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Now you can chat with Gemini while using Google Maps through CarPlay

Engadget

If you're one of the many CarPlay users who prefers Google Maps for navigation, Google has begun rolling out a small but meaningful update for the iOS version of Maps. Now you can use the company's conversational driving experience, Gemini in navigation, through CarPlay. With Maps open, you'll see a new Gemini icon toward the bottom right of the interface. Just tap the bottom to start asking questions of the company's chatbot. "It's a conversational way to find stops on-the-go, report traffic disruptions, get information about places, and more," Google explains, adding Gemini is particularly adept at answering multi-part questions like "what park is famous for gorgeous views overlooking the city?"


Expert 'bat wranglers' put GPS trackers on California's bats

Popular Science

These winged mammals can cover a lot of ground during their seasonal migrations. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. The team at Muir Woods National Monument and Samuel P. Taylor State Park is tracking hoary (Lasiurus cinereus) and western red bats (Lasiurus blossevillii). October is officially Bat Appreciation Month . In the spirit of the season and conservation, a team of biologists in California recently spent time finding bats at Muir Woods National Monument and Samuel P. Taylor State Park. And while Halloween is fast approaching, the activity had nothing to do with spooky festivities and everything to do with tracking hoary () and western red bats ().


Google Maps Changes 'Lake Ontario' to 'Lake America' for U.S. Users

TIME - Tech

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Google Maps Now Shows 'Lake America' Instead of Lake Ontario

WIRED

Google Maps Now Shows'Lake America' Instead of Lake Ontario After Donald Trump's executive order demanding the name change, Google is the first major online maps provider to flip the switch. Lake Ontario is no more on Google Maps in the US. Google changed the name of easternmost of the Great Lakes to "Lake America" late Saturday, days after President Donald Trump ordered its rebranding in official government databases. Trump issued the executive order on Thursday as part of an ongoing feud over tariffs with Canada, whose capital province is called Ontario. It followed a similar order he issued in January 2025 to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America as part of a fight with the US trading partner to the south.


Now you can chat with Google Maps to order food, reserve hotels and more

Engadget

This past March, Google introduced a chatbot inside of Maps as part of its overhaul of the software's navigation suite. The company pitched the feature, Ask Maps, as a way to give users a way to obtain information no traditional map can provide. Today, Google is expanding what Ask Maps can do, starting with the addition of new agentic capabilities. The next time you feel like ordering food, you can do so directly through Ask Maps. In a press briefing, Amanda Leicht-Moore, senior product director of Google Maps, demoed the feature by telling the chatbot she wanted recommendations for avocado toast and an oat milk latte near her home.


GeoLink: Empowering Remote Sensing Foundation Model with OpenStreetMap Data

Neural Information Processing Systems

Integrating ground-level geospatial data with rich geographic context, like OpenStreetMap (OSM), into remote sensing (RS) foundation models (FMs) is essential for advancing geospatial intelligence and supporting a broad spectrum of tasks. However, modality gap between RS and OSM data, including differences in data structure, content, and spatial granularity, makes effective synergy highly challenging, and most existing RSFMs focus on imagery alone. To this end, this study presents GeoLink, a multimodal framework that leverages OSM data to enhance RSFM during both the pretraining and downstream task stages. Specifically, GeoLink enhances RS self-supervised pretraining using multi-granularity learning signals derived from OSM data, guided by cross-modal spatial correlations for information interaction and collaboration. It also introduces image maskreconstruction to enable sparse input for efficient pretraining. For downstream tasks, GeoLink generates both unimodal and multimodal fine-grained encodings to support a wide range of applications, from common RS interpretation tasks like land cover classification to more comprehensive geographic tasks like urban function zone mapping. Extensive experiments show that incorporating OSM data during pretraining enhances the performance of the RS image encoder, while fusing RS and OSM data in downstream tasks improves the FM's adaptability to complex geographic scenarios. These results underscore the potential of multimodal synergy in advancing high-level geospatial artificial intelligence. Moreover, we find that spatial correlation plays a crucial role in enabling effective multimodal geospatial data integration.


How to go back in time with Google Maps

Popular Science

You can access historical imagery through Street View. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. See what a street used to look like. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .