Google To Buy Waze For $1.3 Billion 153
An anonymous reader writes "Google and Israeli start-up Waze have agreed in principle on a deal in which the search engine giant will buy the road traffic information sharing application for $1.3 billion. Waze, which claims more than 40 million users, describes itself as an app bringing together 'the world's largest community of drivers who work together to fight traffic, and save time and gas money on their daily commute.' There have been previous reports that first Apple and then Facebook wanted to acquire the Israeli start-up."
Time for Google to confess (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nfgAa2Hu-o
"President Obama defended the two programs that exploded into public view". In other words he confirmed both leaks as true.
Google have denied their involvement in Prism.
http://www.wate.com/story/22534581/google-ceo-denies-companys-involvement-in-prism
"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Google CEO Larry Page and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg are denying reports that depict two of the Internet's most influential companies as willing participants in a secret government pr
Not happy (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not too happy about this. Waze was the only alternative that could go toe-to-toe with Google Maps Navigation in terms of doing real-time crowdsourcing aggregation of driving data.
I know there are others like Nokia (which purchased Navteq, currently the leader in maps), Microsoft, and Tom Tom, but those others don't work nearly as well mostly because they haven't done anything new in the last ten years.
At least, there is Open Street Maps now, but that still doesn't have good turn-by-turn navigation (nor good real-time up-to-the-second information).
Re:Not happy (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time I've tried to use waze it overheated my phone so much it was physically uncomfortable to hold, google navigation on the other hand behaves nicely. If they take waze's features and google's performance I'd be happy.
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Yeah, with the impending closing of igoogle I've switched my homepage netvibes and Waze was the only source of realtime traffic maps that would allow themselves to be embedded in a third party site. With this purchase I'm going to be back to popping out to a different site which is less than ideal.
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Good ! (Score:3)
I like Waze very much and use it from time to time but I find very frequently that Waze make you take really stupid roads sometime more slower than the one with the traffic jams :/ Other problems I have with Waze are: From time to time it doesn't seems to be able to start the GPS of my tablet, Reboot my tablet just before an exit I should have taken on the motorway, Slow to detect that I have not taken its planned path... :(
Else I use Google navigation with lot less problems but I get in the traffic jams each time when i need to go in town
Now Google navigation with the traffic jam avoidance of Waze could be really be good.
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Same here. I have found the same problem.
One of the biggest annoyances of Waze is that it seems to believe the majority rather than the truth. If the majority of people significantly exceed the speed limit down a narrow country road then it seems to think that I will too and sticks me there. I'd have to go double the speed limit in order for that road to be faster than the normal path. It also routinely puts me down "Local Access Only" roads as through roads. There is one turn on my route home that is "No L
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Now Google navigation with the traffic jam avoidance of Waze could be really be good.
google has traffic jam avoidance. it just doesn't avoid traffic for the sake of avoiding traffic. for example, it won't suggest a slightly faster alternate route if it' results in significantly longer distance. this is generally what makes sense. e.g., it doesn't make sense to drive an extra 20 miles to save 5 minutes.
the sad fact is that it's typically faster to just sit there in traffic. i suppose if you are the type to irrationally avoid traffic at all costs, then google nav might not be your cup of tea.
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Waze optimizes for time not for distance so if those other routes are faster despite being longer then it's going to take you that way. Waze also has a preference for major routes it`s likely to have information from other wazers as to traffic conditions on. It's also possible it's a route bug, they do happen and waze allows you to report them, but IME it's hard to get a change approved unlike Google maps maker where you generally get an approval or rejection in a matter of days.
Apple (Score:2)
I can only see this as a move to head off Apple (but why Apple didn't by them a year ago ...)
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Not sure this is good (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of wasting so much money, I wish Google had investing in something much more worthwhile like offline navigation.
Re:Not sure this is good (Score:5, Funny)
Instead of wasting so much money, I wish Google had investing in something much more worthwhile like offline navigation.
If they did that how would they track where you are?
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GPS.
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There are other products which are pretty good at offline navigation:
http://www.igonavigation.com/ [igonavigation.com]
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FWIW, I thinks OruxMaps is great for offline navigation. It exists and is free.
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I wish Google had investing in something much more worthwhile like offline navigation.
lucky for you, they have that already. menu > make available offline. select the rectangle of the map you want offline.
If you can't beat them, buy them! (Score:2)
I use and like both Google maps and Waze; you can't beat streetview and the quality of Google maps, whilst Waze can give you some handy updates.
This really just goes to show what a massive failure Google has been in 'social' stuff, despite its huge success in other areas.
I still don't "get" Google plus, despite being a keen user of Gmail, Picasa, Docs etc.(urm, still waiting for the Picasa Android client, guys).
Main thing to remember, though, is always keep a 'hard' map loaded on your device too, for those
I hope waze app doesn't disappear (Score:2)
The actual UI in waze is much better than google though. For some reason, google maps nav always seems to lag a
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This is my exact concern too. I'm not a fan of Google Maps for driving and like you, have seen the delays (among other quirks) in the map nav. And unlike GM, Waze's integration into FB is something that's well done. Also, start time of the app in general is much quicker on my 4S. If they maintain it separately like FB did with Instagram, I'll be ok with that. However, given Googles track record and "Do Evil" stance, I'm not holding my breath.
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You ARE traffic (Score:2)
"community of drivers who work together to fight traffic"
That's strange. I've always thought that drivers are traffic. Are they fighting themselves? Or just other communities of drivers?
There's definitely scope for competition here. Different communities, different apps, swore deadly enemies fighting to the death! Which one can stage a fake traffic jam that sends the other into a futile five mile detour, leaving the road half empty?
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"There's definitely scope for competition here. Different communities, different apps, swore deadly enemies fighting to the death! Which one can stage a fake traffic jam that sends the other into a futile five mile detour, leaving the road half empty?"
I feel this idea deserves much VC funding.
And what a great URL this story has (Score:2)
"google-to-buy-waze-for-13-billion"
who needs any dots between 1 and 3 ;)
competition (Score:1)
Strategic blow to everyone not paying for Google Maps data (i.e. Apple). Google might simple kill the company off, or more likely sorta roll their tech into the main Google maps app. As long as nobody else gets the data Google is happy.
Well, crap. (Score:2)
Will Arab nations boycott Google now? (Score:1)
Interesting (Score:1)
Ugh. Another good product lost to the evil empire. (Score:1)
So long Waze. It was good while it lasted. I'll miss you.
Police reported ahead (Score:2)
So, does that mean that we can now say bye-bye to the feature where you can report police
"in countries where it is agains the law" ? (everywhere soon) ...
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No need, now the police will report you, as soon as Google shows them the data. The sad part is, that this is not an "In Soviet Russia..." joke.
The problem with the Law (Score:2)
Yet, Waze is extremely popular in France (the French generally find this law to go against their "liberties").
This has worked up until now because the company that makes Waze does not have any business presence in France, and the French government cannot exercise any pressure against the Israeli
Re:Geotarding? (Score:5, Interesting)
Waze crowdsources routefinding, which is a huge computational problem. I imagine that like Dodgeball the technology, but not the actual user experience, will ultimately be merged into the larger Google Maps crowdsourcing operation.
This is a huge blow for Apple, who simply don't have Google's mapping resources and really need a way to bootstrap their maps improvement efforts. They don't have a web based map system to draw on, and as bad as Apple Maps is, the most pernickety users - the ones most likely to file correction reports - have moved back to the Google Maps app. Well, I know I have.
(That stupid "legal" link in the corner of even the tiniest API-provided, in-app map is exactly the sort of nonsense Apple is supposed to not do!)
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This is a huge blow for Apple, who simply don't have Google's mapping resources and really need a way to bootstrap their maps improvement efforts. They don't have a web based map system to draw on, and as bad as Apple Maps is, the most pernickety users - the ones most likely to file correction reports - have moved back to the Google Maps app. Well, I know I have.
Other than some well publicised issues at launch time I've found that for me Apple Maps works at least as well as Google Maps. Maybe its down to where you are in the world.
At what point did you go back to Google Maps? Was it following the initial criticism and based on the reports of others or was it after you'd used it for a while?
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Other than some well publicised issues at launch time I've found that for me Apple Maps works at least as well as Google Maps. Maybe its down to where you are in the world.
I can't speak for the parent since I'm not an iPhone user.
But could it be that Apple doesn't have turn-by-turn walking directions yet, or real-time transit directions, or even somekind of street-view equivalent.
For instance, I read a consumer study in the UK a few years back that said that Google Navigation would consistently beat out its standalone gps competitors in terms of speed at getting to a destination, because it automatically showed a street view picture of the address at the end of the journey. A
Re:Geotarding? (Score:5, Informative)
Google best?
Try telling that to the HGV drivers from a well known trucking company (No Eddie S) who get lost where I live due to Google telling them that
1) my road is a through road (I was 30+ years ago)
2) it is suitable for 32+Tonne vehicles (It is not).
Despite several people telling Google that their maps are wrong they never get changed.
The HGV's get to the end of my road and find it is a dead end despite the signs saying that it is a no through road.
Then they get stuck because reversing 1.5 miles back up a narrow lane is impossible.
My neighbor comes to their rescue and only charges them £300 to tow them back up the lane with his mega tractor.
As for streetview, Google never got down my end of the lane so we are some of the great un-googled of this world. Hurrah!
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Sounds like a nice business model. Did you check whether he told Google that your road indeed is a through road for 32+tonne vehicles? ;-)
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That doesn't mean that Google's not the best option available. You can actually file an erratum through their web site (it takes about 2 minutes) and you get an email response when they accept/reject the changes. You can submit a correction as a text complaint, or now you can actually edit the map data directly to correct it. And in my experience within a month it's settled.
That said, very few HGV drivers I'm aware of use Google Maps, they tend to use standalone satnav systems if only because you're not dep
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Somehow I totally blanked that you've actually tried to get it corrected.
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I've found that they do correct map errors eventually, especially if given quality error reports. It usually takes a few weeks.
For your safety I recommend you make the correction yourself using Google Map Maker. There is still a human approval process but it should expedite your correction.
http://www.google.com/mapmaker [google.com]
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They are the keeper of speed limit signs.
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Despite several people telling Google that their maps are wrong they never get changed.
I can actually confirm a similar experience I had with them 5 five years ago.
I submitted a correction, I double-checked the same location six months later, and it still wasn't corrected (I'm not even sure it ever got corrected, and this was in Mountain View near to where Google HQ is located). At the very least, they should issue me a ticket number so I can check back on the status of each correction I enter. I actually don't mind if my change gets rejected (but I'd at least like to know that someone took t
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In my city (1.8 million, so not small) Apple Maps consistently fails to find places that all other mapping applications have been able to find reliably for years, it will direct you down streets that have a lot of roundabouts as opposed to a slightly longer but straight route, it's completely traffic, speed limit and roadworks unaware for my entire city... Roadworks and Speed limits are published by the dept of transport so this isn't secret info. Last time I used it to find
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Have you tried to tell Google about the problem with your location?
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2.3; yes its old but whatever happened to the 'its a nexus, it will always get upgrades' bullshit?
No one ever, ever said that. The N1 was severely limited by the space available on the device.
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from what I've read, you don't want to run JB if you are that memory limited.
I looked at the roms but nothing seemed to be usable; they were more POC's and demos but not something you'd use every day and depend on.
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And most likely, Apple doesn't want to tread heavily on app developers.
Apple Maps was done in response to Apple and Google not be
Re:Geotarding? (Score:5, Interesting)
I gave it until the Google Maps standalone app launched, plus about a fortnight. It simply wasn't improving quickly enough in my region (which is not the US) despite my filing error reports daily. I check in on it now and then, and it took them four months to notice that the shopping centre in which one of their own stores was located was not, in fact, a large park. (In fact, most places with "park" in the name were marked out as parks, regardless of whether it made any sense...) Several other issues remain unresolved to this day.
A lot of my issues aren't with mapping data but design. It's presented like a car SATNAV with lots of POI icons for food etc. prioritised over things like road names, railway stations, major universities, etc. so while it's probably good when you're driving it's very hard to read as a pedestrian. Even the colour contrast is terrible, it's all cold-toned pastel shades for everything. That's one I can't see improving any time soon.
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It's presented like a car SATNAV with lots of POI icons for food etc. prioritised over things like road names, railway stations, major universities, etc
+1. not only apple, but companies in general seem to think that the search for food or other consumer items takes precedence over all else in life. take a look at the apple keynote today ... where their calendar will suggest restaurants if you happen to put food words in your calendar appt.
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No, I'm making a reasonably accurate interpolation from the facts. I wrote that Apple Maps doesn't work for me because it's not suitable for pedestrians, and the response I got was a ramble about how Apple Maps is totally pedestrian-obsessed and some gibberish about hipsters. Clearly the response was written by someone with no reading comprehension.
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That's because Apple kit is designed for hipsters and hipsters don't drive. They cycle round on their fixies and care not what the road names are but where the closest place they can sip a latte is.
whats that about Ad Hominem?
that's not an ad hominem its a ad populium
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What is it with Slashdot readers who don't know what the fuck the logical fallacies are and can't be bothered to do a simple web search to find out?
Argumentum ad populum is when you argue that a proposition is true because it is believed by many people. The quintessential form is "can millions of people be wrong about X?"
"It's for hipsters and hipsters don't drive" is an unsupported premise, nothing more. No actual argument is being offered, just an assertion made without support.
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I should add, the bigger issue with Apple Maps' crappy data is that geofences can silently misbehave, because the conversion from an address to a geographical location and vice versa is hidden from the user, so there's no telling if or how it has gone wrong. Bad data in the maps app is one thing, but data that makes other apps work badly is the sort of thing that shouldn't happen on an Apple device.
Re: Geotarding? (Score:2)
I'm in Israel. Apple Maps doesn't even have street names for all the roads in my town.
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Well, if you live in Israel, Google maps doesn't have streetnames for almost half of your capital [goo.gl], or for your . Nor, for that matter, for the [goo.gl] fourth [goo.gl] and fifth [goo.gl] largest city in your country.
And if you deny that those cities are in your country, could you kindly inform your government so that they can withdraw their troops?
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Sorry, I messed that one up big time! It should be:
Well, if you live in Israel, Google maps doesn't have streetnames for almost half of your capital [goo.gl], or for your second largest city [goo.gl]. Nor, for that matter, for the fourth [goo.gl] and fifth [goo.gl] largest city in your country.
And if you deny that those cities are in your country, could you kindly inform your government so that they can withdraw their troops?
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Perhaps because not every street appears to have a name. I street viewed a few of the streets without names and they look more like a shared driveway that a proper street. (no kerb, no footpath, covered in trash, as opposed to footpath, kerb, gutter, slight littering of trash)
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Apple Maps led me to a wrong route from Oakland to SFO during rush hour as I was headed to the airport, and ended up having to double back through the tolls twice. I almost missed my flight and it was a nightmare of an experience. Not the mention some of the crazy UX problems that I had.
And if anything, I consider myself an Apple fanboy, but that whole experience threw me off Apple maps completely.
Add with turn-by-turn navigation, Google maps continues to dominate as my go-to choice for navigation. YMMV and
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I do still have an ipad though. If I don't know where I am going, I usually look it up on google maps before I leave, then take the ipad with me. If I am looking for an address...I don't notice a difference. If I am looking for a starbucks on the way...I have learned that (at least in my medium sized city) the apple maps will piss you off.
I would wager that g
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It was under $300 as an outright purchase, and using an mvno (Simple Mobile), my monthly bill is $50 for unlimited everything, though I did notice a data throttle the
Re:Geotarding? (Score:5, Insightful)
> This is a huge blow for Apple
I doubt it. I've said (when Scott Forstall stepped down) that Apple realised that it's not in the data industry. Sure, they can do a bit in-house, but they just don't have the resources to cross the moat that Google has with its infrastructure, code, and expertise.
Apple does hardware, interfaces, and marketing very well. It leverages other company's products (its kernal, the BSD userland, GCC / LLVM, and Google's online stuff) when it lacks any real competitive advantage. Google is a harder pill to swallow (since they can't just fork it and modify things to suit their needs), but it's a battle they've chosen not to have.
Android and Glasses are what they should be focus on beating, and they won't beat them if they lumber their own devices with half-assed clones of the things Google does best.
Re:Geotarding? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, they've got to get their maps data from somewhere, which means they're in the data industry now. The fact that Apple were bidding for Waze suggests they're stuck with it unless they decide to partner up with someone like Google again.
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Ha, maybe it'd be more apt to say it's a huge blow to my hopes that Apple would get it kicked into shape this year.
Re:Geotarding? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, they've got to get their maps data from somewhere, which means they're in the data industry now. The fact that Apple were bidding for Waze suggests they're stuck with it unless they decide to partner up with someone like Google again.
Apple got their data from a number of different sources originally. One of these was TomTom which might explain the decent data quality in the UK. They were also reported to have been getting traffic data from Waze in some form already. Don't forget that Waze aren't a mapping company, they are a traffic company.
Apple aren't going to partner with Google because Google would have them over a barrel with respect to mapping on iOS. All they can do is iterate on the data that they've got, they were employing people to manage this in the different regions a while back, and look for other complimentary data sources. One problem with getting a new data source is merging it into the existing data and managing conflicts. I worked on GIS systems back in the early '90s and it wasn't trivial then with the small amount of data available. I can only imagine that its got worse as the data set sizes have increased.
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Apple got their data from a number of different sources originally. One of these was TomTom which might explain the decent data quality in the UK.
While no doubt that the quality of data was likely great, every source I've read so far plus my own observations have shown that they horribly mishandled the data. TomTom's maps aren't only good in the UK, they are actually excellent in many parts of the world including Australia. Apple also credit Sensis in Australia, the largest information brokers in the country. They literally got their data from the company that publishes the street director, telephone directories, and business directories, yet that di
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Waze aren't a mapping company
Apple aren't going to partner with Google
"isn't", damnit! "isn't"!
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I'm a Waze user and have corrected their maps a few times both with the online app and with textual reporting. I wouldn't say that they aren't a mapping company as they most certainly provide good tools for correcting maps and highlighting new roads.
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Apple aren't going to partner with Google because Google would have them over a barrel with respect to mapping on iOS.
What you mean to say here is:
"Apple aren't going to partner with Google because they dont want to pay a fair and reasonable price for access to Google's data".
All Google asked Apple for was branding and giving the users the option of using Latitude (on Android it's default is set to off and opt out, so it would have been the same on Iphone). Apple was the one that refused to play nice with others.
I worked on GIS systems back in the early '90s and it wasn't trivial then with the small amount of data available. I can only imagine that its got worse as the data set sizes have increased.
It hasn't gotten better. The tools for merging disparate datasets have gotten better (ArcMap/ArcInfo is st
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See the next announcement that Apple is pairing with Microsoft to bring Bing maps in 3.... 2.... 1.....
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Who do you trust for speed limit information? [wikispeedia.org]
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First of all, I really don't think Google controls maps.
Second, it's only an issue if they abuse the monopoly in order to leverage themselves in another field.
They have a mapping application for Apple iPhones. Microsoft has their own mapping application. So does Apple. So does Tom Tom. So do a score of others. Google leveraging maps to increase the share of Android only works if Apple and Microsoft pretty much admit they need Google Maps.
You have a better argument saying Google has a monopoly on videos
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I doubt it. I've said (when Scott Forstall stepped down) that Apple realised that it's not in the data industry. Sure, they can do a bit in-house, but they just don't have the resources to cross the moat that Google has with its infrastructure, code, and expertise.
dunno if it's a huge blow for apple, but it's painfully obvious that apple thinks maps and navigation technology is part of their core or they wouldn't have dove in head first building their own solution.
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Waze crowdsources routefinding, which is a huge computational problem. I imagine that like Dodgeball the technology, but not the actual user experience, will ultimately be merged into the larger Google Maps crowdsourcing operation.
This is a huge blow for Apple, who simply don't have Google's mapping resources and really need a way to bootstrap their maps improvement efforts. They don't have a web based map system to draw on, and as bad as Apple Maps is, the most pernickety users - the ones most likely to file correction reports - have moved back to the Google Maps app. Well, I know I have.
(That stupid "legal" link in the corner of even the tiniest API-provided, in-app map is exactly the sort of nonsense Apple is supposed to not do!)
well, it remains to be seen what they will do with it.
they might kill it and in 3 years after that introduce an identical feature in their own product line.
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This is a huge blow for Apple
Ha!
This is no blow for Apple. Apple is locked in with its user base.
I literally just an hour ago at work had a guy show me his new iPhone. SWEAR TO GOD. ... ...
He told me it is better than "Droids".
I asked him what is better about it. His answer ?
of course
"It's an iPhone."
Re: Geotarding? (Score:2)
Re:Geotarding? (Score:5, Informative)
For those who think "What on earth is geotarding?", http://www.shootingatbubbles.com/archives/geotarding-is-as-useful-as-llama-spit/ [shootingatbubbles.com] has an explanation:
When combined it means locking out potential users of your web service because their geographical location conflicts with licensing and copyright agreements.
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Re:Pop3 and Thunderbird (Score:4, Insightful)
I already did, pop3, I found that my ISP provides an excellent email. I was quite surprised how much easier Thunderbird is, and pop3 may be old, but it doesn't leave your email on the cloud.
Secure the link with TLS, I asked the ISP if their SMTP connections are force secure, he assure me it is.
My government may not protect my privacy, my British politicians may not have my interests at heart, I may be classed as possible terrorist to be watched, but there is a way forward here.
And it even works better than before!
Your email still passes through the ISPs server so the meta-data about who you received mail from and when, and who you sent mail to and when, is still recorded in their logs. If GCHQ see something they count as suspicious then they can apply to the Home Secretary or Justice Secretary to allow interception of your email and its done.
If the PRISM stuff is to believed then it doesn't matter where your email is delivered it just has to pass a listening point and they have it. So well done for changing your mail setup but I don't think it'll make much difference.
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True, but the email history isn't hanging around on a gmail or yahoo or hotmail server waiting to be read.
There isn't a PRISM interface to my computer like the one to Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo, so they *really* need to get real warrant, checked by a real person. None of this 'click a checkbox to say its legal' business. Only then can they get my email history.
If they want to do business in the UK, or operate offices with the UK, it is. We have laws in place that require ISPs to keep communications logs for 12 months. No warrant is needed to access this data based on UK law either, just the say so from a senior official in the organisation making the request.
You are also assuming that PRISM is picking things up off the servers, from my reading of things, it doesn't. It can collect the data on-the-wire. So all that's necessary is that your mail passes a PRISM tap
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From the information leaked PRISM is covered by a blanket warrant from the FISA court. Under previous law the FISA court would not have been able to sanction domestic monitoring but I'm sure it is under some authoritarian reading of how the FISA bill and the Patriot Act interact.
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I am amused at the amount of "HUR HUR, I USE SSL/TLS TO GET MY MAIL!!" posts. Very good. When you connect to your ISP or mail provider, it's quite possible (but far from guaranteed) that the NSA can't intercept the encrypted content. But how did that mail get to the mail server? (Or, if your sending, from your mail server to the recipients' mail server?)
It was almost certainly relayed via vanilla SMTP. Unencrypted. Via whatever network hops are needed, and probably through a couple of listening posts.
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Werner Heisenberg to the rescue!