211–220 of 442 posts
Related... when I'm in the car, and not, I often use the google assistant to search... for at least a couple months, it's gotten to be almost worse than useless as the bottom 1/3 is covered by google buttons over the stuff I'm searching for, and the mini map view at the top doesn't easily expand to the screen for pan/zoom. The assistant should be much easier to use, and while not the best, I admit I have tried to use…
Oh, and my favourite google maps feature, announce the instruction to turn left or right while YOU STILL HAVEN'T PASSED the previous street intersection!
I worked at a company that heavily used the maps API in 2018. The 1,400% price hike really was an eye opener. It wasn't just the money involved, which was large, but the fact that it came so suddenly and with so much magnitude. Google's choice to bump these prices made me realize that they could do the same thing with their compute cloud pricing or other APIs, again with little notice. That, in turn, led to the reali…
I feel similarly about brokerage accounts that are upfront about charging a transaction fee or checking accounts that have a clear minimum or fee. When it's "free", I'm always scared that I'll end up paying another way and what I'm relying on will get washed away.
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Gmail isn’t there because they want to search your email. It’s there because they want you to sign in.
Google indexes every invoice you get. If you use gmail they know exactly what you order at which store.
I live in London and for commuting around via public transport OR walking I always use Citymapper, which is massively superior than Google Maps for directions. I suspect they are using Googles APIs underneath it all, but their UI is better than Google maps and also their recommended public transport directions are orders of magnitude better than Google Maps. Citymapper will get you between any two locations in London…
It graphically showed which parts of the subway were having issues alongside user reports of what's going on. >90% of the time, users would report issues (e.g. train had its brakes triggered at station X, no trains at station Y for the last 15 minutes, etc.) tens of minutes before the MTA (NYC's transit authority) would.
Rather unfortunately, Google shut down Pigeon back in June 2020. I would've paid tens of dollars per year to have it continue being in operation.
https://www.slashgear.com/pigeon-crowdsourced-transit-app-ex...
I worked at a company that heavily used the maps API in 2018. The 1,400% price hike really was an eye opener. It wasn't just the money involved, which was large, but the fact that it came so suddenly and with so much magnitude. Google's choice to bump these prices made me realize that they could do the same thing with their compute cloud pricing or other APIs, again with little notice. That, in turn, led to the reali…
> Google's choice to bump these prices made me realize that they could do the same thing with their compute cloud pricing or other APIs, again with little notice. That, in turn, led to the realization that we needed to remove our reliance on Google's entire stack, and quickly, or we'd be in a terrible bargaining position later. Yes. You are right. The whole cloud deal is a try to rule out on premise infrastructure an…
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Apple’s approach to cycling directions is second rate IMHO. It’s only available in certain media city locations. If you stray out of those areas you’re out of luck. Basically Apple seem more interested in rolling this out as a tick box item for journalists than helping me get to work. This tells me that Apple is not serious about its Maps app.
So, say they wanted to support this for most of the world, what would look different to outsiders? Waiting to support part of the world until they can support all of the targeted regions would deprive users of data they have for, I guess, years. So, it should be a gradual rollout. Where should they start? I would think it’s easiest in richer countries, where it’s easier to obtain reliable data, and updates thereof. A…
As it is it’s more like the 3D Tour feature of Maps. A great novelty but not useful outside of a very narrow usecase. That’s been around for a few years now but is still only available in a handful of locations.
One mapping product that's rarely mentioned but seems to run on an entirely different/unique stack is 2GIS (https://2gis.ru). It's incredibly detailed and ubiquitous in Russia among other places.