GPS

Google Earth for the iPhone is Here

Guest Author ∙ Updated March 18, 2019

I just downloaded Google Earth and so far it seems pretty nice. It takes advantage of both the Accelerometer and the GPS in the iPhone 3G. It is stunning. Tilting the iPhone allows you to move through the terrain and works pretty well. The GPS allows you to find your current location and see the Panoramio geolocations around you. And although not a replacement for Google Maps because you can't see the street names, it is pretty cool.

Its at the App Store [iTunes Link]. Here is a link to the YouTube video demonstration.

Here is what the Google Blog had to say:

Even before we introduced Google Earth back in 2005, the team had long dreamed of being able to carry the Earth around in your pocket. Well, today that dream becomes a reality as we introduce Google Earth for iPhone and iPod touch. With just a swipe of your finger you can fly from Peoria to Paris to Papua New Guinea, or anywhere in between. It may be small, but it brings all the power of Google Earth to the palm of your hand, including all of the same global imagery and 3D terrain. You can even browse any of our 8 million Panoramio photos or read Wikipedia articles.

With Google Earth for iPhone, you can: • Tilt your iPhone to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain • View the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world • View geo-located Wikipedia articles • Use the 'Location' feature to fly to your current location • Search for cities, places and business around the globe with Google Local Search

It's available today in 18 languages and 22 countries in the iTunes App Store. To learn more, check out this video tour and read the blog post on the Lat Long Blog

Using the iPhone for traffic reporting?

Guest Author ∙ Updated January 9, 2017

I know that Google Maps for the iPhone lets you see traffic data in certain areas, but it is very limited by the quality and quantity of available data. With the huge number of iPhones and there wide geographic dispersion and with its GPS and "always on" internet capabilities it should be pretty easy to to actually capture traffic data with an iPhone app. This data could then be shared and distributed back to other iphone apps.

There have been other GPS's with this approach, but it would pretty simple to create a simple app that has a "Traffic Start" button and a "Traffic End" button that would then use the GPS coordinates and the time between the two points to calculate the location and amount of congestion. This very small packet of data could then be sent to a traffic data base (and maybe validated by other reports) and then retransmitted back to the other worthy iPhone users.

It would have to be something you could do while driving so I am envisioning a very simple screen tap to turn on and off. Also it would take some data finess and number crunching on the server side, but wouldn't it be cool!

Maybe we could just get Dash to write the app for us.

iPhone SDK agreement forbids GPS?

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

Apparently Apple inserted a special provision in the SDK agreement prohibiting developers from creating apps "marketed for real time route guidance; automatic or autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or other mechanical devices; dispatch or fleet management; or emergency or life-saving purposes." No real-time route guidance? That means no GPS...

We know TomTom said that its app is ready to go on the iPhone so maybe Apple is just trying to cover its butt. However, these terms are copied almost word-for-word from the Google Maps API terms, which means that TomTom and others are probably free to use their own maps to do real-time guidance.