June 5, 2008

Public Transit Directions in Mobile Google Maps

The latest version of Google Maps for Mobile includes an option that was already available in Google Maps: directions for public transportation. Google's coverage has been continuously expanded in the past months to many US states, Japan, Austria, Switzerland, important cities from Canada, Italy, France, UK and Australia. Google Maps is one of the applications that is very useful when you are on the go and this new feature is a good alternative to the existing driving directions.

"This version of Google Maps for mobile even has a few tricks not yet available on the desktop version of Google Maps. For instance, you can find the last transit trips of the day (to figure out how late you can stay at the party) and more easily browse through earlier or later trips," suggests Google Mobile blog.

You can download the latest version of the mobile Google Maps for Blackberry and Java-enabled phones by visiting www.google.com/gmm on your mobile phone or by following the instructions from Google's site.

12 comments:

  1. very cool, works also across cities in my entire country...
    the bad thing is, it hangs on my phone, i think a drawing layout error (infinite loop?) of the blue transportation line - nokia 6288.

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  2. Is this new transit feature also available for desktops or is it limited to devices that can run the new gmm app? Will there be an update to the Palm OS Google Maps app (especially with all those Centros out there)? What about iPhones?

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  3. I just pulled the "current/latest" version (v2.1.0.10) off www.google.com/gmm onto my Windows Mobile phone but it doesn't have this capability. Has it actually been released, or when will it be released? What will the version number be, so I know when to try gain?

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  4. yeah i've been waiting for the iPhone version of the public transit directions since it was released for Chicago. I've got my fingers crossed for version 2.0!

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  5. ...Still waiting for NYC's MTA to join this bandwagon...

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  6. This is amazing. But I wonder how many people will actually use it?

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  7. Looks like Google have just added more schedules into the UK system very recently. You can now get directions between most UK towns/cities and all bus stops are visible when you zoom in close on the maps (and directions give the SMS code from the Naptan data for getting schedule info on your mobile).

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  8. How many people will actually use it?! It's a great feature and something that's been obviously lacking in mobile format since they released it on the desktop version.

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  9. I'll definitely use it - once it's out for iPhone.

    Having the ability to get public transit directions while you're actually out and about is much more beneficial than having the ability to look these up at home.

    Good post.

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  10. What about an update for Palm OS version?

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