.::REALITYRECALL::.

(Cross posted from Google Mobile Blog)

We’ve made it easier to check in and out of places, rate various locations, and get transit information with Google Maps 5.5 for Android. This release adds ‘check in’ and ‘rate and review’ buttons to Place pages, the option to edit your home/work address for Latitude, and redesigned transit station pages.

Read below for more details about the new features, which we hope will improve your user experience, a topic we take very seriously as there are now more than 200 million users of Google Maps for mobile across platforms and devices worldwide.

New check-in and rating buttons added to Place pages

Now when you open a Place page from your mobile device, you can check in to places with Google Latitude or submit a rating or review by clicking on two new buttons at the top of the listing.

This past week I had the chance to explore the Computer History Museum during my visit to San Francisco from across the pond in London. Once nearby, I could quickly open the museum’s Place page and check in.

When I was ready to leave and head to lunch, in a few seconds I could go back to the Place page and rate the museum – which certainly earned the 5 star rating it received from me.

Update home and work address for your Latitude Location History

Last month we released the Location History dashboard for Latitude which estimates how much time you spend at home, work, and everywhere else. If your home or work address changes, or you’d rather set a different address to represent ‘home’ and ‘work,’ you can now edit these addresses within Latitude.

View the redesigned transit station pages

It’s been about two years since we added transit directions in Google Maps for Android. Since then, we’ve increased the coverage from 250 cities to more than 440 and counting – the most recent being Washington, D.C. To make it easier to plan your transit route, we updated the transit station pages in this release to better organize the information you need.

Each page now includes a list of upcoming scheduled departures for different lines, all the transit lines serving the station, and links to nearby transit stations.

Download Google Maps 5.5 for Android here to try out the new check-in and rating buttons, update your Latitude Location History home/work address, check out a transit station in a nearby city, or just make sure you have the latest version of Google Maps for Android. This update requires an Android OS 1.6+ device anywhere Google Maps is currently available. Learn more in our help center.

Posted by Luis Sigal, Software Engineer

Microsoft to launch web-based Windows Phone Marketplace alongside ‘Mango’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 May 2011 15:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You probably don't remember who taught you how to wipe—your parents, most likely—or why you wipe the way you do. All you know is that once you were settled in on one style of wiping that worked, more or less, there was no real reason to change. But is it the right way? Is it the best way? Let’s find out. More »

In real, modern combat, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some soldiers have cameras attached to their helmets. The videos make it to YouTube (and on Kotaku, too), giving the rest of the world a first-person view of real combat. More »

About a fifth of Canadian households still had no internet access in 2010, including nearly half the households with annual incomes of $30,000 or less.

We’ve been hearing rumors for a while that Twitter was looking to make TweetDeck a member of its flock, and now, the blue bird crew has made it official. All Things D reports that the deal was done for between $40 to 50 million, and that TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworth will stay on to run the platform. In its official announcement, Twitter said it will continue to “invest in the TweetDeck that users know and love” — time will tell if the new boss birdie is a boon or bane for the popular tweet tracking app.

TweetDeck and Twitter, together at last originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 May 2011 13:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some 60 health care workers in the Yorkton and Melville areas were off their jobs Wednesday morning, in the latest in a series of rotating strikes by members of the Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan.

Acer was already kind enough to give us a heads up that it would not be launching the Iconia Tab A100 in May, as planned. But the company wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to explain why its 7-inch, Tegra 2-powered tablet is taking such a tedious trip to market. According to a DigiTimes report, at least, the hangup comes down to compatibility issues with Honeycomb, an OS that so far hasn’t been seen on many 7-inch slates. Specifically, the site’s unnamed sources say Acer has encountered problems with certain applications and that Google, meanwhile, is “busy resolving other issues.” All in all, precisely the kind of complication that Ice Cream Sandwich promises to circumvent. Oh, and speaking of delays, DigiTimes adds that the Iconia Smart might go on sale in July due to earthquake-related supply shortages. We asked Acer for clarification, but the company declined to comment, so it looks like we’ll just have to wait and see what goodies late summer brings.

Acer Iconia Tab A100 delayed due to Honeycomb compatibility issues? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 May 2011 11:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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School was out on Wednesday, with 12,000 teachers beginning their two-day strike across Saskatchewan.

We’ve highlighted plenty of Labs features for Gmail, but Calendar has some pretty great Labs offerings, too. Since it’s been nearly two years since Labs were added to Calendar, we thought it was about time they got a bit more attention. Here are eight of the most useful experimental features available for Google Calendar that you can start using right now. More »

A new option’s shown up in Chromium builds that allows users to choose what type of cached personal data should be encrypted as it’s sent to Google’s cloud. Until now, only saved passwords have been encrypted, but the new option would conceivably cover everything from saved form data, like credit card numbers, to Omnibar auto-completions and what extensions are installed. [Browser Scene] More »

Do you like Android 3.1? Do you like tablets slimmer than the iPad 2? You might want to talk to Samsung in that case, because the Galaxy creator has put those two features together on its Galaxy Tab 10.1 product page and has compounded the excitement with a tweet saying the tablet is mere days away. Now, there’s a bit of conflicting information here, because Samsung’s tweet actually promises Android 3.0, but the Tab 10.1 page clearly lists the harder, better, faster, stronger Android version as the one that comes with the slate. Additionally, our conversations with Samsung at Google I/O earlier this month indicated that the June 8th launch date that we’ve been taking as gospel until recently is a little shakier now, with a slight delay possibly being caused by the desire to install the latest Honeycomb on board. So maybe the tweet’s accurate in saying the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is coming in just a few days, it just depends on your definition of “few.”

Update: Another tweet from Samsung’s US account has reaffirmed that Android 3.1 will be the OS.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will ship with Android 3.1 on board, said to be ‘a few days away’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 May 2011 04:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s nothing as spectacular as watching a thunderstorm roll in on the dry Australian landscape, which could explain why I’ve just spooked myself by watching William Phuoc’s video of a bolt striking just 200m from where they were photographing. [PetaPixel] More »

Sony is once again dealing with an online security breach after the company said Wednesday that 2,000 customers of its Sony Ericsson venture in Canada may have had their information taken.

Canada Post rejected its union’s latest contract proposal on Tuesday, saying the offer would increase the Crown corporation’s labour costs by $1.4 billion, but made a counter-proposal that may get negotiations back on track.

This is actually great: Barry Bonds, the star of Bob Costas’s nightmares, will provide scholarships for Bryan Stow’s two grade-school-age children. Stow was brutally beaten at Dodger Stadium in March for wearing a Giants jersey. His condition is slowly improving, and police recently arrested a suspect in his beating. More »