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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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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How A Car Crash Changed Vishal Sikka And The Direction Of SAP
It’s a rare fall rainy day in Palo Alto and SAP Executive Board Member Dr. Vishal Sikka is as sick as a dog. It’s less than a week until SAP Sapphire in Madrid and the community around him are like a worrying family. I had told them that it is okay. I could make the trip another time. But they were insistent I make the trip. Fast forward to May. It has been several months since that cold rainy week in Palo Alto. We’re on the eve of the next Sapphire conference in Orlando this week. Last week, Plattner and Sikka held a press conference, announcing the new HANA Enterprise Cloud. HANA is an in-memory database that Sikka and Plattner developed with a team of about a dozen people around the world. SAP has built four data centers for HANA — two in Europe and two in the United States. It would not be an overstatement to say that HANA is SAP’s future, the first technology in a long time from the German giant that is getting buzz for what it can do. It potentially puts the company into ...
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Tweetwall, The Twitter Display Provider Used By The Big Guys, Goes Self-Serve & Launches On iPad
Tweetwall, a Twitter display provider for events (you know, for “tweet walls”), which has been used by customers including CNN, PayPal, Yahoo, Intel, eBay, Microsoft, the Obama campaign, Sprint, and more, is today launching a revamped version of its service. The updated version of Tweetwall has been rebuilt from the ground up, and is also accompanied by a new iPad application offering AirPlay support, designed for smaller venues. If you’ve ever been to a conference or other event where a big-screen TV or monitor was filled with live tweets, then you may have come across Tweetwall’s technology, without realizing it. However, prior to today, the service has only been available to larger organizations who have historically paid thousands of dollars for customized versions of Tweetwall, built to their own needs. Founder and CEO Joel Strellner says that his business was almost like “a consulting company,” and attracted customers who wanted their own particular designs and configurations, ...
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