Google's new 3D Maps destroy Manhattan in the wake of Apple's Flyover

　　Introducing the new Google Maps with 3D
　　Unlike Apple's iOS 6 Maps, which target relatively low powered mobile devices, the new 3D features in Google Maps that were introduced last week require a modern PC running a web browser with a supported version of WebGL hardware accelerated rendering.
　　That limits Google Maps' photorealistic 3D features to users of Chrome or Firefox on a Mac or Windows PC. Mobile users will have to settle for grey 3D building models or use the increasingly outdated Google Earth, which unlike Apple Maps' Flyover feature, is not integrated with the search and directions of Google's mobile Maps apps.
　　This makes the new Google Maps more akin to Nokia's web-based Maps 3D. Nokia's product, which while leveraging the same technology Apple acquired to build iOS Maps' Flyover features, is also limited to the desktop web browser. A year after Apple launched iOS 6 with Flyover, neither Google nor Nokia have a similar, integrated 3D visualization feature for their own mobile platforms.
　　Were Google to launch a 3D Maps app for Android with similar specifications to its current desktop maps product, it would only work on about 29 percent of the platform's reported installed base of devices, just like the company's Google Now, which requires Jelly Bean 4.1.
　　Access to the new Google Maps also requires an invitation, which links your online session to your Google account, reinforcing the company's ad-centric business model. The company's introduction to the new generation of Google Maps first highlights search features, then notes how the new product focuses on promoting businesses, "like restaurants that are recommended by your Google+ friends," as shown in the graphic below.
　　The last feature Google highlights is "amazing imagery for exploring the world," of which the company observes, "of course, no map would be complete without amazing images for exploring the world." Oddly enough, Google is pointing out that its own latest mobile maps for Android and iOS are not as "complete" as Apple's own iOS 6 Maps.
　　"The new carousel gathers all Google Maps imagery in one spot enabling you to fly through cities," it notes, carefully avoiding the "Flyover" term Apple introduced a year ago. And again, only on the desktop, and currently only in an invite-only beta, can Google Maps users "find the Earth view which directly integrates the beautiful 3D experience from Google Earth into the new maps."
　　Despite its years of experience in 2D digital mapping, Google's year late, non-mobile 3D Maps product is riddled with the same kind of glitches that Apple scrambled to address after the release of its own new Maps was greeted with contempt and derision. And users don't have to scour the planet to find undulating roads and smeared buildings in remote areas.
　　AppleInsider reader Vesko Kateliev shared Google Map's above image of Midtown Manhattan (detailed at the native resolution, below), where roads turn into waterfalls and parked cars slide up the side of of a building as if trying to escape from a rolling wave of energy twisting buildings and bulging roads into the air.
　　Exclusive: Find the lowest prices anywhere on Macs
　　
Feature: Google's new 3D Maps destroy Manhattan
　　
'iWatch:' Expected in late 2014 with focus on biometrics
　　
Patents: Apple exploring orientation-based mobile audio
　　
Politics: Apple under fire for international taxes
　　
MacBook Air: Inventory dwindling ahead of expected refresh
　　
Never miss an update Follow AppleInsider
　　
–
　　A
　　+
　　Wednesday, May 22, 2013, 06:05 pm
　　Google's new 3D Maps destroy Manhattan in the wake of Apple's Flyover
　　By Daniel Eran Dilger
　　Nearly a year after Apple introduced its own Maps service in iOS 6 with Flyover 3D satellite views, Google is expanding its own online Maps to support similar 3D satellite imagery, with the same sorts of buckled roads and visual distortions Apple was castigated for last summer.
　　
Google Maps 3D still a work in progress
　　Introducing the new Google Maps with 3D
　　Unlike Apple's iOS 6 Maps, which target relatively low powered mobile devices, the new 3D features in Google Maps that were introduced last week require a modern PC running a web browser with a supported version of WebGL hardware accelerated rendering.
　　That limits Google Maps' photorealistic 3D features to users of Chrome or Firefox on a Mac or Windows PC. Mobile users will have to settle for grey 3D building models or use the increasingly outdated Google Earth, which unlike Apple Maps' Flyover feature, is not integrated with the search and directions of Google's mobile Maps apps.
　　
This makes the new Google Maps more akin to Nokia's web-based Maps 3D. Nokia's product, which while leveraging the same technology Apple acquired to build iOS Maps' Flyover features, is also limited to the desktop web browser. A year after Apple launched iOS 6 with Flyover, neither Google nor Nokia have a similar, integrated 3D visualization feature for their own mobile platforms.
　　Were Google to launch a 3D Maps app for Android with similar specifications to its current desktop maps product, it would only work on about 29 percent of the platform's reported installed base of devices, just like the company's Google Now, which requires Jelly Bean 4.1.
　　Access to the new Google Maps also requires an invitation, which links your online session to your Google account, reinforcing the company's ad-centric business model. The company's introduction to the new generation of Google Maps first highlights search features, then notes how the new product focuses on promoting businesses, "like restaurants that are recommended by your Google+ friends," as shown in the graphic below.
　　
Source: Google
　　The last feature Google highlights is "amazing imagery for exploring the world," of which the company observes, "of course, no map would be complete without amazing images for exploring the world." Oddly enough, Google is pointing out that its own latest mobile maps for Android and iOS are not as "complete" as Apple's own iOS 6 Maps.
　　"The new carousel gathers all Google Maps imagery in one spot enabling you to fly through cities," it notes, carefully avoiding the "Flyover" term Apple introduced a year ago. And again, only on the desktop, and currently only in an invite-only beta, can Google Maps users "find the Earth view which directly integrates the beautiful 3D experience from Google Earth into the new maps."
　　
Source: Google
　　Google Maps 3D messes with Manhattan
　　Despite its years of experience in 2D digital mapping, Google's year late, non-mobile 3D Maps product is riddled with the same kind of glitches that Apple scrambled to address after the release of its own new Maps was greeted with contempt and derision. And users don't have to scour the planet to find undulating roads and smeared buildings in remote areas.
　　AppleInsider reader Vesko Kateliev shared Google Map's above image of Midtown Manhattan (detailed at the native resolution, below), where roads turn into waterfalls and parked cars slide up the side of of a building as if trying to escape from a rolling wave of energy twisting buildings and bulging roads into the air.
　　
Google Maps 3D still a work in progress
　　Apple's Flyover representation of the same area (below) is detailed enough to see that the building Google portrays as being smeared with taxis is actually a JC Penney, and you can even make out that the adjacent billboard is an iPad commercial. Apple even does a much better job at labels for points of interest and streets. Apple also labels 6th Avenue by its official name, "Avenue of the Americas," although a search of "6th Ave" also works.

Google has declined to assist Home windows

　　This month, Windows Cellphone consumers lastly received Microsoft’s YouTube customer for their handset. Designed by Redmond, after Google declined to support their cellular system, the shopper has already sparked a war of words (and legal letters) in between the 2 tech corporations. The saga in the WP YouTube consumer is much from about, nevertheless it highlights two important areas - Microsoft usually means organization with Windows Cellphone, and YouTube is now as pervasive as a utility company.
　　Current within the first week of May possibly, Microsoft’s YouTube client ceased staying an icon that opened up a cell website and have become a full application on any Windows Telephone handset, including support for Kid’s Corner by limiting entry to age limited video clips; pinning channels, playlists and video clips; and downloading movies for offline viewing.
　　By such as an option to down load films to your handset, rather than exhibiting any in-app advertising, Microsoft was provoking response from Google (each of the time while using the remedy of ‘we’d like to incorporate these, but we really do not have the API’). That reaction duly arrived, an enormous, juicy stop and desist letter (along with the request to utilize the trapdoor within the Home windows Phone Store to remotely delete all copies on the application).
　　And similar to that, after a metaphorical spherical of corporate ‘who’s is bigger’, the 2 firms are sitting down round the table, and it appears like Home windows Cellphone consumers could have a good and official YouTube customer immediately after all.
　　It when experienced an excellent third-party version known as Metrotube, but any person supporting that application will realise that it absolutely was constantly attempting to find solutions into the lack of APIs from Google, and at a person point withdrew alone from your Windows Cell phone Retailer mainly because it absolutely was just too really hard to keep up along with the modifications. It’s back again now, and customers keep on to like the application. But there was generally demand from customers for something additional official.
　　The posturing from both of those Microsoft and Google illustrates just how important on the internet video clip is always to a cellular system, along with the de facto leader with this area is plainly YouTube. By delivering shoppers for just a range of cellular platforms in their option, but only an HTML5 mobile version with the web site for Windows Cellular phone people, Google needs to be wary of the anti-trust action offered the dominance YouTube has from the market place.
　　Google has declined to assist Home windows Cellphone with programs, pointing for the lessen marketplace share on the system, as well as their HTML5 offerings that suggest the info might be partly accessed throughout the cell net browser. So Microsoft has created this consumer using their assets, but without having authorization to access the indigenous APIs, they’re needing to power the issue which is able to reward the buyers, nevertheless it also bolsters the Home windows Cell phone platform and provides it parity with all the handsets subsequent to it on the Superior Avenue.
　　There is continue to heading to be loads of give and choose amongst the companies (the down load alternative has currently been eliminated), and many of that may be played out in general public, even so the phase is about. Microsoft goes intense with Home windows Cellular phone; and Google needs to handle the YouTube as being a utility that ought to be available to all people on the web, not as their particular walled yard in which they will ascertain accessibility rights over a platform by system foundation.

Fresh questions for Amazon over pittance it pays in tax

　　MPs are ready to haul Amazon back to parliament to answer new questions about its tax status in Britain after a Guardian investigation's findings suggest the online retailer is pushing the tax rulebook to its limits to minimise its tax bill.
　　Company filings showed Amazon's main UK company paid just £3.2m in corporation tax on sales of £320m last year. However, the Seattle-based group has told investors its 2012 UK sales were £4.2bn.
　　The Guardian investigation has found Amazon pushing definitions close to breaking point; and tax authorities unable, or unwilling, to prevent the imposition of aggressive tax avoidance structures.
　　Information collected by the Guardian details extensive UK activities that suggest HM Revenue and Customs could take a much tougher line on taxing Amazon's multibillion-pound British operations.
　　Among the key indicators of whether a business is taxable in the UK is the location of those negotiating deals. A UK publishing executive confirmed that his contract was negotiated on behalf of Amazon EU Sarl, the Luxembourg company, by staff from the British head office in Slough.
　　"The contract may be with Luxembourg but it is the people from Slough who thrash out the crucial details of the contract such as the discount we agree to give them. There are also people in Slough who are charged with overseeing that the contract is properly executed," the executive said.
　　Meanwhile, job adverts posted this month on the careers page of Amazon.co.uk invite application for scores of roles in the UK. Among them is a vacancy for a senior financial analyst. "Based at our UK Head Office in Slough, Amazon seeks a Senior Financial Analyst to support Amazon UK's Merchant Services business," the advert said.
　　"This Senior Financial Analyst will help establish revenue targets, lead pricing analysis and recommendations, generate competitive analysis and support key operations metrics and goals."
　　The Slough office is also this month looking for applicants to its MBA leadership development programme in the UK. "From day one, you will be given ownership of large, complex problems in various areas of our business," the advert states.
　　Despite booking a tax charge of just £3.2m in its UK accounts for 2012, Amazon received £2.5m in government grants as well as significant tax breaks for building new warehouses. It opened a new site at Hemel Hempstead in September.
　　The company would pay much more tax if its sales were booked through a UK business but they are all routed through Luxembourg. Altogether it has taken £12bn from online shoppers in the UK in the last four years.
　　Amazon avoids paying many tens of millions of pounds in tax because it tells the taxman its main UK-focused business, which collects revenue from British shoppers but is incorporated in Luxembourg, cannot be classed as a "permanent establishment" in Britain.
　　Amazon has a permanent establishment in the UK that operates the warehouses and provides "corporate support services" to the wider group. Despite employing 4,191 staff – and an additional 10,000 temporary workers to cope with the Christmas rush – it had a tax bill for 2012 of just £3.2m because British shoppers are invoiced from Luxembourg.
　　Margaret Hodge, chair of the public accounts committee, said: "My committee has real concerns about the extent to which companies like Amazon are stretching the rules in order to avoid paying their fair share in tax.
　　"By any measure of common sense Amazon appears to have a proper established presence in the UK, and that there is a discrepancy between some of the evidence in this report about its activities in the UK and what the committee was told by Amazon when they appeared before us last year. We will now consider whether we need to recall them to explain that discrepancy."
　　Six months ago Amazon told Hodge's committee: "All the strategic functions for our business in Europe [including the UK] are based in Luxembourg. That could be our retail business, our third-party business, our transportation teams, our customer service, HR, finance."
　　UK staff, he added, were only offered "support" to these activities.
　　Hodge has recalled the UK boss of Google and the head of tax at Ernst & Young, the accountancy firm which advises Google and Amazon, to answer new questions raised about the search firm's low tax bill. The recall was prompted by a Reuters investigation which focused on Google's claim its UK-revenues were not part of a taxable British business.
　　The Reuters investigation highlighted the extent of Google's business activities in the UK in the same way as the Guardian focus on Amazon.
　　David Cameron has promised to address many tax issues raised by multinational groups, in particular digital businesses at the G8 meeting in Northern Ireland next month. This week at a joint news conference with President Obama, Cameron pledged to "tackle the scourge of tax evasion" by multinational companies in his role as president of the G8. International advisers are drawing up new rules to crack down on digital businesses finding legal ways around "permanent establishment" definitions.
　　The Guardian's investigation into the rules on permanent establishment involved looking at HMRC manuals, international double taxation treaties dating back to the 1960s, and guidelines for tax treatments of multinational businesses set out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
　　Hodge said: "Part of the problem is that this is a ridiculously complex issue. HMRC has got to get much tougher in policing the system, but we also need to simplify our tax system so that companies cannot keep exploiting these grey areas."
　　Ernst & Young have already acknowledged that these rules are broken. Many of these rules were drawn up before the internet revolutionised the way people shop, and did not foresee a new generation of tax structure engineering made possible.
　　Asked by MPs on this point, Dixon of E&Y said: "This gets to the OECD [the international body which sets tax guidelines] difficulty that we are in at the moment. The situation is that a warehouse of itself is not a permanent establishment. An internet-based business, where essentially the website and servers are based outside the UK, is also not a UK permanent establishment. The OECD needs to look carefully at whether these rules need to change."
　　The exclusion for warehouses, such as Amazon's eight distribution centres, is contained in the double taxation treaty the UK negotiated with Luxembourg in 1966. Amazon.co.uk is registered to a Luxembourg company, Amazon Europe Holding Technologies SCS, and the site runs off the group's servers in Ireland.
　　Tax officials refused to comment directly on Amazon, but told the Guardian: "HMRC ensures that multinationals pay the tax due in accordance with UK tax law and in doing so we apply the permanent establishment rules correctly and consistently to all businesses"
　　An Amazon spokesman said: "Amazon pays all applicable taxes in every jurisdiction that it operates within. Amazon EU serves tens of millions of customers and sellers throughout Europe from multiple consumer websites in a number of languages dispatching products to all 27 countries in the EU. We have a single European headquarters in Luxembourg with hundreds of employees to manage this complex operation."

She also mentioned that supply troubles which have held back

　　Microsoft released Windows eight in time for the vacations past 12 months, but you will must wait around till the 2013 holiday getaway procuring season to obtain a sensible choice of devices and fixes that address issues concerning the software package.
　　Throughout her opening remarks, she exposed that Home windows Blue, the code name for an update to your application anticipated to incorporate a Start off button into Windows 8, will likely be a free of charge update for users. It'll be formally referred to as Windows 8.1.
　　She verified that there'll be a preview of Windows eight.one through the firm's Build convention in late June, at which period we are going to possible study more facts about what precisely are going to be within the update.
　　Reller danced throughout the topic of when just Windows 8.one will become readily available for customers but implied it will be released throughout the holiday seasons. "We're sensitive towards the timing in the vacations and what meaning for having the update out," she claimed. "We comprehend if the vacations are. We wish to underscore that."

　　She also mentioned that supply troubles which have held back the provision of additional touchscreen equipment -- which Windows eight was created to enable -- is convalescing but won't be thoroughly solved till later on this 12 months. "We see that contact supply is finding a lot of far better. By the holidays we can't begin to see the styles of restrictions we've seen on the skill of our partners and retail companions to get touch in the volume they'd like and that consumers are demanding," she reported.
　　Touchscreen offer constraints have been blamed to get a not enough assortment of fascinating kind components when Home windows eight launched previous 12 months. A quick development cycle for your operating technique also meant that OEMs may not have experienced the time that they generally do to create new items. But many of us imagined that those troubles would be solved during the initially couple of months of this yr.
　　Nevertheless it does influence the consumer current market, which significantly influences the kinds of products which might be used inside the company. Without the need of compelling Windows 8 devices on shop cabinets, buyers have far more motive to get products from rivals like Apple and Google. Microsoft will only have so many getaway shopping seasons to convince individuals that it'll get it right.
http://www.windows7mart.com/windows-7-enterprise-activation-key-p-3529.html

Google delivers 'return to sender' code for iOS

　　Code is king at Google, and a Google-made software module for iOS released on Tuesday allows you to go from third-party app to Chrome for iOS and back again with a simple tap.
　　The module, called OpenInChromeController class with x-callback is the second end-run around core Apple restrictions in as many days. On Monday, Google updated Gmail for iOS with the ability to open links from Gmail in Google's other iOS apps. Once developers incorporate the new software module, it will open links from the app in Google Chrome, provided that the user has Chrome for iOS installed.

　　Both the Gmail update and the software module circumvent one of iOS's most-complained about and unique restrictions, which forces all links to open in the browser Safari, even when the default browser has been changed. Apple did not immediately return a request for comment, but it's hard to imagine that Apple would allow Google or any other app maker to alter such a central iOS behavior.
　　Current iOS behavior requires developers to either create a Web browser frame inside their app, or force their users out of their app and into Safari.
　　Google engineer Michele Aiello wrote in the blog post announcing the callback module that it will be not only able to detect if Chrome for iOS is installed, but that it can open links in Chrome in a new tab or in the current tab. Developers can also choose whether they want the return button appear.

Windows eight shop now has far more than 60,000 apps

　　With all the makeover it released very last October, Microsoft hoped to engage in a far more notable role in the escalating cellular product current market even though even now sustaining its dominance in PCs. But Windows 8's style and design, which emphasizes interactive tiles and contact controls, appears to be to acquire befuddled as a lot of people as it has impressed. One particular leading exploration firm, Intercontinental Knowledge Corp., suggests Windows eight contributed to a fourteen p.c drop in globally Pc sales during the 1st 3 months of the year - the most important year-over-year fall ever.
　　Meanwhile, profits of smartphones and pill pcs are booming. The biggest beneficiaries are already Apple Inc., the maker from the apple iphone and iPad, and Samsung Electronics Co., which sells essentially the most devices functioning on Google Inc.'s Android computer software. Google is usually benefiting from Android's recognition by means of improved traffic to its providers, developing far more opportunities with the enterprise to exhibit adverts.
　　By contrast, foremost Computer makers these kinds of as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc., which generally offer Windows-powered machines, have already been mired inside of a money funk which includes battered their stocks and raised questions about their futures.
　　The company, which is situated in Redmond, Clean., states a lot more than one hundred million Home windows eight licenses have been bought to date, up from about 60 million licenses in January. The licensing volume "is during the same common ballpark," as Microsoft's previous operating process - Home windows seven - in a comparable juncture of its sales cycle, according to Tami Reller, who serves since the advertising and marketing and monetary chief for Microsoft's Home windows enterprise.
　　In an interview, Reller mentioned Microsoft nevertheless recognized alterations really need to be designed to create Home windows 8 much easier to navigate and able of taking comprehensive advantage of know-how improvements which have occur out given that October.
　　For now, Microsoft isn't really declaring what kind of modifications might be launched with the launch of Blue, which the company programs to anoint which has a distinctive name when the update is offered. Microsoft also just isn't saying whether it can cost current homeowners of Windows 8 devices to acquire the fixes in Blue. The organization plans to launch Blue in time to the getaway season.
　　Reller stated extra details about Blue is going to be unveiled in advance of Microsoft holds a developers convention in San Francisco in late June. Several of Blue's functions are expected to become previewed at that conference.
　　Other critics have pined for an option that would enable the program to start in the desktop mode suited for running apps made for previously variations with the working technique. Windows eight at the moment begins off demonstrating a mosaic of interactive tiles tailored for swiping through packages which has a finger as an alternative of employing a computer mouse.
　　Other than responding to purchaser feedback, Blue also will enhance Home windows 8's power to focus on scaled-down tablets with 7- and 8-inch exhibit screens, Reller mentioned. She declined to convey regardless of whether Microsoft intends to make scaled-down variation of its personal Floor tablets. In the convention connect with with analysts past thirty day period, Microsoft Main Economical Officer Peter Klein said the company was working with other producers to create smaller sized tablets.
　　Another thing that Blue is not going to resolve: the reasonably small collection of mobile programs customized for Windows 8. Reller said the Windows eight shop now has far more than 60,000 apps. Against this, there are actually more than 800,000 applications accessible for Apple's mobile's units and practically that lots of for Android devices, too. In a single with the most glaring omissions on Windows 8, Facebook Inc. continue to hasn't designed an application to make its on the internet social community additional accessible on that procedure. Facebook has about 750 million cellular customers.
　　Reller is attempting to frame the improvements as evidence that Microsoft has started to become additional agile and nimble mainly because it responds to the rapidly evolving technologies industry. Smartphones and pill desktops are within the epicenter in the upheaval, diminishing the demand from customers for PCs as far more men and women and firms opt for your ease of ever more highly effective cell equipment.
　　The cell computing movement may be the primary reason that Microsoft manufactured probably the most extraordinary redesign of its Home windows operating technique since 1995. Presented how diverse that Home windows eight is from its predecessors, Reller reported Microsoft normally knew it'd should make some changes much less than a year following the software package came out.
http://www.windows7mart.com/windows-7-enterprise-activation-key-p-3529.html