Google Maps API Gets A Visual Refresh, Available For Opt-In Today, Coming To Most Sites In August
At its I/O developer conference, Google today announced a new Maps API for mobile developers, updates to Maps for Android and iOS, as well as a completely refreshed Google Maps experience on the desktop. After the main keynote, however, Google also announced a major visual refresh for sites that use its Google Maps API. Currently, the company today announced, more than one million sites use the Maps API and all of them will get this visual refresh over the next few months. These sites reach about a billion users every week. The refreshed look, with new base map tiles, default markers and window style, will become the default in the Google Maps API experimental branch (which despite its name is actually the most-often used branch) on August 15. Developers can also opt in to use it today by just changing a single line of code. It will roll out to the release branch (which is used by most Maps for Business customers) in November. This is what it’ll look like: Google says it “carefully designed ...
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Groupon Rebrands Mobile Payments Biz As Breadcrumb, Adds iPad Merchant App And A $5k No-Fee Deal To Bring On New Users
A day after Groupon released (and then pulled) an iPad app with a new mobile payments dashboard for businesses, today the company is taking the wraps off a bigger piece of news around its larger plans to expand its commerce services for local merchants. Building on its Breadcrumb payments and commerce service for restaurants, which Groupon acquired last year, the company today is rebranding its wider payments service — and the final version of that free iPad app — under the same name. The new iPad app for merchants of all stripes is called “Breadcrumb POS,” while the old Breadcrumb app for restaurants will now be called “Breacrumb Pro.” Both will be here when they go live on the app store. Sound confusing for both to be called Breadcrumb? Streamlining names is usually meant to simplify things. Groupon says that in fact this is what is happening here: “As it turned out, when we spoke to merchants at salons and other retailers, they were fine with the name Breadcrumb,” says ...
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Google's New Android Chief Talks Challenges Of Keeping A Platform Consistent While Being Open
Google's Sundar Pichai spoke to Wired in an interview published today ahead of Google I/O this week, describing what it's like to be taking the helm of both Android and Chrome going into the annual conference. Pichai took over for Andy Rubin, who stepped out of his role heading up Android back in March. These days, he says not much has changed around his thinking about Chrome and Android, but he did have some statements about the open nature of Android that rang more sincere than most statements from Google execs on that aspect of the business, which is usually referred to as an impossibly good thing.
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Quickoffice In The Browser: The Reason Why Is Microsoft Suddenly So Scared Of Google's Productivity Tools
We’re just a few days away from the start of Google I/O, the search giant’s annual developer conference, and while we actually know very little about what Google plans to announce during its massive, 3-hour keynote on Wednesday, there is something brewing in Mountain View that has Microsoft’s Office division on edge. Over the course of the last week, Microsoft started a very negative anti-Google Docs campaign that fits the mold of its more general Scroogled anti-Google ads. But why the sudden focus on Google’s productivity tools? That reason, I believe, is Quickoffice in the browser. Quickoffice, which Google acquired last June, allows users to read and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the iPad, iPhone and Android. Unlike Google Docs, which remains a relatively limited productivity suite when compared to Microsoft Office, Quickoffice does a very nice job at allowing you to open and edit Office files without losing the document’s layout and other advanced features that ...
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Web-Based Financial Terminal YCharts Raises $3.875M Round Led By Morningstar And Reed Elsevier Ventures
YCharts, a Chicago and New York-based startup that calls itself a financial terminal for the web, today announced that it has raised $3.875 million in its third funding round. The round was led by Morningstar and Reed Elsevier Ventures, with participation from all of the company’s earlier investors, including Hyde Park Angels, I2A and Amicus. This round brings YCharts’ total funding to $8.625 million. Last year, our own Rip Empson called the service “a better Yahoo finance,” but the company’s goal is now quite a bit broader than that. YCharts says it computes more than 2,000 metrics for every listed stock in its database and also tracks over 350,000 economic indicators from around the world. The service gets these data points from public sources, as well as through deals with other firms, including data from its investor Morningstar. YCharts also offers an Excel plugin that allows users to easily pull YCharts data into spreadsheets and financial models. As the company’s CEO ...
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