If you are an iPhone owner and you have not already heard, a major update (v1.1.3) became available last Tuesday during MacWorld. The update brings many anticipated features such as the ability to SMS multiple people at once and watch iTunes Rental Movies. The upgrade added an easier interface for bookmarking web pages through the Safari browser and the ability to add shortcuts to websites called “web clips” to home screen. The home screen also got a bit of a makeover, now allowing icons to be re-arranged and moved to multiple pages.

“iPhone doesn’t stand still—we’re making it better and better all the time,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve delighted millions of users with this revolutionary and magical product and it’s great to share these improvements with them.”

The most notable upgrade is probably the Maps application. The iPhone can now utilize cell phone tower data to triangulate your exact location. We tested this feature a few times, but unfortunately it didn’t function as well as I had hoped for it to perform. In most scenarios the best it could do was to narrow down my location the the city I was in. In reality it wouldn’t be of much help. Hopefully it will do a better job when it’s used in areas with stronger cell phone signals. Another neat addition to the Maps was the new “hybrid” view feature which will display satellite images with a overlay of street names.

If you’ve got an iPhone and you would like to upgrade it, just connect it to a machine running the latest version of iTunes (v7.6) and press “Check for Updates” on the iPhone page. It should download a file about 150MB in size and then install the new firmware. It took us over 10 minutes to update our unit. Although it was successful, the installer wasn’t very clear about what was going on during certain points. Just be sure not to disconnect your iPhone if it is taking too long since that could brick the unit. Anyways if you have an iPhone spend a few minutes “upgrading” since it’s got quite a few neat features.

Links: Apple iTunes | Apple iPhone

If you were to venture over to Google Maps right now, you’d notice a new tab in the upper right-hand corner that reads “Traffic.” Thats’s right; Google now offers real-time highway traffic congestion data for 30 major cities, including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles. As of yet the system is still in its infant stages: Google Traffic is only capable of displaying the congestion on major highways and does not offer detours based on incidents. It also isn’t exactly the most accurate system available, but it’s a pretty good start.

Google Traffic System Visuals:

• Green: 50 mph or above
• Yellow: between 25 & 50 mph
• Red: less than 25 mph
• Gray: data not available

Google isn’t the first major company to try to alleviate traffic congestion by informing commuters about traffic conditions. Live Maps has had a similar service for quite some time now and they’re offering additional information besides simply the speed of traffic. One of the nicer features on Live is its ability to display road construction with little warning icons to indicate the exact location. Once hovered over, these icons will expand into text boxes to explain the construction plans, the severity of ongoing constructions, as well as start and projected completion dates.

Hopefully we’ll see more companies entering this arena, so that the competition will motivate these companies to keep developing and improving these systems for the benefit of commuters everywhere.

Update: Yahoo! Maps has pretty good traffic data as well!

Links: Google Maps | Live Maps
Related: Google Multi-Point Destinations

Google recently added a new feature into their mapping service, Google Maps, which now allows creating multiple destinations. Previously, the service only allowed use of “point A to point B” directions, however today users may create as many points as they want. Although this feature is new for Google Map users, services such as Yahoo! Maps has already had this feature for several months.

When using Google Maps, destinations can easily be reorganized by simply dragging them to a different point on the time line. One thing we found to be quite annoying is the fact that the entire page must be reloaded before a destination can be added. Therefore the page must be refreshed 5 times before your final map is ready if you plan to add 5 locations. I would expect Google to add the ability to enter multiple points at once in the future before asking your browser to refresh. Overall, the new feature makes Google Maps a more powerful tool. We suggest checking out both Google Maps and Yahoo! Maps. (Please let us know which one you prefer!)

Links: Google Maps | Multipoint Example
Related: Yahoo! Maps | Live Local

1) As of 04/26/06 Google Maps now has BETA maps for France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Google Maps satellite imagery has also been updated with new higher resolution images. Google stated that they plan to continue to expand their coverage to many new areas. A new “Google Maps 2 API” should be available for developers soon.
Links: Google Maps | GoogleBlog Announcement

2) On 04/25/06, Yahoo! released a new free PC “Software DVR” called Yahoo Go TV. This program was re-created based off Meedio TV, a company which Yahoo acquired a week earlier. This product is intended to compete with Windows XP Media Center, TiVo, and even Apple Front Row. Yahoo Go can not only record shows, but can be used to easily access music, photos, videos, and online media. However, the DVR function will only work if you have already purchased a TV Tuner card for your machine.
Links: Yahoo Go TV | Features | Yahoo TV

3) ABC has launched a free online streaming service to watch full episodes of shows such as Desperate Housewives, Lost, Alias, and Commander In Chief. The video is played using Macromedia Flash technology and the live streaming quality is pretty impressive. Unfortunately you will need to sit through 30-second commercials and there’s no way of skipping them. This service is not permanent and is only up for BETA testing. Go ahead and try it out when it’s still free.
Links: ABC Episode Streaming | ABC Home

4) Napster’s Music Store now offers “unlimited” free music. Once registered for a free account, you can listen to any of the 2 million songs in the Napster Music Store for free. The only catch is that you can listen to each song only 5 times and you will be required to purchase the track to save, burn, transfer to portable devices, or listen to it in the future.
Links: Napster | Napster FAQs

5) On May 2, 2006, Mozilla released Firefox v1.5.0.3. The new update includes some major security fixes and a some minor bug fixes. I recommend updating your program as soon as possible. If you already have Firefox v1.5 or above, just go to [Help] -> [Check for Updates] and Firefox will automatically update itself. If you have older versions of Firefox visit Mozilla.org and download the latest version for your machine.
Links: Mozilla Firefox | Release Notes 1.5.0.3

Other News:
New Apple TV Ads Released
Yahoo! Tech Reviews Launched
TiVo Desktop For MacOSX Available
VideoLan v0.8.5 Released

Note: Sorry for the delay in new content, we have been very busy recently and are undergoing many changes. However, expect to see even more quality content from this point forward!

“Yahoo! has acquired global map data and medium resolution images, which lets users find and see cities, towns, and major land feature in the world, [...] It’s a logical extension of Yahoo!’s recent product enhancements that included multi-point driving directions and improved zooming technology.” – Yahoo Spokesman.

Although they may lag behind in imagery, one feature Yahoo offers that others do not is multi-point directions. With multi-point directions a user can set not only point A and B, a start and end, but instead as many destinations as they’d like (C, D, E, etc.). Yahoo also offers a feature called “round-trip,” which is quiet different from reverse directions. With reverse directions, if the user has set the first, second and third locations, the standard application will only flip the exact same directions. However, the new innovative “round-trip” feature, Yahoo Maps will find new and closer directions if possible to get the driver back to the origin from their final destination without needing to go through mid-destinations again.

Links: Yahoo Maps Beta | Yahoo Maps
Related: Google Maps | MSN Maps

On Monday March 13, 2006, Google launched a new service called “Google Mars“. This new application allows browsing multiple scientific maps of the Mars from any browser. Only three types of maps are currently available. These maps will display elevation levels, visible imagery, and infrared maps of the surface. Google Mars uses the same user interface as Google Maps making it easy to navigate. Google also has added pinpoints to hundreds of major landmarks, which are accessible through a menu on mars.google.com. (This program was created with the help of NASA researchers from Arizona State University) This is a 2nd space-related project for Google, they had launched Google Moon in July ‘05.

Links: Google Mars | Google Blog
Related: Google Moon | Google Maps

1) Microsoft launches MSN Virtual Earth to compete with Google Maps. Their new product has satellite images of most areas throughout the U.S. and of course maps. It is hard to tell which service is better because MSN has better images in some areas, while Google has better ones in other places. MSN Virtual Earth is also includes satellite images with an overlay of maps on top. (Google does the same see #2). MSN also offers some tracking tools to find out your current location by using your IP address. (It is probably still in BETA because it tracked my location to Virginia when I was in California!) This service existed before (and still exists) and was called Terraserver, but has been given a new look and interface.
Link: MSN Virtual Earth | MSN Maps | Terraserver
Related: MapQuest | Map24 | Google Maps

2) Google just launched Hybrid maps. When you visit Google Maps, you will have another option next to “Maps” and “Satellite” called “Hybrid”. If you click on this, you will now see a Satellite image in the background, but an overlay of maps on top. This works normally just as the other two would but makes it much easier that switching back and forth between Maps and Satellite.
Link: Google Maps | Google Earth (aka: Keyhole)
Related: GlobeXplorer | MSN Virtual Maps

3) Microsoft announces the official name for their next operating system called “Windows Vista,” (previous codename: Longhorn). The expected launch time is mid-2006. Microsoft didn’t state that there were any amazing unique features, but it is suppose to be faster, more secure, and better organized.
Link: Microsoft Windows Vista Offical Home Page
Related: Anncoucement Video | Google News

4) DVD -> PSP – I have been ripping my DVDs and converting them to a format compatible with the PSP for a while now and I was planning to write up an article on the entire process, but it is no longer needed. Someone has gone through the process of created a flash animated video of the entire process. To complete this you will need DVD Decrypter or DVD Shrink and PSPVideo9. I use a 1GB card, which is recommended. There are many alternatives to this method, but I found this one the easiest! (Also see Memory Stick Deals)
Link: DVD 2 PSP Guide (Direct Link) | via digg
Downloads: DVD Shrink | DVD Decrypter | PSPVideo9

5) PS3 and PSP – If you didn’t get a chance to see the “Sony Playstation 2005 Meeting” post, take a look! There is a lot of information on what levels Sony is taking the current PSP to. They are releasing a new White PSP and on July 27th 2005, everyone can update their PSP to v2.0. This will have a built in Web Browser, downloadable movies, and plenty of other features. (see the previous post for the full scoop) Sony has also announced that the PS3 has a definite launch date of spring 2006; they have already started to distribute the development kits so the expected date is likely.
Link: Sony Playstation Meeting (previous post)

Other:
Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager
Netflix/TiVo Download Service Soooon