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Google Local Goes Mobile
bigtallmofo writes "Google has added a mobile version of their local-search service to their lineup of mobile applications available from devices equipped with XHTML-enabled browsers. Previously available mobile Google applications include their mobile web and image search and their SMS service (beta) that allows users to enter their search queries and receive results via a text message. The day of receiving unsolicited coupons for your next latte as you walk by a Starbucks is one step closer."
Whatever the news warrants. At one time it was SCO. Now it's Google, and for good reason.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
For those of us that travel a lot to disparate locations for our jobs, this is useful. I could goto Chicago and find the House of Blues as a nightclub or the Scotch and Cigar Bar at Palmer house. Converting this to use on a mobile just makes sense.
In God we trust, all others require data.
I just tried to look for something and it gave me a parsing error: XML Parsing Error: not well-formed Location: http://www.google.com/xhtml?q=Pizza&near=Windsor%2 C+on&site=local&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&btnG=Googl e+Search Line Number 2, Column 5693:
The day of receiving unsolicited coupons for your next latte as you walk by a Starbucks is one step closer.
What kind of crap is that?
How does google making a search page make this any closer? Especially when google is well known for their unobtrusive ads. Maybe a small ad WHEN you search but just walking by some place?
SMS and web browsing on your phone already exist. Google releasing a local search (which is sweet when used with google maps BTW) isnt going to start the spamming of your cellphone.
I suppose I have been trolled, since that sentance couldn't have been meant as much else.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
The day of receiving unsolicited coupons for your next latte as you walk by a Starbucks is one step closer.
Zonk really likes posting those anti-google stories, doesn't he? Does he see Google as "the man" now that they're rich and famous? I understand it's a natural inclination to be envious of others who appear to have more, but as grown ups we should suppress those reactions. Personally, I think it's cool that Google is coming to mobile phones. As a company, they have earned my trust and I will happily give them the benefit of the doubt.
Let's just hope that Zonk doesn't refer to a "post-Columbine world"...
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The map is tiny on my Treo. It's surrounded by a huge amount of white space. I wish there was an option to have a larger map. Zooming in doesn't help.
Slowly but surely google is becoming the next microsoft
It's a pity that most 3G phones that are offered these days (at least in the UK) are restricting surfing to the service provider's homepage.
Sounds really lame, and it definitely is. So even if I've got a great 3G phone with browsing capabilities, I can't access the Google Local Mobile page because my service provider limits my usage to its own pay-services.
I hope to see a change in this area. Monopoly is never good, and imagine only being able to surf on one site where your service provider sets the rules.
Between the inadequate text entry on my T610 and the godawful connection speed (GPRS sucks. Thanks cell phone companies!) and tiny screen, I'll just find an open wireless access point and use Google from my laptop.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Why is it that whenever there's a post about Google everyone keeps looking for flaws that will make them "the next Microsoft"? I'm not referring to the article mention of ads, but whenever we hear something "corporationy" about Google, we always go "ooo, there we go, EEEEVIL". I'm not saying they're saints, but yeah, I get all that free high-quality stuff from Google and I like them. When (if) they start doing evil things, then I'll see about blaming them.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
... that you have a good text message plan, because personally I don't see the benefit on searching via my cell phone just to be charged $.10 for information. Especially since the text message has to be 160 characters or shorter. I'll get 100 replies and only 3 of them may be relevant costing me more than it would be to just drive to a public terminal. But hey... Who's keeping count? :)
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. -Alan Kay
I thought that new mobile content had to have stupid names, ala mobisodes? Shouldn't this be GooLocMob, or MobLocGoog, or GoogLocMob?
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
The day of receiving unsolicited coupons for your next latte as you walk by a Starbucks is one step closer.
and the day of me not minding a latte as I walk by a Starbucks is here!
Won't somebody please think of the Karma!
- While visiting another city's downtown - bar
- My own city - beer
- Hoping to find an archery range - archery
There were some others that returned poor results also - To be fair, I think pub worked well, but only showed places that actually had pub in the name. The sad thing is, this is definately a service that the business owners want to have work well, not just end users like me. I wonder if there is not some way that Google could get input from the business owners to make the system work better.I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
Does anyone have any information? Or are we going to frequently see cool new Google stuff which we can't really use to the fullest?
(If they have no plans, it might be nice for Slashdot to drop the practially dead Apache section and change this to Google so at least us non-Americans can filter it out).
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Ughhh. How? The Google SMS is a service where YOU request information, and Google provides information. It's a "dumb service" Google doesn't know any more about where you are than what you tell them. If your sitting in Philadelphia and do a Googble Mobile Local search for Thai in Vegas, Google will think your in Vegas and have no clue your in Philly.
Even if a next generation of this service was "smart" and used the GPS on your phone to know where you are, there's an accuracy limit of ~150 feet, IIRC. If your in Time Square in NYC, do you have any idea how many retail businesses are within 50 yards of you? It would overwhelm users who would complain in huge numbers and it would be dropped. Despite all the grassroots FUD on this issue, it's not going to happen. To get 10 foot resolution, you need to triangulate with 12 GPS satellites. To have any chance at getting line of sight with 12 satellites, you need to be a pretty open area. GPS tracking in urban areas is always going to be pretty useless
Free MacMini
google text messaging rules! i use it all the time and wish i could thank them for all the time they've saved me.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
It appears that US Cellular users cannot use this Google service, as USC does not support 'short codes', but instead requires 10 digit numbers.
All this means is that mobile users can access Google Local results. Users have to enter their selected location, just like they do for "regular" Google Local. Google's not figuring out the location by pinpointing the mobile user. If Google did get into targeted ads, I see no reason why they'd abandon their practice of doing so in a tasteful, optional way.
He'll be with 3. Cheap, but no web browsing, and (in my experience), appalling customer service.
I appear to have a blog. Odd.
In other words, transfer blame to the consumer, not the company that deliberately obfuscates and cripples a more capable product just to get some cheap brand enforcement.
You can always tell who grew up in the nice neighborhoods around here...
and the map could stand to about double its size.
I wish it could save a list of frequently used addresses for driving directions like yahoo does. It's painful keying them in with t9
Imagine if Google actually implemented gmaps and Google local on their mobile site. You could get directions on the road, figure out where you are and plot your course from there. Google maps + mobile compatability = alternative to personal GPS device.
Now imagive if Google also implemented Google Local. You would NEVER have to ask for directions anywhere again. That is, until you hit a dead spot for your cell phone carrier.
well with the ridiculous price of Starbuck lattes, an unsolicited coupon sounds pretty good to me...hopefully it will be 1/2 off!
Really, tho, Google has been a good steward of online restraint. I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt and we should applaud whatever efforts they are making into mobile space.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Sweet! I just signed up w/ Verizon and my mins are gonna be goin to waste unless I find more stuff to do w/ mobile web.
[1] Average Revenue Per User
I'm against using mobile web features until they can get the pricing to a reasonable amount. I'm on Rogers in Canada and they charge $3 for 250KB of data, $7 for 1MB, and $12 for 2MB. On my first month of using their mobile internet plan, I went a little crazy downloading games. I probably downloaded about 10-15 games off of the net. Most of the games didn't even work on my phone. By the end of the month I had racked up $60 in mobile charges. That's insane! Now I understand why it costs more than regular internet access, but is it just me or are these prices a little too high? Nowadays for $10 I would expect at least 100MB seeing as the speed is dead slow.
Can't wait to get home to try on my IPAQ 4150/802.11b. Format looks like it will fit that screen nicely. Thanks again, Google!
I made a conscious decision to get separate cell phone and PDA when I returned from overseas. I wanted my cell phone to be small enough to slip in my pocket, and having a screen big enough for WWW didn't allow that. This "Grand Unified Gadget Theory" leaves me nonplussed.
I started a project to have a rich client for Google Maps that blows this away:
http://gmap.trileet.com/
You get a full scrollable map, way better view of the search results and a map that's actually 240x160 and you can scroll for infinity.
Most full maps take less than 5 seconds to come down and you get full integration with your addressbook etc..
You'll need a developer key and unlocked device to get it for now, but as I said, this blows away any other mapping software I've seen on any other phone.
Nic
I, for one, welcome our new benevolent information-providing overlords.
First it was Google SMS... http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=124818&cid=104 66707/
Then it was Google Maps... http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13869 9&cid=11626545/
And now this! I just want some friggin' pizza!
Kudos to the Local team, this is a big improvement.
Can your IM do this?
We maintain a database of locations labelled by keywords. As a user, you can create search lists containing the keywords you want to find. Then the software looks for every place nearby which is labelled by a keyword in your active search list. Simple. The keywords attached to locations are picked by the proprietors themselves, so as a business you're not at the mercy of a relevance-scoring algorithm.
And it's all free to the user, including pan/zoom maps of the entire US to take with you.
We're really just getting started, so the service has several known (big) issues. To wit:
It's Palm-only
Not much commercial data (right now, it's mostly historic, civic, and geographic points of interest)
Our coverage area is limited to the US
It's not "over the airwaves" -- you have to download map and location data to your PC, then sync to your device (we offer a utility which helps)
Missing lots of little features, niceties (at this point, our enhancements list is a mile long)
;-) If your thing is photography, create a group marking great spots to take a photo. If you like hiking, mark the hiking trail heads in your area. Solicit others to join and do the same, and pretty soon there's a whole world of locations relevant to your area of interest that you never even knew were there. Anyway, I think it could be cool. It just needs people.
We also have a non-commercial offering which I think is really unique, and that's Earthcomber Community . It's like Yahoo Groups, but it's location-based. Our groups let you drop points on the maps, which you can then download and take with you. Or just view them on the web (no handheld required to use Community).
Again, we're brand new, so there aren't tons of groups. But you could start one today!
OK, I'll stop pimping. But since what we are doing is relevant to your point, I thought I'd toss our hat in the ring.
Regards,
Chris
I used the service with a Palm Tungsten T3 through a Nokia 6310i via Cingular.
Short version:
Works great. Wish I had it years ago.
The maps need to be larger to be useful on a 320x400 screen.
The layout of the page could be optimized a bit. The Google logo at the top pushes data too far down. Google should either shrink the logo or relocate it.
Long version:
I've been looking for a service like this for a long time. I tried Avantgo for a while but it was cumbersome, and of limited use if you needed to find info on the fly. MapQuest allows you to download maps and directions using Avantgo but it doesn't work as well as Google Local.
I've alread mentioned my main criticisms of Google Local. It gives a map but seems targeted at 160x160 screens. (understandably) A larger map option would be nice as the maps are a little small to be genuinely useful IMO. You can zoom in/out and scroll around via buttons. Not as smooth as the regular Google Maps but perfectly adequate for on the road. Driving directions are always available and work great. Once you've located what you are looking for you simply select driving directions and enter your From: address. Simple and logical and it works pretty much exactly as you expect it to.
Speed of the service is fine. I have a GPRS connection (not EDGE) which isn't speedy but download speeds were satisfactory. If you have a Treo or a Tungsten type device (like me) you should have no trouble finding regular uses for the service.
SMSTerm allows you to run a terminal over SSH. I wrote it to monitor servers from class. Its old, but still works. I use ICQ's SMS gateway. Get it at http://freshmeat.net/projects/smsterm/
I've written a J2ME google maps viewer for java-enabled cellphones. I'm releasing it under the terms of the GPL.
GMapViewer
It's only been tested on my own phone, so expect problems.