Google Maps Mobile updates

Google Maps has added some new ways for you to find your way using your mobile device. You’ve now got contacts integration and GPS functionality on Windows Mobile, for version 2003 or higher (download it here). There’s also GPS-Enabled Google Maps for the rest of us to use, as well as an optimized version for your Treo and your Blackberry (found here as well).



And some stuff that’s been rolled out on the web version of Google Maps and Earth that’s now available on its mobile implementation: real-time traffic conditions, favorite places and routes, and additional details for businesses marked on your maps. Google’s working so hard to keep the updates going for various handsets. Will it lose some of these options if it rolls out its own mobile network?

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Apple updates iPhones to 1.1.2

It's official: iPhone 1.1.2

We get some hands-on time with version 1.1.2 of the Apple iPhone firmware, courtesy of our UK iPhone.

In the UK, November 9th is D-day for everything iPhone. One detail about this date strikes the fear of god into iPhone hackers, however: with the UK phone launching on firmware 1.1.2, it's a question of time before the rest of the world's jesus phones will follow.

As part of our iPhone review, we've been having a play around with the new firmware this week, and there are plenty of cool new changes that will make Apple's cell a truly global affair.

First off, there's support for dozens of languages, so if you happen to be a fluent Cantonese speaker, the phone has all the relevant character sets so you can display your language properly.

There's full support for French and German, with special keyboard lay-outs on the ready to tackle accented characters - perfectly understandable, of course, what with the phone heading for launch across the channel this month too.

And then there's access to The Cloud WiFi hotspots, which is already available to iPod Touch customers. This exclusive iPhone deal will let UK punters get onto the web, and use wi-fi to download tunes using the iTunes WiFi store, or just zip around the web at broadband pace, all for free!

Undoubtedly, 1.1.2 will send the hacking community into frenzy - the previous update certainly did. We're not advocating hacking your iPod in any way, of course, but some gentle experimentation shows that the TIFF exploit (described over at MacNN) which could be used to jailbreak and hack the 1.1.1 iPhone has been closed, rendering the latest attempts to jailbreak the phone obsolete.

It'll all become clear this Friday when the iPhone finally launches here in Britain - and when the 1.1.2 update starts being seeded out to iPhone users all over the place.

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