This is our new Google maps features photo tour (2013).

We were invited to preview and test Google’s new maps beta interface yesterday, and we went through and created a whole photo tour, talking about what we liked, and what we didn’t. The full review is coming soon, but for now, enjoy the photo gallery of Google Maps 2013.

Below is the text from our photo tour. Each headline indicates a new photo.

Welcome To The New Google Maps

Currently, the new maps is invite-only. The browser limitations on the new maps are a bit disappointing (many features don’t work in the latest Safari, Firefox, or Internet Explorer).

This is particularly annoying because the current Chrome is such a RAM hog, that I can’t even keep it open. With only a few windows open, it shudders, occupying nearly 7 gigabytes of RAM.

The New Google Maps Interface

Simply put, the interface of the new maps is awesome. Gone is the giant white bar, stealing valuable screen real estate. Every function can be done straight from that white bar, and it’s close to instantaneous.  The new coloring, resembling Apple’s maps, is snazzy as well.

Finding the Best

The new Google Maps unfortunately still takes all context literally. I was expecting it to pick up some cognitive abilities from Google’s Now service, perhaps allowing it to understand phrases like “best” or “closest”.

No dice. On the bright side, sorting by top results and top reviewers does allow for the same functionality, albeit a bit more challenging to do.

Also a positive is the Circles feature, allowing you to take recommendations from friends, and share with your circles as well. I like the added social element.

Easy Access Features

Another fantastic addition to maps is a variety of shortcuts. Simply clicking on the white bar allows for instant traffic help, biking maps, public transportation, and directions. Many of these features are new to the online version of maps, or required a lot of work to do previously.

A bit Confused…

The instant results need some work (especially given that this is their own example). When searching for sushi in Boston, it came up with results in Florida, Italy, Switzerland, and Grenoble, but oddly enough not Boston (a major US city).

On the bright side, upon pressing the search button, it brought up results in Boston right away, displayed graphically on a map of the city.

Graphically Displayed Sites

One of maps’s prior weaknesses was that when searching, everything on the map was labelled with a letter (i.e “A”) and you had to look at the key to the right to figure out what anything was. Keys are certainly more functional on real maps, than digital ones.

On the new Google maps, everything is displayed graphically. Every place is labeled with name and category, getting rid of the need to constantly refer to keys. Great improvement there.

And Clicking Things is Better Too

Numerous enhancements to finding things fast have been made. First of all, simply double clicking anywhere on the map pulls up the address. Double clicking a restaurant pulls up reviews, menus, contact info, hours. It’s a fantastic integration of the formerly underutilized Zagat acquisition.

Finally, maps is now gesture based. New controls of the map make it much more touch/tablet friendly, and that’s certainly a positive.

One-touch Street View

After finding a location (by double clicking), getting directions is literally as easy as pressing one button. Another one touch feature is streetview. One click allows you to enter the new street view.

Google Street View is better than ever, because the expanded Window size means that you have an absolutely massive view of everything. I did some virtual street photography (see later).

Enhanced Google Earth

Google Earth is now built entirely into the new Google Maps, and available with a single click (if you have a supported browser – see photo 1). This is a great addition of a fantastic project. Another progressive step was the addition of 3D imagery, and building, which were previously only available in Google’s desktop earth app.

Photo Tours

Photo Tours of Famous sites are very nicely integrated into the new operating system.

Street[view] Photography

This is a tribute to Humans of New York, and the legendary band of street photographers it represents. This was just spotted in the new streetview.

by

What time does the xbox live reveal 2013 start?

10 AM West coast (1 PM Eastern)

Where to Watch Xbox reveal live event

A live stream is available right here. The new Xbox 2013 is…

Until then, watch Microsoft’s 5 biggest commercial fails

by

The new design is minimalist, featuring a dark interface, full screen photos, and none of the clunkiness of the old design, which seemed circa 2006. It resembles its’ new cousin, Tumblr, in a way. Yahoo has just purchased Tumblr, a photocentric minimalist social network that seemed to be gaining real tranction, for a billion dollars.

Beyond the design, the new Flickr has some incredible new features. Flickr is giving each user (with a free account) 1 terabyte of photo storage FOR FREE. That’s a step up on their former rival, Google, who last week unveiled a limit on total documents to 15 Gigabytes for all google accounts, including on their popular social network, Goog-

le Plus. Yahoo’s offering is about 67 times as much space as Google’s. They are also offering full-resolution uploads – previously a premium feature – trying to attract amateur photo geeks by allowing them to display their work in all of its glory.

Even with the Flickr redesign though, Yahoo seems to be a bit Confused

Despite offering a terabyte free, Flickr refuses to get rid of their premium upgrades. They currently offer a “double your space” option, bringing the total to 2 terabytes, for $500 a year. Who would pay $500 a year, when they can just create two accounts, and not pay a cent? It’s really an awful idea, but sometimes it’s hard to let go of the past, so I’ll let it slide.

For the first time in five years, Yahoo’s goals seem focussed, and they seem to have a general sense of what they’re trying to do. With the purchase of Tumblr, and the redesign of Flickr, Yahoo seems to be shifting focus from the less-profitable news business, focussed on ad revenue, to the more lucrative social industry. Yahoo has been trying for years to penetrate the market, but it wasn’t until today that they were able to really penetrate the market.

Kudos to their CEO, Marissa Mayer, for seeming to make a real effort at revitalizing the company, and for seeming almost to be succeeding.

Check out the new flickr here.

by

How Snapchat Saved my Life (kinda)

by

He created a whole movement of designs for some crazy things (list below), and he talks about that in the TED talk below. If Steve Jobs could see this, he would smile, knowing that his “Think Different” plea was heard.

These are all working inventions, made with the Makey Makey

• Mouse made out of two slices of pizza
• Keyboard Made out of a banana
• Plants that sound like bongos, and pianos
• Slideshows Controlled by a trampoline

His mission wasn’t just to create a $50 toy though. It was more fundamental. Silver wanted to inspire a spirit of hacking, and of not accepting everything at face value. Why can’t a hammer be used for anything but hammering? Take a look at an everyday object as if you’ve never seen it before, and you can think of a whole host of uses for it, beyond what we’ve accepted it does. Kudos to Mr. Silver. Watch his talk below, and check out the Makey Makey here.

by

Microsoft Loves The iPhone

They say no press is bad press. This commercial for the new Lumia Windows 8 smartphone, seems more an ad for the iPhone, than for the Lumia. The Lumia gets a cursory nod by name at the end, but the iPhone plays a far greater role, and despite the narration, still seems to be the cooler phone.

Scroogled #1

Instead of emphasizing the benefits of their in-house search engine, Bing, Microsoft decided to get nasty and attacked Google in a series of ads, focussed around the buzzword “scroogled”. On Youtube (ironically owned by Google), where Microsoft posted the ads, this particular ad focussed around Google shopping has 268 likes to 712 dislikes. Customers seem to be responding consistently negatively to these ads, but they just keep advertising anyway. A new scroogled ad is coming out next week. P.S I’d rather look at a Google product ad, than anything Microsoft has to offer.

As one customer put it:

”

Dear Microsoft. Spend more time improving your own products instead of simply bashing your competitors for something you yourself do.

-Sincerely everyone with a brain

“

Don’t Gamble with Google

Once again feeling threatened, Microsoft launched a negative campaign against Google’s Docs editor which was fundamentally flawed, and riddled with lies as to the risks of using the service. The campaign performed so poorly that by day 2 the ad was moved to the unlisted section of youtube.

Despite the move, the ad has still garnered 100k+ views, 277 likes, and 1025 dislikes, showing once again the outrage over Microsoft’s controversial advertising practices. Loyal users were quick to defend Google’s service. The most liked comment on the page was “I don’t have any Microsoft documents to convert because they are all made in Google Docs in the first place. And the formatting is excellent”, responding to Microsoft’s claims that Google Docs cannot properly convert Microsoft’s proprietary formats.

Outlook.com – Made For Deleting

The mistakes in this ad are much milder than in the other campaigns, but I’m still not a fan. Outlook.com is a fantastic product, with a variety of features superior to its’ competitors, so I don’t understand why Microsoft chose to focus entirely on the ability to mass-delete. Of all the features available. Receiving several dozen email a day, I get the overload, and the feeling of wanting to be able to quickly clear things away, but I’m still not impressed with this campaign, because I think it’s narrow-sited, and it’s on a relatively easy to replicate feature.

Surface: It has a keyboard that clicks on

Once again, I feel like Microsoft wasted a chance to market a fantastic product, with their surface campaign. The entire ad, which doesn’t even really show the tablet in use, basically shows people clicking on the keyboard cover to a rhythm  I’m sure it was a very high-quality expensive production… but it says nothing. Microsoft is not known as a consumer products company, especially for hardware, so they should have introduced their product to the market by showing off its’ features. Instead, they came up with…this. People aren’t going to like when I say this, but Microsoft really needs to take some advertising queues from Apple, whose tablet ads showcase features, popular apps, and potential use cases, instead of a cheap plastic keyboard case that clicks on.

Conclusion – Microsoft Worst Commercials

Microsoft’s ad struggles aren’t new. In their 35 year existence they’ve never been able to quite focus their marketing efforts. It’s time for them to take a step back and reconsider their marketing efforts, before it ruins their shot at ever becoming a consumer products company. An official representative of Microsoft was unavailable for comment at the time of this writing, but we did get in touch with one MSFT engineer, who responded “I guess Microsoft mostly released it in the wake of the upcoming Google I/O. Google is going to get a lot of press in the coming days and will most probably announce new products and services. This ad just shows the arch-rivals involved in yet another spat.”.

What do you think of Microsoft’s advertising? 

by

1. Visit this hidden support page, which has the Android Studio download
2. Accept the terms and conditions. and click the download button.
3. Have fun, and enjoy the brilliant new environment.
4. Check out our Google section for the latest from IO, and more.

by

Microsoft and Google – Tech’s New Rivalry?

Microsoft really needs a new marketing team. In a new ad released Friday, Microsoft attacked its’ rival, Google Docs, for not being able to open Office documents without reformatting.

Not only is it just a generally nasty ad, which is in very poor taste. The ad also blames Google for something that is Microsoft’s fault. The reason that some documents don’t open correctly, is that Microsoft codes their documents into a proprietary format that can only really be descrambled perfectly by Microsoft’s own software.

Unlike Microsoft, Google uses open standards to make sure that Docs documents open perfectly on any computer, in any program. Microsoft is essentially blaming Google for their own defensive measures.

Until today, I’ve  been enjoying a subscription to Microsoft’s Office 360 subscription service, but after this ad, I’ve decided to unsubscribe. The fact that they blame Google for something so absurd, in the shameless promotion of their own defective products, is just plain disgusting.

Attempts to reach Microsoft for comment were unsuccessful, but after the initial reception to the ad, they’ve made the video unlisted, so as to stop people from finding it. At press time the video had 77 likes, and 98 dislikes, showing that most consumers agreed.

See 5 More Examples of Crappy Microsoft ads here

What is Microsoft’s advertising team doing?

by