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Climate change has brought an increasing number of wildfires and air quality problems. In the US, the West Coast has seen more than its fair share of fires over the past several years. Here on the East Coast, we were affected by wildfires in Canada last year, creating a haze across the skies and warnings ...

Google Maps is one of the most widely used navigation apps in the world, with 60 million active users in India alone as of 2023, according to Miriam Daniel, Vice President and Head of Google Maps. The web mapping platform introduces new features and improvements to existing ones on a regular basis, helping solo travellers ...

Google DeepMind introduced a new AI assistant model named Astra at their Google I/O developer conference. Astra is designed to be a highly functional AI assistant capable of understanding and responding to complex and dynamic environments. It aims to be proactive, teachable, and personal, allowing for natural and lag-free interactions. This groundbreaking technology is expected ...

At its annual Google I/O 2024 conference, Google announced that users will soon be able to access geospatial augmented reality (AR) content directly on Google Maps on their phones. The feature will first appear in Singapore and Paris as part of a pilot program launching later this year. Users will be able to access the ...

A group of 63 doctors filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court on Thursday against Google seeking ¥1.45 million (about $9,400) in compensation for causing harm to their businesses through what they described as one-sided, hateful reviews for their clinics on Google Maps. The suit is the first in Japan — and possibly the ...

In 3D scene generation, a captivating challenge is the seamless integration of new objects into pre-existing 3D scenes. The ability to modify these complex digital environments is crucial, especially when aiming to enhance them with human-like creativity and intention. While adept at altering scene styles and appearances, earlier methods falter in inserting new objects consistently ...

In August, when heavy rain hit parts of Chile, tens of thousands of people had to evacuate their homes as their communities flooded. Many got a warning a couple of days in advance, thanks to a tool from Google called Flood Hub that rolled out in the country earlier this year. Before Flood Hub existed, ...

The family of a North Carolina man who died after driving his car off a collapsed bridge while following Google Maps directions is suing the technology giant for negligence, claiming it had been informed of the collapse but failed to update its navigation system. Philip Paxson, a medical device salesman and father of two, drowned ...

Google is expanding its sustainability offerings with new products from its Google Maps platform, including mapping technologies for solar energy, air quality, and pollen distribution. The mapping tools use AI and machine learning paired with aerial imagery and environmental data to provide valuable information for developers, businesses, and organizations to track and mitigate their environmental ...

Alphabet-owned Google on Tuesday said it is cutting jobs at mapping app Waze as it merges the app’s advertising system with Google Ads technology, without giving details on the number of layoffs. Google had in December said that it will merge Waze and Google Maps teams to consolidate processes, making it a part of the ...

The ability of AI tools to manipulate images continues to grow. The latest example is shown in a research paper from the Max Planck Institute. For now, it’s “only” a research paper, but a very impressive one, letting users drag elements of a picture to change their appearance. Not only can you change the dimensions ...

At Google I/O 2023 on Wednesday, Google’s ARCore and the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) launched a preview of two new immersive AR experiences around Merlion Park and Victoria Theatre & Concert Hall in the Visit Singapore app. Powered by Google’s ARCore Geospatial API, visitors will be able to embark on an immersive guided tour. “Google’s ...

Google has unveiled its Geospatial Creator for Unity platform, allowing developers to preview 3D assets via the Unity Editor. Viewing spatially-linked assets on a hyperrealistic 3D planet map, the toolkit powers ARCore and Photorealistic 3D Tiles via the Google Maps Platform, it said on its website. Users can select locations, retrieve 3D geometry of the ...

Quintar wants to enhance navigation with augmented reality so you can have an easier time navigating live events at big venues for sports or concerts. And so it announced today at Google I/O that is has partnered with Google on its ARCore tech platform. Quintar tried out the tech recently as the official mobile augmented ...

Google and Japanese games company Taito are teaming up for a new augmented reality version of the 1978 shoot ‘em-up arcade game Space Invaders. Inspired by the original gameplay, players are tasked with defending the Earth from Space Invaders in their neighborhood. Powered by Google’s ARCore Geospatial API and Streetscape Geometry API, the upcoming SPACE ...

Google has announced a series of measures to provide up-to-date and actionable information to help people and cities cope with rising temperatures due to climate change. These initiatives include new extreme heat alerts on Google Search, the expansion of the Tree Canopy tool for urban planning, and a $5 million investment in the World Resources ...

Mercedes-Benz and Google announced today a long-term strategic partnership to further accelerate auto innovation and create the industry’s next-generation digital luxury car experience. With this partnership, Mercedes-Benz will be the first automaker to build its own branded navigation experience based on new in-car data and navigation capabilities from Google Maps Platform. This will give the ...

Dublin City Council has launched the results of Google’s Project Air View initiative, which measured the air quality of Dublin City’s streets over a period of 16 months and gathered over 50 million pieces of data. The project was delivered in partnership with the City Council’s Smart Dublin programme, with data captured by Google’s first ...

Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., plans to merge its teams working on Maps products and the mapping service Waze with effect from December 9, reports said. The decision to consolidate processes comes as the search giant is facing pressure to streamline operations and cut costs. The restructuring is expected to reduce overlapping work across the ...

For the last several years, Google has been using artificial intelligence to develop a system that can predict floods. It has also been working on wildfire tracking tools. Ahead of the COP27 climate conference taking place next week, the company announced that it is expanding those tools. First, Google says it will offer flood forecasts ...

By prompting a text-to-image model we can generate images of a wide variety of objects. With clever prompting, it’s also possible to synthesize different perspectives of a specific object. To use text to generate 3d objects, we start by feeding a caption to a text-to-image model, such as Imagen, adding minor tweaks to the prompt ...

Navigating peak rush hour traffic has become a familiar fixture of city life, leading to interminable gridlocks, frustrating congestions and severe pollution, along with crucial hours lost daily. The problem is quite acute in Bengaluru, where, as per a 2019 TomTom report, residents lose over 243 hours every year due to traffic. In order to ...

Quando si usa Google Maps, di solito si controllano le indicazioni per un nuovo posto. Non ci si aspetta però di imbattersi in qualcosa che solleva più domande che risposte. Gli utenti di Reddit sono infatti rimasti a bocca aperta per un post bizzarro. Una telecamera di Google Maps avrebbe infatti ripreso un cane randagio ...

Announced at the Google Cloud Sustainability Summit today, the tool is said to provide access to more than 70 petabytes of “analysis-ready geospatial data.” Google Earth Engine is not a new product. In fact, it has been available for more than a decade, but until now access has been restricted to academia and the nonprofit ...