JetBlue Uses Google Maps for In-Flight Tracking
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JetBlue will partner with Google Maps to allow customers to map the routes of their flights in real time on the plane's seatback TVs.
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(InfoWorld) - A new chip designed for portable wireless devices combines the coverage of two satellite-based navigation services to offer a location tracking time of less than one second. The u-blox 5 chip, which Switzerland's U-bloxÂ plans to unveil at the 3GSM World Congress event in Barcelona next month, uses two global navigation satellite services: GPS, which was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, and Europe's Galileo, the vendor said Wednesday. The technology has a tracking sensitivity of -160 dBm, which enables indoor coverage. The abbreviation dBm represents the power ratio in decibels (dB) with respect to 1 milliwatt (mW). With a power consumption of less than 50 mW, the u-blox 5 chip allows GPS-enabled mobile phones and other wireless devices to operate in difficult indoor environments, such as shopping malls and train stations. In addition to its satellite-based navigation chip, U-blox will use the 3GSM event to show several other new products, including AssistNow Offline, which stores data in the GPS receiver for up to two weeks. The technology allows the receiver to compute a position instantly without having to connect to a mobile network at startup to download the data, as is the case with typical GPS services
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Blog: Gizmodo reports that Google has fleet of camera cars to take photos for Google Maps street view and they are Chevy Cobalt's
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Preloaded with maps of North America and eastern and western Europe, the N&uuml;vifone will be Garmin's first device to include Google Local Search.
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Blog: Gizmodo reports that Google has a fleet of camera cars to take photos for Google Maps street view, and they are Chevy Cobalts
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Google Inc.  said on  Tuesday that the company has begun offering mobile phone users  in more than 30 major U.S. cities the capacity to view highway  maps with "live" traffic data.
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Excellent observation by Michael Gray that when performing a search for JetBlue on Google&#8217;s Image Search, three or four images are served of the crash landing of a JetBlue plane, including the second image on the page. Results on Google Video Search are also full of JetBlue emergency landing footage.      Luckily for JetBlue, Google Universal Search has [...]
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(InfoWorld) - Google is coming for you. In fact, Google's minions are driving Chevy Cobalts with roof-mounted 360-degree digital cameras, and they want to take your picture. Smile! You're on Googlecam. In an unprecedented campaign, Google is enhancing its Google Maps service with a new Street View feature that allows you to view crisp, navigable photos of roads in nine major cities across the United States, including San Francisco, New York, San Diego, and Denver. (To see the full list, go to maps.google.com and click the Street View link on the upper-right corner.) Once you zoom in close enough, you can click the Street View link and look around the location, or click an arrow to see the next Street View photo. To snap the pictures, Google mounted digital cameras on the roof of passenger cars -- reportedly Chevy Cobalts, according to the tech blog Gizmodo -- and drove around San Francisco and San Diego. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company partnered with Immersive Media for the underlying photo technology and has worked with third-party firms for street-level photography for the additional cities outside of California. Only San Francisco and San Diego use high-resolution street-level images, however. Other cities use lower-res captures. Street View could be a boon for "landmark drivers" who prefer driving instructions such as "Turn left at the large brick church, and drive until you get to the pizza place on the corner" as opposed to "Meet me at Second Street and Fourth Avenue." It certainly reveals how far Google will go to prove its mapping prowess -- and, incidentally, attract users to more localized advertising. According to Greg Sterling at Sterling Market Intelligence in Oakland, Calif., Google has a Business Referral Representative program that sets a precedent for localized involvement. That program involves Google representatives providing local business information and photos to Google for a fee. Sterling said that precedent for collecting local information and photos is being continued with the Street View program. Street View is "about creating more utility for consumers, which in turn will lead indirectly to ad revenue over the longer term. Google has long focused on small businesses and local users, so this is just trying to take those efforts to the next level," Sterling said. Still, regardless of whether Street View is purely a mapping enhancement or a new play for ad revenue, there is tough competition from Microsoft and others. There are also some nagging privacy issues to deal with, plus the sheer magnitude of the project. The story so far ... Of course, Street View is not a new idea. Amazon.com tried a 360-degree street-view mapping feature in its A9 service that it subsequently abandoned. Microsoft has provided a Bird's Eye View feature in Live Virtual Earth that allows you to zoom in on a location, albeit not quite to the street level. (There is a preview of Microsoft's "street side" technology that does allow you to see street-level views, but only for portions of Seattle and through a rather clunky interface.) Another competitor, EveryScape.com in Waltham, Mass., has mapped out the Union Square section of San Francisco with 360-degree street-level views and plans to "virtualize" four more cities this year. Users can sign up to become "scape" artists who drive city streets with roof-mounted cameras. There's a strong user-participation angle, but EveryScape doesn't have Google's funding or advertising incentive. Street View is an audacious project that, according Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch in Darien, Conn., will likely expand to every major American city and even to higher-population rural areas. "Google is adding cool and interesting features to their mapping service as a way to enhance their core services and generate new revenue," he said. While Google has no set plans to update street-level photos on a regular basis, according to Google Maps product manager Stephen Chau, it does have policies for updating aerial shots on a regular basis that could set a precedent for Street View updates. Google fandom reaches new heights Google is immensely popular, of course, but Street View seems to have attracted an unprecedented level of interest, some of it perhaps even slightly obsessive. One Wired blog allowed users to submit odd Street View sightings, including a man being arrested and another urinating at a roadside. Other sites, such as Street View Gallery and Street View Spy, also allow users to post strange Street View sightings. There's even a Cafe Press T-shirt for those who don't want to be photographed. Google's Chau said the company encourages user participation, but only through the My Maps feature. "We get offers from people to drive the [camera] cars almost every day," he said. For users who want to participate through the My Maps feature, they can geo-tag their photos (adding location data) and post them in public forums. For example, after the bridge collapse in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, users posted photos of the fallen bridge and aftermath. Why the fandom? For photographer Charles Bandes in Boston, it's the community aspect -- the fact that a large company might be visiting. "I am fascinated by the idea that Google is taking snapshots of my community, and the idea that they might actually take a photo of me if they make a map of my neighborhood is even better." For Bandes and others, it's an opportunity to meet Google face-to-face. Meanwhile, from Google's standpoint, camaraderie with users could help them capture out-of-the-way locations. "I think user participation would be a great idea as Google simply can't do the level of coverage required alone," adds Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif. Right-to-privacy controversy Yet, the idea of photographing the entire United States one street at a time is a monumental undertaking, even for Google. It's also controversial, especially for privacy-rights advocates. For example, BoingBoing users argue that it's wrong to take photos in public places and use them for commercial gain, that it's "creepy" for cars to be prowling city streets, and that -- if the government were monitoring the public with photographs on public streets, there would be more of an outcry. Tom Austin, a Gartner analyst covering Google, said that anyone can take photos in public places, but the privacy issue could become a problem when Google expands to foreign countries where photographing people on public streets requires a signed waiver. Google's Chau did say that the company filters out some photographs that might be perceived as inappropriate and that individuals can request that the company remove specific photographs. That kind of user-specific filtering could be a death blow to Street View, however, once it expands to hundreds of U.S. cities, because monitoring such a vast library would be nearly impossible. Whether the local advertising monetization works or the privacy issues persist, or whether many more metropolitan areas become "Google-ized" this year are all interesting questions waiting to be answered.
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JetBlue Airways rolled out a customer bill of rights Tuesday that promises vouchers to fliers who experience delays in a move it hopes will win back passengers after an operational meltdown damaged its brand and stock price.
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New ground-based city views wow the crowd Google yesterday announced the immediate availability of "Street View" - ground-level, photographic panoramas of Denver, Las Vegas Miami, and New York which allow surfers to "navigate around a city, 'virtually' walking the streets, checking out restaurants and landmarks and even zoom in on bus stops or street signs to make travel plans":â¦
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Thanks to such free mapping sites as MapQuest and Yahoo Maps, it's been a while since road warriors have had to sketch out a route with a yellow highlighter, guessing which shortcuts to take or avoid. Instead, they can just type in start and destination addresses and print out crisply labeled, turn-by-turn directions, with the only cost being some printer ink.
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NEW YORK -- JetBlue Airways rolled out a customer bill of rights Tuesday that promises vouchers to fliers who experience delays in a move it hopes will win back passengers after an operational meltdown damaged its brand and stock price.
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NEW YORK -- JetBlue called off almost a quarter of its flights for today but hoped that would be the last round of cancellations as it struggles to recover from the snowstorm that saw some travelers sitting on grounded planes for hours.
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Business travelers will soon take advantage of airborne internet if two companies have their way. Boeing and software maker iPass plan to use satellite and Wi-Fi to connect high fliers to the office.
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Google Inc.  said on  Tuesday it was introducing street-level map views of various  U.S. cities, giving Web users a panoramic, 360-degree images as  well as the overhead views Google Maps has offered.
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JetBlue passengers set to travel on Monday, a US holiday, face more cancellations and delays following bad weather.
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Oracle is adding a visual component to one of its E-Business Suite applications to help service providers locate customers more quickly using Google Maps.