Results tagged “google”

On the agenda today for the City Council is consideration of a proposal that will "replace the city government's crash-prone e-mail system with a Google-based application," according to the Daily News. The impetus behind what some view as a costly or belated upgrade is the fact that the system they currently use, GroupWise, is often down and unreliable.

Since June, Google has been playing with the idea of tourism itineraries within Google Maps. Basically, the service "helps you identify points of interest and plan multi-day trips to most major cities. You just specify the location of your hotel and the length of your trip and City Tours will map out an itinerary for you," explains Google. Still, it's a major work-in-progress. A search for "Hollywood, CA" doesn't show any local sights, but pushes you downtown. That may not be a bad thing because letting people know about more unknown places like The Grier Musser Museum might be a good idea. The first-day itinerary also tells us to check out the FIDM Museum Shop, The Musuem of Neon Art and MOCA. It also tells us to walk 141 minutes from Hollywood to downtown. Whoa, better get started...

Let's face it. The city of Los Angeles is truly in the stone ages when it comes to technology. City workers may be addicted to their crackberries and the City Council File Management System may be pretty sweet, but other than that, our tax dollars are disappearing into a non-efficient system. Now enter the idea of partnering with Google's e-mail and apps program. From the LA Times:

Earlier this week, word got around that Google Transit was up and working in beta mode. Today, it became the real deal. Over 200 bus lines and five lines with more than 2.5 million data points are now on Google Transit, an option found on Google Maps.

After much pushing and prodding by the public and media, Metro finally succumbed, quietly launching Google Transit this past weekend. Go ahead and play, it's like we're in a real big city now, catching up with most other major ones.

Google's Street View has gone off roading--in a sense--with their cutely named Google Trike, which has "3 bicycle wheels, a mounted Street View camera and a specially decorated box containing image collecting gadgetry," according to the company.

Today Metro made a big step with an announcement that will give programmers a new tool to make and computer savvy commuters ecstatic. They launched a new beta developer website (and blog!) with two downloadable data sets--GIS and GTFS, or Google Transit Feed Specification, which is used in Google Transit. "This data set is a collection of tabular data describing route, stop, schedule, and fare information for Metro’s system," Metro said in a news release. "The GIS data is a collection of shapefiles for mapmakers who wish to include a layer of Metro Bus and Metro Rail lines and stops into a map."

Google Transit has been working with Metro's schedules for over a year now, but Metro won't sign the final contract, according to sources.

Google complimented us in an e-mail today for catching their short test on street traffic for Google Maps. Unfortunately, that function isn't fully available yet, they tell us. "We're constantly testing new features to improve Google Maps - one feature we're currently working on is traffic conditions for arterial roads," the Google spokesperson wrote. "Unfortunately we don't have a launch date to share, but the positive response from having it live for just a short time yesterday was great to see, and we're working hard to make it available soon." However, they do encourage people to use the Typical Traffic feature that launched last year. You can plug in a day and time and see what the traffic is like based on past patterns. For example, you're going to LAX at 5 p.m. on Friday, what's a typical traffic pattern? Oh, it's hell.

No longer are the days of checking Google Maps just for freeway traffic, you can now check the conditions on major streets. Have fun out there. As of 5:30 p.m., it's very yellow. Thanks, rush hour.

Franklin Avenue today spotlights someone's attempt to use Google Maps to suggest public transit options to get him from Downtown Los Angeles to Inglewood. Shouldn't be that hard to do, right? So what happened when he plugged in his plan? "Google Maps said the total trip would take 10 hours, 44 minutes by public transit -- and cost $10.50." In fact, that almost 11-hour journey had him getting to Inglewood via...Anaheim! Why does this seem horribly wrong? The answer--or blame--rests with Metro, who did not hop aboard the Google Transit train soon enough to get their routes meshed with the maps. So this trip has the traveler using Metrolink and OC Transit, and not Metro (same happens if you try to plot a public transit trip via Google on the iPhone). We wondered a few months ago if it would happen...it hadn't then, and it seems like it still won't. Silly Metro...what a wasted opportunity you're still ignoring!

As Metrolink announces their inclusion in Google Transit today (although, it's been live since October), Steve Hymon at the LA Times takes a rightfully and just swing at Metro for still not working with Google.

Google and the city of Santa Monica teamed up earlier this year to provide real-time data on the city operated parking lots. It helps you can plan ahead and hopefully save some time when heading to 3rd Street Promenade or the beach.

Have you ever noticed that Google Maps displays Metro Subway and Light Rail stations but not Orange Line ones, even though the buway pretty much acts like train on rubber wheels (yeah, cheesy description). We posed that question to Google and a spokesperson quickly responded saying those stations would be marked on the map if Metro joined the Google Transit program.

Last week, vowing to help make NYC transit less complicated, New York City and Google officially launched Google Transit's ability to help people navigate the city. So it got us thinking. If New York City has it and Chicago has it in addition to Orange County, San Diego, Burbank, Irvine, Metrolink Trains and Thousand Oaks, when will Metro, Los Angeles' main transit operator, launch the tool?

Big media is coming out against Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that seeks to eliminate same-sex marriage in California. Last week Google said no to the proposition followed by the New York Times on Sunday.

After finding out about Metro's new and improved transit map earlier today, we see that Metrolink is now on Google Transit, thanks to ExperienceLA's blog.

If you are seeing what we're seeing when you log into your Google Mail account, you're not alone, and no, the "errors" aren't your fault. What to do? Well, you can go to the beach, take a nap, follow the grumbling session on Twitter and throughout the blogosphere, or take a chance on the GMail HTML interface, which is still functioning for some users.

LAPD's interactive crime maps have been helpful since they launched a couple years ago. Today, they relaunched the tool, now using Google Maps instead of the old city map they were using. The new maps also let you double click on an area to browse crime in neighborhoods and also toggle between the graphic, satellite and hybrid maps (however, the search your address function seems to not be working at the moment).

Google Trends provides insights into broad search patterns by users on Google. A look into what is being searched nationally this afternoon is obviously the earthquake. Today's 5.4 magnitude quake was only considered "moderate," which is big enough to knock things off shelves and cause minor damage to buildings. However, Google searches across the country are intensely focused on the incident. The majority of top 100 trends ("hot trends") are quake-related.

Yesterday, Google introduced a new Google Maps feature: directions when on foot. "Starting today, you can tell Google Maps that you want walking directions, and we'll try to find you a route that's direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when we know about them," explained Andy Schwerin, Software Engineer, on Google's blog dedicated to maps. "Just get directions as you normally would. If you're going 10 km or less (some call this 6.2 miles), we'll show you a link that you can click to get 'Walking' directions."

Two of my friends have been raving about this supposed "real Italian/napolitana" pizza in Monterey Park, and after months of accumulated hype I decided to give in and drive 20 miles just for fucking pizza. I even took five other friends in tow for the expedition to Monterey Park, the hotbed for all great cheap eats -- some of my favorites include Shakas and The Boiling Crab.

Next time your uncle and aunt are in town skip the usual Hollywood Boulevard shenanigans. The Walk of Fame and Mann's Chinese Theater are just as exciting as they look on Google Images. Instead take them to Pincher's Liquor and crush their spirits with these unusual murals.

The AMGEN Tour of California has returned and it started a couple days ago with a time trial in Palo Alto. The tour makes its way to Sacramento today and then starts heading south towards Los Angeles. The race concludes on Sunday, February 24th with Stage 7 which starts in Santa Clarita and finishes in Pasadena.

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Kanye West tickets for the April 21st concert sold out extremely quickly this morning during pre-sale (uh oh!). But we're happy to announce that they just decided to have a second Kanye West concert at NOKIA Theatre L.A. LIVE taking place the next day on Tuesday, April 22.

The global day of action was initially announced last month after a video attributed to "Anonymous" coincided with an online effort that managed to temporarily knock out Internet servers belonging to the Church of Scientology.

Photo by victoriabernal via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr