• Gavin O'Malley, Oct 28, 2009, 3:06 PM
  • Google Navigation Finds Its Way Forbes et al. No informed industry watcher should be surprised by the news that Google's forthcoming Android 2.0 will include a free turn-by-turn navigation feature. For the digital mapping expert, it's a natural extension to its mobile operating system, which is rapidly shaping up to be a real force of nature. Yet, a natural extension for the resource-rich Google is enough to catch even the savviest media-type off guard. "Including [satellite navigation] in a phone for free?" writes the Guardian. "Are they mad?"

    The Times writes that the feature "is likely to be seen as an attack on yet another industry," before quoting several analysts who agree, in effect, that "Google's free service, if successful, could erode the sales of GPS navigation devices made by companies like Garmin and TomTom and of navigation services offered by cellphone carriers."

    The Maps for Mobile service lets users search "in plain English", by voice, give you "live traffic data," "search along route" when they need to find a business en route, satellite view, and street view. As Keith Ito, who wrote the Google blog post says, "Take Google Maps Navigation for a spin, and bring Internet-connected GPS navigation with you in your car."

    More broadly, Forbes writes that the move "signals a bigger effort by Google to increase its reach to include the organization of people's information and lives to sources far from the standard Internet."

    What's more, Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google, tells the magazine that, "Google's strategic thinking is dominated by the confluence of ever-increasing computing power (as seen in what an Android device can do), mobile connectivity (which provides real-time data, as well as access to the network) and cloud computing. "If you put all three of those into designing software, it changes things," he said. Right.

    Regarding this latest development, analyst Greg Sterling writes: "I hate the word 'disruptive,' as it's often used in the Internet world, because it's something of a cliché ... But I use it here because the new Navigation for Google Maps for Mobile will in fact be -- disruptive."

    Writes (mocks?) theAppleBlog.com, "But hey, maybe it isn't so bad for you, GPS industry ... Maybe people will still want to pay way too much for single-purpose devices instead of installing a free app on the cell phone they already have that works with the Google Maps and Google Search they already use." Harsh. Read the whole story...
  • Schmidt: Ranking Real-Time Data Is Key Read Write Web Five years from now, expect a Web dominated by the Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time. That's according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who said as much during an interview at last week's Gartner conference. He also said figuring out how to rank real-time social content has emerged as "the great challenge of the age."

    Also, today's teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years -- a belief that doesn't bode well for Twitter, which has yet to catch on among many young adults. What's more, we can expect broadband performance to be well above 100MB, which will erase any distribution distinctions between TV and the Web. Read the whole story...
  • LA Taps GMail Los Angeles Times The city of Los Angeles just voted to outsource its email system to Google, making it the largest city in the nation to make the move, and handing the search giant a major victory in its quest to become a software provider to the world's cities and businesses. The $7.25-million contract will move all 30,000 city employees to Google's so-called "cloud" over the coming year.

    Because LA will be among the earliest adopters of the Google system, city council members expressed concern that they might be signing on before Google's cloud system was fully proven. The contract was approved pending an amendment that would require Google to compensate the city in the event that the its system was breached and city data exposed or stolen. Expect another chapter to this story. Read the whole story...
  • Prepare To Be Stalqed TechCrunch Meet Stalqer -- a curiously named location-based social network that TechCrunch describes as "Foursquare on steroids." Similar to Foursquare, the free iPhone app tracks you and your friends' locations and broadcasts this data via the application, and through push notifications. A key differentiator, however, is that Stalqer updates the location in the "background."

    In other words, Stalqer has found a way to record your location without you having to actually open up the application. The service also lets you import your Facebook friends, via Facebook Connect, to the app, which will potentially allow you to track their every move whether they've joined Stalqer or not. It's expected to hit the app store on Wednesday, ushering in a whole new era of privacy invasion. Read the whole story...
  • Regulator: Facebook Ain't Finance Friendly Reuters Social networks raise "serious new challenges" for financial regulators, according to the head of the largest U.S. independent securities regulator. Indeed, Wall Street bankers and analysts increasingly want to use such networks to connect and interact with customers, said Richard Ketchum, the chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said.

    But, as sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are currently designed, they may not allow firms to keep the kind of archives of their employees' business communications required by regulators. For that reason, most firms presently prohibit their employees from using sites like Facebook for business, partly because of the difficulties they pose for firms' ability to meet supervision and record-keeping requirements. That, however, is getting tougher to enforce in an increasingly social world. Read the whole story...
  • Forbes To Axe 100 Staffers Bussiness Insider As it "restructures" for the Web, Forbes now plans on firing 100 employees, from both the editorial and business side. The editorial cuts came Wednesday, according to The Business Insider. Earlier this week, publisher Steve Forbes sent a memo to staff, explaining: "On the editorial side, we will maintain the essential strengths of Forbes while also deepening our relationships with our community ... On the advertising side, we are making shifts to fully meet marketers' evolving needs ... These current difficulties are a more intense version of what we underwent eight years ago, particularly after 9/11." Read the whole story...