maps

New York solicits taxicab tech ideas

You got a better idea on how taxis should work? New York City is all ears.

On Tuesday, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) put out a request for information on how it can improve its taxi technology.

The TLC, in conjunction with the Design Trust for Public Space, staged an elaborate display at the New York International Auto Show in 2007 of taxis with innovative ideas on sustainability and design. Now it seems that the TLC wants to ensure that the public is aware of its interest in tech beyond hybrids.

The city's contracts with service providers for its tech tools program--referred to as the Taxicab Passenger Enhancement Program, or T-PEP--expire in about two years. The TLC seems to be shopping for options on how "to enhance the technology systems in each taxicab for the benefit of passengers, drivers, and owners alike," according to the announcement.… Read more

Google Street View camera + low bridge = uh-oh

There are any number of amusements to be found on Google Maps, candid images of the world captured by Google's car-mounted cameras, but I couldn't resist passing this one along.

It looks as if southbound on Merchant Street in Pittsburgh, Pa., is a lousy spot to have a camera mounted on a stalk on the roof of your car.

Open the link above and click the forward arrows. You can watch as the car heads toward the low-clearance bridge, then see the view go askew, then see it corrected again, apparently because the camera was remounted correctly.

Or … Read more

More universities join Yahoo for Net-scale research

Yahoo has signed up three new universities to participate in Internet-scale computing research, the Internet pioneer said Thursday.

The University of California-Berkeley, Cornell University, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have joined an effort that already included Carnegie Mellon University, Yahoo said Thursday. The universities get access to a cluster of Yahoo computers called M45 that runs open-source software called Hadoop that can be used to process data rapidly.

Yahoo is a major contributor to Hadoop, a project within the Apache Software Foundation's collection, but Google created the underlying technology through its MapReduce algorithm. MapReduce and Hadoop can be used … Read more

For Googledom, start here

A vast improvement on its BlackBerry predecessor, Google Mobile App is primarily a search app that also serves as a portal to other Google Web apps. It's anchored by a search bar, with a string of icons along marching along the top. Click one to download or launch native Google apps like Gmail and maps, or to jump to mobile Web sites for the panoply of Google apps.

Warmly welcomed are autocomplete search suggestions, the ability to scroll through search history, and the ability to edit a misspelled search term and begin a new search. Brand new is a … Read more

Geocoding error distorts L.A. crime statistics

The Los Angeles Police Department is battling a virtual crime wave in downtown L.A. caused by an Internet map coding error.

If the department's online crime map is to be believed, one might think that a downtown location just a block from the LAPD's new headquarters is the most crime-ridden place in the city. In the past six months, that location experienced 1,380 crimes--4 percent of all crimes mapped--or roughly eight a day.

The crimes were real, but the locations were off. A coding error within the system's geocoding--the process of converting addresses into map … Read more

Amazon launches Hadoop data-crunching service

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

A correction has been made to this story. See details below.

Amazon on Thursday announced a new cloud computing service that uses Hadoop, a free software framework, to crunch tons of data.

The service, called Amazon Elastic MapReduce, is designed for businesses, researchers and analysts trying to conduct data intensive number crunching (statement). Hadoop, which is used by companies like Yahoo, is trying to be pushed into the enterprise data center by start-ups like Cloudera.

Correction, 7:15 a.m. PDT: This story initially miscast Google's connection to Hadoop. … Read more

Google maps draw a line in sand for clean energy

A new set of layers for Google Earth is trying to make it easier for solar and wind farm developers to figure out where they are least and most likely to be challenged.

The Path to Green Energy, as the Google Earth tool is called, provides information on lands legally prohibited from commercial development, on natural habitats of endangered species, and on lands proposed for inclusion into the federal wilderness system.

The tool was developed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Audubon Society with sponsorship from Google.org's Geo Challenge Grants. The grants program provides nonprofits … Read more

Google makes user-created maps searchable

Google Maps users have created millions of their own maps using the service's My Maps feature. But whenever a visitor searched for content on Google Maps, none of those maps appeared in the results. Until now.

Google announced in a blog post Thursday that maps created by others will now start to surface when users search for specific content in Google Maps. For example, company representatives said that if a user queries Google Maps with "President Birth Places," the top result will be a user-created map showing all the Presidents' birth places.

If a map is attributed … Read more

HearPlanet adds map to audio tour guide iPhone app

As I made my way around Vancouver, B.C., last week on a business trip and admired the futuristic high-rises and sweeping vistas of ocean and mountains I felt curious--and lost. I wanted to know what the buildings and landmarks were and why they were so striking.

My questions could easily have been answered with the HearPlanet Premium iPhone app. The new version of the "talking tour guide" mobile program, released publicly on Thursday, includes an integrated, interactive map and human voices, in addition to the computer-generated audio.

The HearPlanet Premium app, available for download from the App Store … Read more