Apple iPhone Boosts Google Maps Usage
It would appear Google owes Steve Jobs a round of beers.
According to GigaOm, the iPhone has boosted the popularity of Google Maps like never before.
While she didn’t give specific numbers, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products, told Om that the company saw a significant uptick in Google Maps usage shortly after the iPhone release in July.
That trend has continued for the past two months, Mayer said, and “maps usage hasn’t stopped rising.”
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for YouTube, another iPhone feature Apple has promoted heavily.
Meyer says that the phone’s YouTube functionality has not caused any major upsurge in video viewing.
Of course, that may be attributable to YouTube’s already gigantic user base, but AT&T’s slow-as-molasses EDGE network certainly isn’t helping matters.
Find Video Favorites With Google Alerts
Google has added a video option to Google Alerts giving you a way to easily find new videos on topics that interest you.
For those not familiar with Google Alerts, it works something like the RSS feeds Google offers on some search service, notably Google News, Blog Search and Google Video.
However, rather than dumping your results into an RSS feed, Google Alerts notifies you of new content via e-mail. Options include being notified “as-it-happens” or in daily/weekly digests.
There’s plenty of ways you can use Google Alerts - such as monitoring a breaking news story and alerts are helpful for search areas that don’t offer RSS results feeds, or if you simply don’t like RSS notification.
Perhaps even better than the new Video Alerts, Google has created a new catch-all alert category that will combine results from three search engines - web, news and blogs making it easier to track topics across a broad spectrum.
The chief disadvantage of alerts as opposed to straight RSS feeds is that alerts only include the top results and are sorted by relevance. Unlike RSS feeds, there’s no way to sort alerts by date.
For some this won’t be a concern, but in cases like tracking breaking news date-based sorting is key.
Still, the new Google Alerts for video are a handy way to find obscure movies on subjects that interest you.
Google Calendar Optimized For The Apple iPhone
Google Calendar has released a new iPhone/iPod Touch site designed to optimize the interface for Apple’s touch screen devices.
The new version can be found at http://calendar.google.com and will auto-detect the mobile version of Safari (if you want to see it in your browser you’ll need to spoof your user agent).
The new interface is a color-coded list of all your calendars and selecting anything in the list will take you to the detail view where you can find specifics like any notes or directions attached to the event.
There’s also a page to control which of your calendars are visible, but there isn’t any way to see a month view or otherwise control what’s included in the calendar listings.
On the bright side, the interface is lightweight and fairly fast, which should be good for those times you’re stuck on the EDGE network.
Google and NASA Team Up
When you get tired of looking at things on our planet via Google Earth, turn you sights towards the moon. NASA and the mega search engine team up for, wait for it, Google Moon:
The newly launched site lets you click through Google markers on the moon to access newly released photos and content from the Apollo missions, including panoramic shots from the moon, audio and video clips, and diaries of the astronauts’ activities while bopping around the dimpled sphere.
All content is overlaid on a high-res lunar map that has detailed charts of different regions of the moon for anyone simulating a lunar mission.
Google Celebrates Roald Dahl’s Birthday
Today is Roald Dahl’s Birthday and as usual with most famous people, places and things, Google has provided us with a tribute Google logo:
Roald Dahl was a Welsh novelist, short story author and screenwriter of Norwegian parentage, famous as a writer for both children and adults.
His most popular books include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Witches and The BFG.
Canada Says Google Map Could Break Privacy Law
The Street View feature of Google Maps, with its close-up views of city streets and recognizable shots of people, could violate a Canadian law protecting individual privacy, officials said earlier today.
Google introduced street-level map views in May, giving Web users a series of panoramic, 360-degree images of nine U.S. cities. Some of the random pictures feature people in informal poses who can clearly be identified.
Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart wrote to Google in early August asking for more details. She said if the Street View product were expanded to Canada without being amended, it could well violate privacy laws.
The images were produced in partnership with Canadian firm Immersive Media Corp, which says it has taken similar street level pictures of major Canadian cities.
Canadian law obliges businesses wishing to disclose personal information about individuals to first obtain their consent. Stoddart said pictures of people on Street View were clear enough to be considered personal information.
The images appear to have been collected largely without the consent and knowledge of the individuals who appear in the images.
I am concerned that, if the Street View application were deployed in Canada, it might not comply with our federal privacy legislation. In particular, it does not appear to meet the basic requirements of (the law).
Stoddart sent a similar letter to Immersive Media and the documents were posted on her website.
A spokeswoman for Google said the company abides by the local laws of the countries it operates in.
Source: Reuters