Google Maps Is Getting AR Directions, Recommendation Features (theverge.com) 38
Google Maps is getting a new augmented reality Street View mode to help you follow directions in real time, along with personalized recommendations to help you discover places in your neighborhood. The Verge reports: The new AR features combine Google's existing Street View and Maps data with a live feed from your phone's camera to overlay walking directions on top of the real world and help you figure out which way you need to go. In addition to directions, the new AR mode can help identify nearby places, too, and Google is even testing adding a helpful augmented reality animal guide to lead you along the way.
Maps is also getting a new tab called "For You" that will feature recommendations specifically tailored to you. Google is using a new "match number" system, which will generate a personal score on how much it thinks you'll like the recommendation based on your past likes and reviews, as well as your saved food preferences. Google is also adding more social features to Maps, making it possible to share multiple places to friends with a single action, and vote on them together in real time to decide where to go without having to leave the app. The AR directions feature has no release date, but the new social and recommendations features will be coming to both Android and iOS later this summer.
Maps is also getting a new tab called "For You" that will feature recommendations specifically tailored to you. Google is using a new "match number" system, which will generate a personal score on how much it thinks you'll like the recommendation based on your past likes and reviews, as well as your saved food preferences. Google is also adding more social features to Maps, making it possible to share multiple places to friends with a single action, and vote on them together in real time to decide where to go without having to leave the app. The AR directions feature has no release date, but the new social and recommendations features will be coming to both Android and iOS later this summer.
Speed cameras please (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd rather they'd add something practical, so that I don't have to stick with Waze.
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you can make choices for yourself
Navigation decisions are choices where I really appreciate an automated suggestion. I'm willing to give up the human part of me that used to drive around lost in exchange for help with those choices.
"Where should I eat?" is something else entirely.
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For Android anyway I suggest Speed Cameras by Sygic. I don't work for them or know who does. But it does report the current speed limit as you're driving and where there are red light cameras. I paid a couple dollars for it but think the adware one would work too.
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And yet Waze is also owned by Google.
Does anyone know why - after several years of being under the same company - Waze and Google Maps have *still* not been integrated? Google Maps seems to have a different (and much more comprehensive) database than Waze, but doesn't have many of Waze's features (like reporting police).
And Just Who... (Score:2)
...Is going to pay for all the AR street-cleaners to clean up all the AR animal-guide poo? Who wants to track *that* all over your carpet from your AR shoes?
Google is even testing adding a helpful augmented reality animal guide to lead you along the way.
At least it wipes off, like with a cloth.
Strat
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At least it's not Clippy.
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Re: And yet they don't add something useful... (Score:1)
Oh look. It's you again.
Yes, people still listen to the radio. Not everyone is such an ivory tower douche like you fluffynuts.
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Yes, people still listen to the radio. Not everyone is such an ivory tower douche like you fluffynuts.
Practically every car being made today has both a line in and a USB in, and really every car being made today has one or the other. And this has been true for around a decade.
You don't have to live in an ivory tower to not want to listen to commercials. Even if you don't have strong feelings about them, they're not the music you're trying to listen to.
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Watch out for more zombies wandering into traffic (Score:2)
Or slipping or tripping over things....
As the experience becomes ever-more "immersive", people will increasingly forget they're living in a real, potentially dangerous world.
or the opposite (Score:2)
You know augmented reality is an overlay of what your camera shows - so you have less things in between you and your vision.
I would predict that people would bump into stuff less while using walking AR, and that they wont mentally be teleported into a world detached from the consequences of reality.
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Right turn NOW!
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Natural selection will simply sort out the immersive ones, and nothing of value will be lost.
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Along with spying for the Chinese gov. Nice!
Off course. That is why Google cannot stay behind. Any service from Google rings an alarm bell, and if it contains the word "personalized", I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Even more advertising... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Maps is also getting a new tab called “For You” that will feature recommendations specifically tailored to you. Google is using a new “match number” system, which will generate a personal score on how much it thinks you’ll like the recommendation based on your past likes and reviews"
Great, so instead of just helping you get to your destinition, you will be plastered with ads on the businesses you walk by.
Also, with the current interface, like you would a paper map. With the AR interface, the temptation will be to hold the phone in front of your face, so that it replaces your view of the street. Anyone who thought phone-zombies were already bad - Google says "hold my beer".
Less useful than it was (Score:2)
It's amazing how less useful Google maps is now than it used to be.
I wanted to find where a road goes in my home town... and couldn't. The road is rendered in white (color:255,255,255) and the surrounding landscape is "barely off white" (color:235,233,239). The contrast between those two colors is so poor I simply *couldn't* follow the road windings across the landscape.
Google maps is so useless that I had to get a real [paper] map to see where the road goes.
Looking after drunk people (Score:1)
Awesome! (Score:3)
Augmented Animal Guide? Name it Clippy!!! (Score:2)
They should name the animal guide "Clippy".