TomTom is looking to beef up its location based services portal by joining forces with TrafficLand to bring real time traffic video to its developers. TomTom’s LBS will now incorporate TrafficLand’s network of over 13,000 roadside webcams, enabling developers to integrate live footage into their location-enabled apps via the Traffic Camera API. TrafficLand’s real-time video will join the other cloud-based location services TomTom provides to devs, like map content, routing and geocoding. For right now, TrafficLand covers only the US, UK and Canada, and it’s not clear if the company plans to expand beyond those three countries anytime soon. For more information, you can take a gander at TomTom’s full press release, embedded after the break.

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TomTom pairs with TrafficLand to provide live roadside footage to devs

Just hours before its I/O event, Google has apparently had a little accident: the sign-up page for “the new Google Maps” briefly went live, revealing a slew of extra details about what’s coming in the rumored refresh before quickly being pulled. Droid-Life managed to grab some screenshots, including the one above, which gets to the heart of what Google is trying to achieve. The central idea is that Google will create maps tailored to the kind of information you’re looking for, using a “smarter search box” to highlight just the “things that matter most,” whether those be flights, ground transport or the new Earth View that integrates directly with Google Earth without the need for a plug-in. According to the leaked sign-up screens, the bringing together of all Google’s data results in layers of information that reach “from outer space down to the streets” — but there’s still no evidence about how (or whether) this might work on mobile. Stay tuned to our Google I/O opening keynote liveblog for more.

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Source: Droid-Life

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Sign-up page for revamped Google Maps shows off plenty of new features

While patrolling the halls of the CHI 2013 Human Factors in Computing conference in Paris, we spied a research project from MIT’s Media Lab called “Smarter Objects” that turns Minority Report tech on its head. The researchers figured out a way to map software functionality onto tangible objects like a radio, light switch or door lock through an iPad interface and a simple processor / WiFi transceiver in the object. Researcher Valentin Huen explains that “graphical user interfaces are perfect for modifying systems,” but operating them on a day-to-day basis is much easier using tangible objects.

To that end, the team developed an iPad app that uses motion tracking technology to “map” a user interface onto different parts of an object. The example we saw was a simple radio with a a pair of dials and a speaker, and when the iPad’s camera was pointed at it, a circular interface along with a menu system popped up that cannily tracked the radio. From there, Huen mapped various songs onto different positions of the knob, allowing him to control his playlist by moving it — a simple, manual interface for selecting music. He was even able to activate a second speaker by drawing a line to it, then “cutting” the line to shut it off. We’re not sure when, or if, this kind of tech will ever make it into your house, but the demo we saw (see the pair of videos after the break) seemed impressively ready to go.

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Eyes-on: MIT Media Lab’s Smarter Objects can map a user interface onto… anything (video)

Noam Bardin, CEO of Waze, just took the stage here at D:Dive Into Mobile, taking part in a wide-ranging discussion hosted by Liz Gannes. Aside from dodging questions about potential acquisitions, Bardin made no bones about how he saw the future of mobile playing out. Of course, this is a man who spends essentially no time focused on the desktop web — given that Waze is mobile only, one shouldn’t be surprised. According to Bardin, “the next five years will be about fighting for time with users,” and he pointed to Facebook Home as the de facto example of that.

Rather than crafting their own OS and “doing what Microsoft has done — fighting a war that ended five years ago” — Facebook decided to make a time play on a massive OS. From there, Bardin confessed that in major markets, he sees Waze as Google’s “only real competition.”

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Waze CEO Noam Bardin: the future of mobile is fighting for a user’s time

Those red pins look almost like little hearts, revealing which countries have been showered with the affection of Google’s crowdsourced map improvement tool and those — like the UK — that have so far been left out. We can now safely ignore the chart, however, as the UK has just received its dose of Map Maker love, taking its rightful place among nations like the US, France, India and even North Korea. Instead of just reporting problems, which has long been possible, Brits can use the browser-based service to contribute additional local knowledge about everything from bus stations to cycle routes, as well as natural features like parks and even bits of shrubbery. (Hopefully, only really amazing bits of shrubbery.) You can watch folks adding these sorts of things, almost in real-time, at the Google link below — and it’s weirdly addictive.

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Via: BBC News

Source: Google Map Maker

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UK finally gets access to Google’s Map Maker editing tool