Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Google Maps is experimenting with speech recognition technology for its mobile users. The lucky guinea pigs are owners of the Blackberry Pearl 8110, 8120, and 8130 in the US. This is the same voice search technology that they use in their free directory service, GOOG-411.

This service proves to be very useful for many mobile users who lack the time or patience to type the long names of the places they want to go to. It will hopefully also add a level if safety as it could help to keep peoples hands and eyes off their phones and on the road, because even knowing the danger people still insist on using a mobile phone while driving. Here are the simple steps:

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Palm announced this afternoon that the Centro will be able to add Google Maps with My Location as early as tomorrow.  The maker also announced an unlocked version of the Centro in white with gray.

Another phone with Google Maps for location and driving directions.  Iv’e said it before, but anyone else feel like something else is coming?  Google has to have given this some thought?  Don’t get me wrong, Google Maps is fun but navigation is missing.  Enough of my blather.

My Location on the Centro will allow users to find themselves with fewer keystrokes and less effort.  The My Location is in addition to all the great things Google Maps brings: traffic, aerial shots and driving directions.  Ok, I can’t take it.  Just driving directions?  Come on Google.  You know where we are.  You’ve got the directions.  How much harder is it to put this together???  Ok, I am over it now.  This is a cool addition for the plethora of Centro users out there (the phone is really cute).  You can download as of tomorrow from here.

The unlocked phone is $299 and retains the same dimensions.  You can find it for sale online here.

Press release [Palm]

If you were underwhelmed with Mr. Jobs iPhone GPS demo like me, take heart.  While the demo was fun, it wasn’t too practical a tool, I mean if you’ve got GPS then you want turn by turn navigation.  Something big is around the corner and I believe it has Google’s fingerprints all over it.  The iPhone SDK forbids developers to produce a real-time navigation application so we know there are protecting someone.

Some rumors have said Tom Tom was that someone.  But it looks to me like they built their app on a jailbroken iPhone, so that puts them at risk.  I don’t think that is going to happen.

The Google map application has been on the phone since day one.  Google Maps is a great resource in its own right and the point by point directions are great.  But what is Google waiting for to jump into the navigation market?  They’ve built phone apps, they’ve got a POI database, they want to serve advertisements to us that are locally significant (one thing all competitors can’t do yet).  This would be a coup for them to jump on.

I believe we’ll see Google complete it’s mapping circle with navigation.  Anyone care to guess why Google or Apple didn’t want to announce this last week?  Let us know in the comments.

Read [Engadget]

Google has just made available version 2.2 of its useful Google Maps for mobile application. Adding to the previously introduced public transportation for San Francisco is a new feature which lets users get transit directions all in the same place, similar to the web-based Google Maps. It has even expanded its coverage to include Chicago, Seattle, Vancouver as well as over 40 other cities across the US.

Additionally, version 2.2 lets users find the last transit trips of the day in covered cities. This comes in handy for users who rely on public transit, since they can easily schedule their activities at night. Likewise, users can also view earlier trips made by public transit. Even more useful is Google Maps for mobile’s My Location feature which lets users set the start point of their local trips.

Google Maps for mobile version 2.2 works best with Blackberry devices and other Java-based phones. In fact, it features faster searching capabilities and star rating features for business establishments.

You can download this mobile application by pointing your mobile phone’s browser to http://www.google.com/gmm.

Via [Google Mobile Blog]

Whenever you buy a GPS, they come with preloaded maps, basically if you buy one in the United States, you will get maps of the U.S., and neighboring countries and if you buy a GPS in Europe, you will get European maps. What happens if maps get updated? To update GPS maps it usually costs a lot of money, and if you move far away you will need a new GPS. This new service aims at stealing maps from sites and saves it and uses those. You would think such a service would cost a lot of money, but in fact, it only costs $9. 

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Perhaps you’ve made time to play with Google Sky in Google Earth, the downloaded program that lets you roam around the planet and in the case of Google Sky, around space.  If you’ve been to busy...or lazy...Google launches their Google Sky site.  Like Google Maps, Google sky gives you free reign to move about, zoom if you like or take a tour to Space hot spots.

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As a regular Google maps user I use “the Send to” button whenever the option arises. Although sending a map to my phone was a big help, I have been lusting for GPS integration for a while now. Now TomTom looks to steep into that void and partner up with Google to offer a “send to GPS” feature in Google Maps. Your TomTom GPS must be connected to the internet via TomTom’s HOME application that they offer for free, but other than that it should be a fairly straightforward process. A quick check to Google Maps and TomTom’s website don’t show any immediate movement on this but there should to be some noise about it in the coming weeks.

read [SlashGear]

The Amazon Kindle is already a revolutionary device and it has been recently discovered that it can do a little bit more than what meets the eye. These little hidden secrets are called easter eggs, and one of the main easter eggs found in the Kindle is GPS.

Basically, the GPS is CDMA based, and it comes with Google Maps. To open up the Google Maps, press Atl and 1 while in the browser to show the current location. In addition, there is a picture viewer and you can make a screen shot by pressing Alt+Shift+G. Finally, there is even a game on it, Minesweeper! To play, press Alt+M. These new little tools will probably make Kindle owners happy, and may even persuade people to purchase the Kindle.

There are a few more GPS short cuts:

Alt-2 find gas station nearby
Alt-3 find restaurants nearby
Alt-5 find custom keyword nearby
Alt-D dump debug info to the log and toggle highlight default item
Alt-Z toggle zone drawing and show log

Via [Interface]