In this week’s top stories: an artist “hacks” Google Maps with no less than 99 cellular phone to develop phony traffic congestion, Google submits a hallmark for a new operating system called “Pigweed,” a robot folds and unfolds the Motorola Razr to its unavoidable demise, and more.
Starting the week on a light note, German artist Simon Weckert chose to have a bit of fun with the method Google Maps immediately figures out whether there’s a traffic congestion in an area based upon how quickly those using navigation have the ability to move through traffic.
To achieve this, he loaded 99 mobile phones into a wagon and turned them all onto Maps navigation. As he strolls down a street, Google acknowledges the high concentration of “users” and the slow-moving “traffic” and marks that street as having bad traffic.
The results promote themselves and produce a certain ” must-watch” video to brighten your weekend.
Somewhere Else in Google Maps news, the service commemorated its 15 th birthday today in design– a brand brand-new style, that is! Dropping its traditional “identify on a map” icon, Google has used its traditional colors onto an identify to match the icon of apps like Google House, Wear OS, and Google Fit.
As you would expect from a radical change like this however, the community is not all on-board with the new icon. Our Stephen Hall shared his ridicule for the brand-new logo on Alphabet Scoop A survey of 9to5Google readers shows that just 44%prefer the new icon, with the comments area sharing some intriguing insights.
It’s absolutely not bad by no ways. Of course the Google branding is kinda lost through it. Just people who know the colours can identify it with Google. And even then it’s a little bit flat for 2020, imho.– Henny Roggy
I like it, however I hope Google does not go too much more standard