Google India’s Street View project under police scanner
It looks like the Bangalore Police has some objection to Google’s Street View project in India. Just a few days after starting the ambitious project to enable street view imagery in India, Google had to suspend the project as the Bangalore police has some objections. The project has not been shut down, but will remain suspended until Google and the authorities kiss and make up.
“We can confirm that we received a letter from the Commissioner of Police regarding Street View. We are reviewing it and have stopped our cars until we have a chance to answer any questions or concerns the Police have” – said a Google spokesperson.
Google Street View Soon In India, First in Bangalore
So the cars we spotted earlier across India may not really be the "Street View" cars, they could have been just collecting WiFi triangulation data only.
As reported on the Google India blog today, starting today tomorrow (27th May 2011), the Google Street View cars and a few Google Trikes (modified indian rickshaw with a StreetView Camera on the top) would be collecting pictures of select locations of roads in Bangalore. This will probably be done for other major cities too soon.
In case you pass by these cars on the roads of Bangalore, do let us know in the comments.
[Via Gaurish]
Google Street View Could Soon Be Real In India
We’ve cited the Google Street View cars in various major cities in India before. Now we’ve recently captured them going around the streets of Hyderabad. Here’re some pictures up close. From what we hear, they’re running this operation right from Maharashtra (MH license plates).
XPeria Pro, Neo And the PlayStation Phone Announced
If you’re wondering why Sony’s advertising those year old XPeria 10 in India, Here’s why.
As usual whenever a new product is announced in the US, older products are dumped to India(3rd world countries). This time it’s Sony which announced the latest in the XPeria series – XPeria Play, XPeria Pro and XPeria Neo at the Mobile World Congress 2011.
You Can Taste Android Ice Cream This Summer [Rumor]
Sometime back people were talking about Android 2.4 running on Sony Xperia Arc and how it was a just an incremental update to Gingerbread and not like Android 3.0 Honeycomb that was actually a major redesign primarily for tablets though. Then Sony said it was just some software misconfiguration and people shouldn’t get excited already.
The latest rumor on the streets is that Android 2.4, the next Android version for smartphones, nicknamed Ice Cream will be announced sometime in time for Google I/O i.e. May or maybe worst by July.
But I thought we’ll be getting Honeycomb around that time. So is Honeycomb never coming to smartphones? And will Ice Cream come with another Google Phone?
[via Mobile-Review; Image via Erictric]
Android 2.3 tips & tricks from Google
Google released the Nexus S smartphone a few weeks back which redefined the android smartphone space and is the first phone to carry pure Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
Here are a few tips and tricks from Google for the Android 2.3 Gingerbread mobile OS. Note that many of these tips will also work on Android 2.2, but some of them are specific to 2.3:
Mobile Safari Gyroscope Demo shows the Future of Google Maps
While making their new iPhone app 360 Panarama, Occipital discovered that Mobile Safari can actually utilize the Gyroscope for navigation in some webpages. They created a demo that can be seen on your iPhone 4 or iPod Touch 4G as long as they have been updated to iOS 4.2. Just visit the website occip.it/pt3dmqna from Mobile Safari to see the demo. You can move the device up and down and see the panoramic scene move as if you were actually moving your eyes up and down.
Steve Jobs on Adobe Flash
Ending all the hoopla around Apple not supporting Adobe’s Flash on its iPhone OS based devices, Steve Jobs made his (and Apple’s) stand clear in an article titled “Thoughts on Flash” over at apple.com.
The article basically re-iterates that Apple has no intention of supporting Adobe Flash on iPhone OS based devices (iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad). In a pretty verbose article, Jobs has given 6 reasons why they won’t support flash in their OS.
Google Street View High-Tech Tricycles are very much real, called “Trike”
Remember the High Tech Google street view tricycles we told you about? Apparently, the project was very much real. Google is now using these high tech bikes (which they call “trike”) to capture street view for places inaccessible by their street view cars. This includes places like university campuses, beach boardwalks, bike trails etc.
Google has already “triked” a few places like LEGOLAND, California, SanDiego university, Santa Monica Pier and Monterey Bay Bike Trail. Their street views are available here.
Google Street View High-Tech Tricycles
Google is apparently trying to add high tech tricycles to its fleet of street view vehicles. The bike was spotted in a local San Diego bike shop:
The bike is carrying a generator and will arguably be pretty heavy. It might be difficult for people in the US to pedal this thing, however, it will not be a problem here in India. Thanks to already prevalent rickshaws on the Indian roads, there are a lot of men in India who can pedal this thing.
This makes me wonder when Google might be planning to launch the street view project in India. This thing might actually be pretty useful here.
[via Gizmodo]
