

Google's Map application for mobile is one of the best things that happened to mobile devices. I've enjoyed it in the beginning on BlackBerry devices. As time progresses, they've developed .cab files for Windows Mobile devices which worked w/ some flaws in WM5 but near flawless within WM6. Yesterday, they released a new 2.0 beta for the application to support a new feature called "My Location". This is great for phones without built-in GPS (even if you do have GPS, chances are, your wireless carrier will charge you to use it) where they use nearby cell-tower and other GPS-enabled phone users signal to triangulate your location.

Yours truly downloaded the latest GMAP mobile application tonight to give it a whirl. Installation went fine as usual, however, from my apartment in the West Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, GMAP prompt that it can't find my current location. Bummer. I'll need to try this on my way to work tomorrow morning.

Google Maps Mobile: works on WM5/6 and Supports GPS

Yesterday, on my train ride to Boston, I was browsing the web on my Cingular 8525 to pass the time. I noticed Google's homepage prompted me to download Google Maps. I always knew that GMM worked for selected Jave-based phones (like the BlackBerry, etc.). I downloaded the CAB file to my handset and installed the program. Unlike Microsoft's Virtual Earth Mobile, this mobile application works! Flawlessly!. I attempted to search for addresses using Microsoft's Virtual Earth and it always give me an "unexpected error" message.

Right away, I looked up the restaurant I was headed and it provided direction from the Back Bay station. The same features (satelite, traffic info, directions) once available for BlackBerry is now available on my Windows-powered phone. Awesome! Infact, with touchscreen, it even allows you to pan/scroll just like the full PC version.

In addition, Google Maps work with phones with GPS, this is basically a free map set with millions of POI without the need to pay for maps like Garmin CityNavigator. I love Google!