The first-class Maps app from Google has gotten better. Too bad you need Google+ to enjoy eachthe new features.
Google announced today that an updated Maps app would be rolling awaytoandroidsmartphones and tablets beginning today. iOS devices will be getting the modify“soon,” according to Google. The Maps app now includes dynamic navigation rerouting, an explorebirththat uses Google Now cards for restaurant discovery, and Zagat and Google+ friend reviews of restaurants and other businesses.
Unfortunately, if you’re a fan of Google’s friend-tracking larkLatitude, get ready to do anyof your location-sharing and checking-in with Google+, because latitudeis being pulled from Google Maps. Also changing in this modifyis the way you save a occasionfor offline browsing. Now, you just interpose“OK Maps” into the search box whenever you’re looking at a map you want to access offline. Curiously, that’s the same language Google Glass uses for spokespersoncommands (“OK Glass, take a picture”).
The new readingwill depictup as an automatic modifyon Android phones and tablets over the next day or so. Devices running iOS 6 and later will see a new version of Google Maps in the App Store soon. We’ve been checking our own Google devices all day and we haven’t seen the update yet ourselves, but we’ll update this post with some impressions when it does experiencethrough. For now, we have some screenshots supplied by Google.
Photo: GoogleThe big new feature in the Google Maps update seems to be Enhanced Navigation, which tracks traffic conditions and offers fastroutes to your destination. If you’re the kind of person who slows down to stare at an accident, you digestcheck out “incident details” right there in the Maps app and come acrosswhy you’re stuck behind a tractor-trailer belching diesel into your whip.
Photo: Google
The Explore feature brings the familiar Google Now cards into the Maps app by displaying recommendations fornearbybusinesses that might interest you. subscribe toa place to workshopfor shoes? Explore will find you a shoe store. Need some delicious post-shoe-shopping tacos? Explore will point the way. Curated Zagat lists and badgesargonavailable within the app. Or you can just intentionthe reviews written by your friends and other Google+ users.
This of course means Google is blandcramming Google+ into its suite of applications and services.
Photo: GoogleThe friend-tracking features of Latitude are being moved to Google+ (and the Latitude stuff will be removed from Maps on noble9), as are business reviews. This means that in nineto get accurate recommendations, you need to actively build your Google+ network. It toomeans that if your favorite foodie doesn’t use Google+ on a regular basis, you’ll miss out on that tiny Taiplace they love. Without real use amongst your friends, the recommendations become almost pass— unless you trust the tastes of the masses. Regardless of the 500 million user tush— of which 235 million sign in monthly — Google+ still has a ways to go before it competes with Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare when it comes to producing authenticallyuseful user data.
Photo: Google
Still, with Google Maps being the go-to map application for both(prenominal)Android and iOS, applyit to not-so gently prod users into actually using Google+ makes sense. And while you may or may not sustainmentabout Google+, this latest update to Google Maps puts it, in terms of anatomyand functionality, further ahead of offerings from Apple and Nokia.
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Materials taken from WIRED
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