Google Maps

Watch Humans Destroy the Earth in 30 Years With Google Earth Time Lapse

Humans do not treat the Earth kindly, and now we have even more evidence. Google just updated the Google Earth Engine to include four years of additional imagery, petabytes of new data, and generally a much clearer view of any location on Earth from 1984 to 2016. The best part: You can watch any area…

Are These People Really Fucking in Trump Tower? [NSFW]

Google Maps, as we all know, has a tendency to surface some pretty odd scenes. Trump Tower, too, contains many oddities. But do you know what happens when you combine the two? Fucking. Fucking happens. Or at least that’s what a couple of images from the photo stream for Trump Tower on Google Maps suggest.…

All-Seeing Car Fails to Watch Road

After gazing long into the abyss that is our daily lives, Google finally found the abyss gazing back this week when a Reddit user snapped a picture of a Street View car following “an unexpected error.” https://gizmodo.com/google-car-captures-guys-awful-day-at-work-for-all-eter-1786032702 “I was so stoked to see the Google car that I whipped my phone out,” wrote Nurse-Patches on…

Google Car Captures Guy’s Awful Day at Work for All Eternity

We’ve all had bad days at work, but most of us can just soldier through and move on. Unfortunately for Joshua Justice, Google Street View will never let him forget one particularly terrible shift. Two months ago, Justice was working at Houston’s Flying Saucer Draught Emporium when he spilled “half a cleaning keg” on his…

10 Tricks to Make Yourself a Google Maps Master

Google Maps has been available for more than 10 years now, and since its launch, a huge swatch of features and functions have been added to the service. Are you sure you know all of them? Here are our favorite tips and tricks for getting more out of Google’s mapping service. 1) See all of…

Uber Reportedly Will Invest $500 Million Into Mapping the World

Earlier this month, satellite imaging technology company DigitalGlobe announced it was partnering with Uber to “leverage DigitalGlobe’s industry leading constellation of sensors to access imagery and location intelligence to help identify and improve pick-up and drop-off locations.” Last week, Uber posted a press release to announce that Brian McClendon, the former head of Google Maps…

Meet the Guys Who Cracked Pokémon Go Wide Open

I’m in the back of a Gregory’s Coffee in New York’s midtown across from Dronpes and flanked by Moots7, who are careful to tell me as little about themselves as possible. From what I can gather Moots works in finance and comes from rural Colorado, while Dronpes is a developer at a tech company, hard-working…

Google Maps Driving Mode Is Your Essential In-Car AI

You’re probably used to getting turn-by-turn directions to your next destination with Google Maps, but there’s also a pretty-well-hidden Driving Mode just for… well, driving. It alerts you to traffic problems, directs you to nearby gas pumps and stores, and is useful for those times when you already know your route or don’t even have…

Demolition Company Tears Down Wrong House, Employee Blames Google Maps

Lindsay Diaz and Alan Cutter were the proud owners of two halves of a duplex in Rowlett, Texas. Sadly it had been damaged by tornadoes over Christmas, but it was ready to be repaired, so things were looking up. Then a demolition company tore it down by accident. According to WFAA, the Billy L. Nabors…

Google Maps Now Includes a Tab For Uber

Google Maps will soon be able to give you time and fare estimates on a variety of ride-sharing apps so your drunk ass can get home in the least amount of time for the best price. The update will include support for whatever apps you have pre-installed, but will also add some country-specific options (e.g.…

What Happens When You Zoom in Too Much on Google Maps 

Sleeping too well lately? Looking for that “something something” to turn those boring restful nights into a horrorscape? Turns out, zooming in too far on Google Maps’ user-uploaded 3D Spheres produces some impressively fucked up images. Digital artist Kyle F. Williams has been collecting some of the weirder glitchy images Google Maps turns up when…

Google Maps Will Now Figure Out Your Destination Without Asking

Google Maps might know the local traffic better than me, but for short trips around town, I can’t be bothered to turn it on. But thanks to the latest update to Maps on Android, I don’t have to. Among a few other updates in Maps v9.19 spotted by Android Police, Google has introduced a new…

These Satellite Maps of Cities Are Made From Thousands of Lego Bricks

As children, the first cities we build are often rendered in Lego. Artist Ben Hecht uses the material in a slightly different way—to recreate cities as giant Lego brick paintings inspired by satellite imagery taken from above. Creating the series, named Urbicus, is quite an involved process. First, Hecht snaps an aerial photo with his…

Real-Time Traffic Cameras Could Make Me Actually Use Bing Maps

Yes, Bing Maps does still exist, and thanks to a brand-new update, you might even have a reason to use it again. Starting today, Bing Maps has access to 35,000 traffic cameras across 11 countries. Sure, in this day and age of crowd-sourced traffic info a cop-dodging Waze, cameras feel a little passé. But if…

Google Finally Lets You Download Maps for Offline Navigation and Search

We’ve all been in that unfortunate situation when we’re lost with no reception, and our phone’s navigation features are neutered as a result. Now, Google is offering a dead simple solution. You can download snippets of the world for offline navigation and search. There’s one small but unsurprising catch: The new feature is available now…

It’s worth downloading the latest update to Google Maps for iOS: just like on Android, you now get up-to-the-minute traffic updates read out to you, so that you can avoid crashes that occur while you’re en route. [App Store via Engadget]

Send Maps from Your Desktop to Your Mobile Device

Many of us go through the process of looking up a route on a desktop or laptop and then switching to a phone for the actual journey. Apple and Google are wise to this process because sending directions from one platform to another is way easier than you think.. Here’s how to do it. Google…

Use This Handy App to Find What’s Open Around You

Whether you’re looking for somewhere to have just one more beer, you need a late-night store that sells cough syrup, or you want to do something productive in the early hours of the morning, Wotsopen can tell you which places are open for business near your location. Wotsopen is free on Android and iOS and…

In Case You Want To Prowl Around Japan From the Point of View of a Cat 

We have the technology, and the time is now: We can roam alleyways from a cat’s POV. Onomichi, a city in Hiroshima prefecture, is rolling out Hiroshima Cat Street View. As the name implies, it allows internet users to scope out Onomichi’s shops from cat height. If you speak Japanese, you can click on the…

Add a Widget Shortcut on Android to Get Home With Just One Tap

If you’re a Google Maps user on Android you can set up customized 1×1 widgets on the home screen that will give you directions straight home from wherever you happen to be. The setup process also gives us an excuse to check out the new Maps app interface Google has rolled out over the last…