05/25, 6:35pm
Google Maps gets transit remake as mobile leads
Google marked a pair of milestones for its mobile mapping on Wednesday with both an app and the rise of mobile. Google Maps 5.5 for Android (Market) has received a newly overhauled section for mass transit stops designed to reduce the dependence on plotting a course for routes. A given stop will now show the upcoming departures with color-coded lines, all the lines regardless of the time, and nearby stations if the current one won't work.
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04/08, 4:00pm
Google Hotpot now permanent in Places
Google on Friday was happy enough with the state of its Hotpot location recommendation service to make it a permanent staple of Google Places. The once experimental feature will now be subsumed into the place pages on the web and in mobile apps. Uniting the two should have a practical benefit by simplifying the link between the basic place information and how the places have been reviewed.
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03/03, 4:40pm
Google Maps for Android adds two-way Latitude talk
A Thursday afternoon 5.2 update to Google Maps for Android (Market) has given the app a much more social element. Latitude now finally supports interaction with others through "pings." Users can ask their friends to check in with a ping and get a notification to help find them after the check-in, such as when they've reached a local bar for a meetup.
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