Written on July 24, 2008 – 3:11 pm
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
Google announced a new feature in Google Maps, letting you view the walking directions. And as Andy Schwerin puts, it makes me want to stroll through the city a little bit as well: “You’ll notice shops, parks, and public art that you’ve been accustomed to zooming past, and come away feeling like you’ve really gotten the insider’s take on a neighborhood or city. Of course, don’t get too caught up in enjoying the sights! Please be careful, and be particularly attentive in high traffic areas.”
Simply type in the directions as you are used to and if the route is shorter then 10km, Google will offer a option to show Walking directions on the left of the screen. Don’t walk blind on the new feature’s directions yet, the beta service doesn’t know all the sidewalks yet, and is not intelligent enough to see a pedestrian bridge for crossing a busy street. Google doesn’t know all pedestrian pathways yet, and is collecting new data to find more effective ways to get to where you need to be.
Google seems to be the only mapping service that offers walking directions for now. Although we have seen Google Maps mashups for jogging purposes before, allowing to manually create, share and discuss jogging routes. I hope Google will implement a sportive function as well. For now, the feature will prove very useful on mobile devices for quick navigation purposes.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on July 18, 2008 – 12:43 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The Tour de France has been steaming across France for ten days now, keeping cyclists fans in awe. It’s a modern classic so far, with new heroes, surprising sprint winners, and EPO scandals. It also seems to be the definite break through year for new technologies surrounding the cyclists race. Your blogger earlier reported about the Tour de France edition of Google Streetview and across the web, several bicycle-related initiatives have emerged - like the Ubilabs live tracker.
But in the end, it’s all about watching the race. Since most of the Tour de France takes place during working hours, Internet television is the medium to tune in to. And that’s what people do; on a rather massive scale. American sports events channel Versus.com has attracted 20.8 million viewers so far, according to Nielsen Media Research data. More than 4.3 million videos have been downloaded, says Versus, which is more than the total number of last year. The network is averaging 341,000 videos per day, compared to 170,000 per day last year.
Written on June 11, 2008 – 12:40 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Give me four months and I’ll race against Kimi Raikonnen and Fernando Alonso. Not that I’ll practice with go-karts or anything, no, I’ll just play some Formula 1 games to get ready. You think I’m bluffing? Think again. Dutch entrepreneur Andy Lurling is working hard to make this reality. By using a sophisticated DGPS-based technology his company iOpener Media will offer players the opportunity to race against their heroes. That’s better than just watching with a beer in your hand.
BBC News runs an article today about this technology that will make many dreams come true. Lurling told the British reporter that “it’s clear that the next trend in gaming is going to be bringing real objects into the virtual world; playing not against other gamers but people doing the real thing.” So Lurling and his team have developed a patented product that imports in real-time GPS data from racing events into compatible game consoles and PC’s.
Lurling has already tested the service with a real F1 car. The only thing that is holding him back to bring it to the market is finding the right partner. He’s currently talking to six parties and aims to launch the first game as early as this September. This game will also use some AI magic. For example, if Alonso drives past you (he can’t see you in real life, he’s watching our for real cars), the game will generate a real-life looking overtake. Same goes for those spectacular collisions - although Alonso will always get away with it, you probably will be walking back to the pits.
Yet what if you’re not into racing? Well, don’t worry, Lurling told the BBC that you can also think of biking, rowing, skiing and snowboarding. “In the next three to five years, we believe that games will not be ‘triple A’ games unless they have our feature in”, the GPS-magician said.
[WebTipr: David Petherick]
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