Slashgeo

From cnet downloads : "Google has slowly been adding its location feature to Google's mobile applications. Last week, Windows Mobile phones were the latest to get the handy localization feature. In Google's mobile maps apps, My Location appears as a blinking blue dot that shows either your approximate location, based on cell tower triangulation, or a more precise reading based on your phone's built-in GPS. The same principle now applies to search in the Google Mobile App. The blue dot will list your current location below the search box. Instead of specifying a city or zip code, you just type in your query, and Google will deliver the results closest to you."

Google Street View is now available in Canada and Czech Republic. The official announcement should be available this afternoon. Here's the two articles about the new StreetView availability, but they're in French: Google Street View à Montréal et Québec and Google Street View au Canada et en République tchèque. I'll update this story once we have official announcements or other geoblog coverage. Meanwhile, you'll find related stories below. Update: 10/07 16:32 GMT by S : Still no official announcement, but you'll now find English coverage on the Google Earth Blog (two links) and on The Map Room.

I'm leaving to FOSS4G tomorrow, here's your dose of geonews. Don't hesitate to submit geonews to help out the other Slashgeo editors during my absence. GeoExt 0.6 has been released, including 34 new features. James Fee runs a discussion about Google va OpenStreetMap crowdsourcing competing efforts. Google now allows you to report errors on Google Maps data. Here's DM's article named Google's Michael Jones on Crowdsourcing. Not exactly related but still interesting, MapAction uses OpenStreetMap for Philippines response. Mandown offers advice regarding problems with running out of registry space with MS Windows 7 and ArcGIS 9.3.1. The Map Room shares a review of the Map Addict book by Mike Parker and an entry on colour-blind maps for the U.K. There's an augmented reality mashup event in London next week. Slashdot has a story about Acer's 3D laptop, which is obviously related to 3D visualization. APB have stories about iPhone nav apps and the MapQuest iPhone app now available. The Dataset of the Day is a breast cancer rates map. VS share a USDA crop explorer tool. Spatial Sustain offers an entry on mapping muslim populations worldwide and another one on the role of GIS in combatting climate change. Kurt offers a review of the SPOT tracking service. The Google Maps API is now available in 40 languages. Finally, the FGT blog shares an open source .Net control for map display. Please do a search to find previous related stories.

Currently in discussion on slashdot : "Google is taking suggestions for where you'd like to see the new Street View Trike go. Your favorite park, hiking trail, zoo, school campus hangout or outdoor mall could be going online thanks to Google Street View's new 250 pound tricycle, complete with camera and GPS. According to the press release: 'The Street View trike began as a 20% project by Daniel Ratner, a Senior Mechanical Engineer on the Street View team. "I began thinking about building a bicycle-based Street View system after realizing how many interesting places around the world — ranging from historic landmarks to beautiful trails to shopping districts — aren't accessible by car," says Dan. "When I'm riding the trike, so many people come up to me and ask where it's off to next or how they can get imagery of their favorite spot, so I can't wait to see what our users come up with."'"

Here's some recent Google-related geonews. In addition to our previous story about it, here's the official announcement of Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0, along with discussion on Slashdot. There was their usual Google Earth imagery updates, with answers. There's also many additional 3D buildings all around the globe. Google Earth Outreach is now also in Africa. Now available are layers in Google Maps for the Blackberry. There was also various minor announcements, see the Google Earth Blog and the Official Google Lat-Long if you want more.

That's the story discussed by Slashdot, Will Google and Android Kill Standalone GPS? Their summary: "xchg passes along a WiseAndroid piece on the drop in value of Garmin and TomTom shares following Google's announcement yesterday of Google Maps Navigation. "Shares of GPS device makers Garmin and TomTom plummeted... through a combination of their quarterly results and the launch of Google Maps Navigation. Following both low guidance for Garmin's next quarter as well as poor results from TomTom, shares for the two fell 16.4 percent and 20.8 percent respectively and remained low through the entire trading day after news of Google's free, turn-by-turn mapping service became public." Today Lauren Weinstein posted a number of reasons why standalone GPS won't go away any time soon." This topic was discussed previously, see previous stories below.

The Bing Maps blog has news on a monster update to Bing Maps. Just in time to take advantage of the recent Google Maps blunders. Along with a new look, there are some major new features which you might want to check out. I'll glance over them here, but check out the blog to get the full rundown. Draggable Routes, Zoom Bar, Command Parsing, Embed a Map, Dynamic Compute, New Navigation, World Wrap and a smaller download size.