In more news of Flash’s impending decline, Google is announcing that it’s “deprecating” the Google Maps API (application programming interface) for Flash. This API previously allowed developers to add Google Maps functionality within their Flash-based applications.

However, as of today, use of the API is limited, says Google, with only a small number of applications taking advantage of features unique to the Google Maps API for Flash alone.

The API, which originally launched in May 2008, is similar to the JavaScript version, but designed for use within Flash apps. Developers could use the API for manipulating and adding content to maps through a variety of services, which enabled them to embed interactive maps applications on websites.

The Maps for Flash API isn’t actually being killed off entirely – it’s being deprecated. That means that it will continue to function according to the Maps API Terms of Service, but no new features will be developed, and only “critical bugs, regressions and security issues” will be fixed.

In other words, the API is basically being abandoned.

Flash developers are instead encouraged to migrate applications over the Maps API v3, which offers other benefits like Street View, Fusion Tables integration, Places search, and full support for mobile browsers, says Google. And help is being made available on the Google Maps JavaScript API v3 forum.

The move is not surprising, given the limited interest in the API’s unique features, as noted above. However, in some way, the decision seemingly stands in contradiction to other moves Google has made in recent months in support of Flash. For example, last summer, Adobe and Google jointly announced that the Flash Player would soon be built into the Chrome Web browser going forward, thus eliminating users’ need to download, install and update the plugin separately.

Plus, Google’s mobile operating system is known for its support for Adobe Flash, and Flash-based apps.

In today’s blog post, Google also adds that it continues to support Flash as a development platform in Chrome, too, but the link for more details goes to a dead URL.

Maybe that page got deprecated too?

Update: Google fixed the link. The correct URL is http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=108086.

Google’s push into voice search is no secret: it’s baked into most builds of Android, and Chrome users have been enjoying the search-by-voice feature since July. It wasn’t so much a question of if Google would keep running with it, but where and when would it pop up next.

Google’s Lat Long Blog has that answer for us today, as voice search is now available in Google Maps.

The process is as straightforward as ever: click the microphone icon that now appears in the Google Maps search box and get busy talking. After a bit of testing, accuracy doesn’t appear to be an issue save for a few really dicey names. “Uttar Pradesh” took a few tries, but I can chalk that up to how poorly I tend to enunciate.

While it scores points for verbal accuracy, some Google’s directions are a little flaky. The Lat Long Blog mentions, for example, that you can simply say “directions from Place X to Place Y,” but I couldn’t for the life of me get the place names to pop up in the correctly in the To and From boxes. It took eight tries until I discovered that using the word “directions” in the query like Google suggests really throws everything off.

Tiny oversights like that aside, voice search for Google Maps is generally a blast to use. All you Chrome lovers can feel free to take it for a spin (and report your findings), but everyone else will just have to do it the old-fashioned way.

It’s hard to believe that Google’s Street View has been in use for over four years. What’s more amazing, perhaps, given the rate at which they have canvassed the world’s streets and alleyways, that there is anywhere left unmapped. But while their teams have successfully traced the surfaces of most large cities and a number of other interesting areas, I suppose it won’t come as a surprise that the remote reaches of the Amazon have not yet been put under the lens.

They aim to change that, however, and have detailed in a blog post their plans to Street-View-ize a large section of the river. It’s being done in collaboration with the Foundation for a Sustainable Amazon, a nonprofit working in the area.

To map the entire length of the Amazon, its tributaries, and distributaries, is the work of years, however, so Google won’t be attempting that just yet (though there are plenty of spots to drop the orange guy if you’re curious). For now, they’re focusing their efforts on a 50km stretch of the Rio Negro starting around Manaus, right about at the center of this image:

They’ll also be going down the dirt paths to small villages with the Street View Trike, mapping all the while, and will set up the tripod they use to show business interiors to give a panoramic taste of village life. And as a little parting shot of charity, they’ll be leaving behind some equipment, probably some cameras and laptops, for FAS and the locals to use. The whole thing is sort of a publicity play for sustainability, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

No word on when the project will be complete — from what I’ve read (travelogues from the 1800s, but still), these kinds of trips generally take longer than expected — but you can see some more pictures of their work over at the Google blog post.

ECOtality (NASDAQ: ECTY) — a San Francisco company that’s building electric vehicle (EV) technology and infrastructure in the U.S. and China— unveiled its Blink Network mobile app (screenshot, above) to help users find and reserve a nearby, available charging station at the Electric Drive Transportation Association conference in Washington D.C. Reservation and status-update features made ECOtality’s app distinct from other charger-finders for about a minute.

On Monday, however, Coulomb Technologies announced an upgrade to the ChargePoint app, including similar functionality. ECOtality’s app will be available for English-language users of iOS and Android devices in the next few weeks via BlinkNetwork.com, while Coulomb’s ChargePoint app is available now.

Both companies map the charging stations within the networks that they install, own and operate on behalf of their customers. Both companies supply stations and software to: companies with large vehicle fleets; employers that want to offer EV charging at work; retail store and garage owners; homeowners; and municipalities or utilities.

Several other web and mobile charging station finders, however, map any and all charging stations — which could make more sense for cross-country drivers. One such app is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Alternative Fueling Station Locator. The app uses Google Maps technology to show the location of publicly accessible EV charging stations, clean vehicle equipment suppliers, and biodiesel, hydrogen and other alternative fueling stations.

The open source site CarStations.com, which is expected to spin out a mobile product this year, includes user-contributed data a la Wikipedia to show charging and clean fuel stations.

A newer entrant, the PlugShare app by Xatori (images, below) maps publicly accessible charging stations, along with volunteer homes or businesses that are willing to share their outlets with EV and hybrid-plugin drivers.

PlugShare today claimed that its users comprise the “largest consumer electric vehicle charging network” in the United States. According to company reports, about 1,500 outlets have been shared under the PlugShare collaborative consumption model to-date, across 48 states in the U.S. The app has 13,000 some users so far.

Xatori chief technology officer*, Armen Petrosian, said that PlugShare is functioning as a kind of social network, and discussed features the company plans to add to it:

We are seeing two main types of communication occurring in the [PlugShare] network. One type of communication occurs between members who have shared outlets 10 to 100 miles apart…and are making a request to charge when one member is away from home. Users who are 5 miles apart or less— [sometimes want] to chat with a like-minded individual. I’ve experienced this first-hand as several members in my neighborhood have contacted me just to say hello, see if I have an EV, etc.

There are a number of features that we hope to add [to PlugShare] but a couple stand out right now. One is a reputation system so users can rate charging locations (private and public) and add comments. The second is a way to add or edit public charging station information, so that it can be kept up-to-date by the community.

Xatori has not yet determined how the open data and volunteer-inspiring app will generate revenue. The company is focused on building a large user base, first.

Meanwhile, Coulomb’s ChargePoint app helps the company generate fees from mobile payments— fifty cents per transaction, plus 7.5% of whatever the station-owner adds as a transactional fee for drivers.

A veteran engineer and advocate for clean vehicles, Kristen Helsel, vice president of EV Solutions at Aerovironment, believes that apps of the greatest use to electric vehicle drivers, and the industry, should present data about charging stations agnostically. Aerovironment’s own EV charger technology is sold on a “white label” basis, and is included in a number of other brands’ stations and networks. Helsel explained her position further:

“At Aerovironment, we work to enable all of the mapping services to have the most up to date information about where we install public charging stations. We don’t expect customers just to rely on us. What’s really important is that the information is available, and that drivers experience confidence when they want to access EV infrastructure.

It will be just as important in the future to make data available about all renewables; where are the chargers that are powered by wind or solar, where are the biofuel stations? The networks can go up, and can be limited. But we have to have open architecture in terms of the data.”

Richard Lowenthal, founder and chief technology officer of Coulomb Technologies noted:

“Home grown apps are great. They don’t offer features, and real-time data like we can. We offer [back-end] support with billing and asset management that tells you which stations are working and not, lets our customers [who purchase Coulomb's charging stations] set pricing and more. We have phone support for drivers; if someone is having trouble charging, they don’t go into the store, or to the receptionist, they call our 1-800 number.

As long as we need to offer our own app to show off all of the benefits and features of our network, we will add to and offer it as a standalone. We do have an open API and offer data to everyone who wants it, PlugShare, TomTom, NREL or anyone. We are not trying to stifle any of them, in fact it’s quite the opposite.”

ECOTality’s president and chief executive officer, Jonathan R. Read, believes there is value in providing an app that’s brand-specific, as well. In an interview with TechCrunch he said:

“I take my hat off to the community service providers, I really do. There’s sort of a brotherhood in the industry. I think that for this EV movement and charge infrastructure to succeed, though, it has to be commercially viable. We cannot rely on good will and trust, or government completely.

We need to make sure that EVs and charge infrastructure can stand alone, make money, be profitable so [clean energy] can proliferate with or without subsidies and volunteers.

I think the task of building EV infrastructure in the U.S. will be somewhat like the early stages of the cell phone business. We look to create the largest network, and provide the greatest depth of service through our apps. We’ve built the Blink Network app to be a part of an overall system that will eventually include not just the ability to make reservations, but also to make payments, use home energy management programs and devices on the go, experience connectivity and access a network of hundreds of thousands of charging stations.”

ECOtality — with the help of a recovery act grant from the DOE — is set to install approximately 5,700 commercial charging stations in the U.S. by the end of this year.

Correction*: In my original draft of this post, I wrote that Armen Petrosian was a chief executive officer of Xatori. He is chief technology officer. Forrest North is founder and CEO of Xatori, Inc. Sorry Forrest!

It’s hard to believe, but for the last few years Google Maps users in the United States have been missing out on a pretty important feature (though there’s a decent chance you’ve never heard of it). It’s not particularly sexy, and many of the people reading this post will probably never take advantage of it, but we’ll all reap the benefits over the coming months. Meet Google Map Maker.

The feature is pretty self-explanatory: it allows users to create (or, in the case of the US, edit) Google Maps, and it’s already had a major impact worldwide. You see, in the United States, we’ve been able to access online maps for years because companies have been plotting and licensing the data to services like MapQuest and Google. But in many countries, there wasn’t any data for online maps to speak of — so Google created a web-based tool so people could create their own. Edits are submitted by users, and after a moderation process, they’re added to Google Maps.

The feature has been used to generate maps for 183 countries and regions wordwide, and Google says that the number of people  globally with access to detailed maps of their neighborhoods has jumped from 15% to 30% because of it.

But why is it coming to the United States?

Lalitesh Katragadda and Manik Gupta, who lead the product, say that the tool can be used to give a greater level of detail to Google Maps in the US. We’ll now be able to edit (and access) more detailed maps of university campuses, biking and walking trails, and other areas that aren’t traditional roads.

Each edit submitted goes through a review process — Google looks at your past submission history to see if you’re trustworthy, and a small in-house team reviews each edit before it’s pushed live to Google Maps (users can also flag incorrect data). Once an edit is approved, though, it goes live for all of Google Maps users within a few minutes, so it won’t necessarily take a long time to see a change go live.

For now the feature is only available via the web interface, but it sounds like it will eventually make its way to mobile platforms as well (it would be easier to make submissions and corrections in the field).

Building interiors aren’t included as part of this release, but I suspect we’ll see these added down the line (imagine being able to navigate through a mall or office building). You can, however, add building footprints, including 3D versions of buildings.

To coincide with the US launch, Map Maker users everywhere are getting a couple new features: Street View can be used from within the editor, and there’s now an advanced search engine with more granular controls.

With all the buzz surrounding electric cars, it goes without saying there are a few concerns from customers. The biggest of concerns — range anxiety — could be lessened if people could easily find a place to plug in.

Now, thanks to Google, EV owners can type in “EV charging spots” near your location and up populates a list. I did it for my area and I found two less than a mile from my house. What’s also cool about the two I found is that they offer both 120V and 240V ports and there is no cost to use them — or to park!! I’ll assume that the ports are the standard SAE J1772, that common 5-pin plug on every vehicle. 

Audi was once known as the German car that came with all-wheel-drive. That notoriety is changing and Audi is becoming a huge player in the tech game; their interfaces are fantastic and run with exceptional speed and style. And now, they are bringing the internet to their navigations systems: the Google maps of navs, if you will.

With the new A6, Audi plans to integrate internet delivered traffic, rather than satellite, from sources like Inrix and Google Maps. Unlike previous systems powered by Sirius Traffic, the new internet-based systems can tell traffic information every 20-30 feet, rather that the old mile-by-mile. This is increasingly important in urban areas with many traffic lights — instead of knowing which block of blocks are slow, you will now be able to zero in down to the block.

With all this information comes great direction. The nav system in the Audi will now take you through the fastest route — perfect for getting in and out of cities with ease.

The system is launching with the name Audi Online Services and will use a data plan to to deliver traffic, road conditions and other information to the system. In Europe, the data will be accessed by a SIM card reader — european customers can often have their cards cloned. In the US, data will be accessed from a Bluetooth enabled smartphone. In addition to the traffic and nav routing, the data connection can be used for Google-searching points of interest. Expect greater search capabilities with up-to-date results, than from previous in-car systems.

All other manufacturers, please take note of this. The Germans are bringing the technology we are already familiar with and that we really want. Rollout will begin with the A6, followed by the A8, A4 and Q7.

Press Release

Well, if you do remember it, and are as keen as I am to see more, Google have now released a video showing off all the new features as run on a shiny new Nexus S.

Best of all, we’ve gone and embedded it for you, below!

Marvel at the 3G buildings! Gasp in awe at the compass mode! Live vicariously through Ken Norton!

You don’t have to do any of those things if you don’t want to, but I think it made my day a little more interesting.

[via Phone Arena]

The Google Map App on Android phones will soon get a major upgrade which will allow it to render map images a lot faster, incorporate 3D buildings, offer offline caching, and use the compass to orient the map. In a talk this evening at the D Mobile conference, Android chief Andy Rubin gave a sneak peak of the new app.

At the heart of the new app is a dynamic map rendering engine which draws maps as you use them, and offers smoother transitions when zooming in and out of different levels. The dynamic rendering will also make it possible to start to show 3D buildings as you zoom into the street-level view. The touch screen will allow you to tilt and rotate the map and buildings.

The new maps load faster because they require 100 times less data each. Instead of downloading the entire map image for each level, the app downloads meta data which describes the entire map at all different levels and then renders the appropriate sector on the fly. This will start to give Google Maps offline capabilities on mobile phones. It may be possible to cache a map of an entire city on the phone. And for people who use the turn-by-turn navigation in Google Maps, when the new app comes out it will be able to recalculate the route even without a data connection.

The Google Maps app will also use the built-in compass on Android phones to automatically flip the orientation of the map to the person holding the phone. That orientation feature will come in handy when you are coming out of a subway station in an unfamiliar stop, or exiting a building.

When Google put their faith in Wave, an ambitious new project last year, they knew it was a gamble. But a big part of it was the team behind the project. A team led by Lars Rasmussen, the engineer best known as the co-creator of the hugely successful Google Maps. And now he’s left the company. And from what we hear, he’s heading to Facebook. (Update below — he is.)

Rasmussen confirmed his departure on his Facebook page. Yesterday was his last day of work at Google. He didn’t give any indication where he’ll be heading next, other than he’d be “a whole big ocean closer” (he was living in Australia where the Wave team was based). But the fact that he put all this info on Facebook is telling. From what we’re hearing, he will be joining Facebook.

Neither Facebook nor Google has returned our request for comment yet.

This is a huge loss for Google and a huge gain for Facebook. But it’s hardly surprising that Rasmussen is leaving Google given that the search giant killed his ambitious Wave project barely a year after it was first unveiled.

Rasmussen’s defection is the latest in a series of moves from Google to the pre-IPO Facebook. But his move is likely the biggest one since Chrome OS lead Matthew Papakipos made the same jump in June.

We’ll be very interested to hear what he’s working on at the social network. No word yet on what his brother Jens, who also helped co-create both Maps and Wave, will be joining him there.

Update from Facebook:

As matter of policy, we do not comment on potential employees until they start.

In other words, when he gets back from his vacation in between jobs, they’ll confirm.

It’s also worth noting as well that current Facebook CTO Bret Taylor was heavily involved in the launch of Google Maps.

Update 10/31: Facebook has now confirmed the Rasmussen hiring with the following statement:

It’s true that Lars Rasumussen has joined Facebook.  Lars has a knack for building elegant, powerful products that people love.  We’re thrilled he’ll be part of Facebook’s world-class engineering team to help design transformative technologies that will improve how people connect and interact online.

Google has just released a series of updates for their Google Maps Android application. Two of these updates are useful: Place page reviews and the ability to filter search results. But one of them is really interesting: real-time location updating in Google Latitude.

To be clear, this feature is an experimental one that Google is trying out. But if you enable it, your friends on the service will be able to see where you are in real-time (and vice versa, if they enable it too). Previously, location updates through Latitude would occur regularly, but not in real-time. The reason is that this constant sending of location data can wear down mobile phone batteries much quicker. Many service that update location in the background instead tend to ping towers to see if you’ve moved periodically.

But this new real-time feature is meant for short-term usage if you’re going to meet up with a friend, for example. It make sense to make this a more temporary option for both battery life, and because of the creepy factor. Even if people opt-in to using Latitude, if you know you’re being tracked in real-time, that’s fairly creepy.

Sounds awesome. Can’t wait to try it out.

This is all a part of Google Maps 4.6 for Android (1.6 and later). It’s available now in the Market or if you click here from your device.

The Internet is rife with Google Translate failures, but this is the first we’ve seen on Google Maps. Apparently the Rio De Janeiro = Landfill issue on the newly launched Google Maps Brazil is known within Google and is caused by a mixup between a landfill site near Rio and a poor Portuguese to English translation, where the Portuguese is okay but the English is um, suspect.

I’ve never seen this kind of mistranslation on Maps before and from what I can glean it only affects Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Sao Paulo and other Brazilian cities are, from what I can see, immune. It is currently unclear whether Google is working on a fix.

So Gmail Instant would actually be useful, but seriously what’s next, Google Calendar Instant? Google Image Search Instant? Okay, maybe those would be helpful too. In fact it’s really difficult to think of a Google service that wouldn’t benefit at least slightly from Instantization.

Inspired by Google Instant and the story of engineer Feross Aboukhadijeh, who got a YouTube job offer via his YouTube Instant experiment, Alabama-based developer Michael Hart used jQuery and the Google Maps API to build Google Maps Instant, a pretty nifty Google Maps updating search for anywhere in the world. Much like Feross, Hart is also looking for a job.

According to Hart, the Instant interface, which “instantly” travels to the place it auto predicts you’re looking for, was created in 193 revisions and 4 hours (he’s still working on the Maps pins and the iPhone/Android functionality). But, while being able to instantly watch the permutations of where you’d like to go is kind of cool, I don’t think Google Maps Instant has the potential for YouTube Instant-level moments of serendipity, yet. My most recent YouTube Instant “moment,” below.

Attention those who still remember their parents’ stacks of old Thomas Guides, Google Maps for Mobile has hit a userbase milestone. More than 100 million people a month use the service across various mobile devices, according to a very interestingly-timed post on the Google Blog.

With GPS killing Android-only features like Google Maps Navigation, as well the increasing Google Maps reliance of app developers who want to power location-based services through the iPhone, it’s no surprise that the extremely useful service has grown exponentially since its launch in 2005.

Google Maps has most recently tried to take a cut of Yelp’s action with its Google Place Pages. Facebook shortly followed suit with their own social leaning “Place” in the name product. You might have heard of it.

Stay tuned for the Facebook vs. Google land grab. Literally.

Update: A Google representative reiterated that the Google Maps post timing was completely innocuous, “We issued the post in conjunction with having reached the exciting milestone today. “

Google Maps Navigation for Android now works outside the US or UK as the free turn-by-turn navigation system has been switched on for users in Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium (update: and Portugal).

In addition, Google Search by voice is now available for French, German, Italian, and Spanish speakers. English, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese were already supported.

Google also detailed how it goes about adding new languages for Voice Search:

Our goal is to bring Google Search by voice to speakers of all languages. We follow a rigorous process to add each new language or dialect. Working directly with native speakers in each country, we spend weeks collecting spoken utterances to create the specific models which power the service.

Our helpers are asked to read popular queries in their native tongue, in a variety of acoustic conditions such as in restaurants, out on busy streets, and inside cars. We also construct, for each language, a vocabulary of over one million recognizable words. It’s no small feat, but we love doing it.

A side-effect of this approach, Google says, is that if you’re a Spanish speaker in Mexico you may find that the service doesn’t work as advertised because of the difference in accents.

Voice Search works on the iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia S60 devices. Obviously, it also works on Android devices, although you best check the blog post announcing the addition of the newly supported languages to know how you can active it. Also, the application is only available in the Android Markets for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Google Maps Navigation is available in version 4.2 of Google Maps, on Android devices 1.6 and higher.

Oh, a car story written by Nicholas. This is sure to be riddled with errors! (Kidding&mdas;or am I?) Ford Sync, which Matt has talked about for some time, now works with Google Maps. That is, from Google Maps on your computer or mobile or whatever, you select a destination then send it straight to your car. That way, when you hop in the saddle—cars have saddles, right?—your destination is all marked out for you. Pretty neat.

Ford makes it seem pretty easy to handle. On Google Maps, again, either on your computer or mobile device or however you want to access Google Maps, you select a destination. Let’s say you want to drive from New York City to Six Flags Great Adventure. You search for “great adventure” on Google Maps, then pull down the Send menu. Then off you go.

You will need Ford’s traffic, directions, and information dealie for everything to work.

I think that’s it.

Google is announcing tomorrow at the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC that Google Maps will now include biking directions in the U.S. Apparently, this was the most-requested feature for the service, as some 57 million Americans ride bikes.

Thousands of miles of bike trails have been added to the maps. And there is also step-by-step directions, much like you can see for driving or public transportation directions in the maps. There is also a new layer that shows bike trails and bike-friendly areas on roads. Yes, it’s a bike-lover’s dream.

To make this new feature happen, Google partnered with Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit group that converts old rail lines into bike trails. The group have given Google information on some 12,000 miles worth of trails in the U.S.

To coincide with the launch, Google also has a cycling contest. To enter, you simply have to tweet with the hashtag #bikewithgoogle. The randomly selected winner will get a voucher for $2,500 to be used at American Cyclery.

I fully expect that hashtag to be dominated by members of Yahoo’s cycling team tomorrow.

Find out more about the new feature in the video below.

With the SXSW conference approaching in Austin, we are seeing a lot of geo-location launching this year. A lot of startups are taking advantage of Foursquare’s APIs in particular to get their geo apps quickly out of the gate.

Take FourWhere. It is a pretty basic mashup of Foursquare comments and venues overlayed on Google Maps. You can search by city and neighborhood, and see all the recent tips from people who have checked into various nearby restaurants, bars, stores, and offices. The site forces you to right-click to see comments or venues instead of just having a menu in the side, but it does the job.

I’m kind of surprised Foursquare doesn’t offer the exact same functionality, but that’s what APIs are for. Sometimes startups need other startups to show them what they should be doing.

FourWhere was created a demo app for SXSW by social media analytics firm Sysomos. It plans to add more data from services like Yelp, Twitter, and Gowalla in the future, which brings up the issue of whether it picked the best name.

Local search is heating up, especially on advanced mobile phones, where augmented reality apps and immersive photo-realistic apps show great promise. EveryScape, a startup in Waltham Massachusetts which has built out immersive 3D photoscapes for 20 cities, raised a $6 million Series C funding. The investment was led led by SK Telecom Americas, a subsidiary of the Korean telecom giant, which will help EveryScape expand into Asia.

Existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Dace Ventures also participated. EveryScape’s previously raised a $7 million Series B in March, 2008 and a $4.5 million Series A in 2005.

Up until now, EveryScape has been stitching together navigable street photos into 3D environments paired with Google Maps. Of course, Google Maps does much the same thing with its Street View feature. EveryScape, however, can take the viewer inside buildings. Businesses can pay to be listed and called out in the street view mode, and even pay for EveryScape to create those indoor 3D tours.

This sort of experience becomes much more useful on a mobile phone when you are trying to find a business or some other point of interest when you are standing on the street nearby. Still, it’s tough to compete against Street View on Google Maps, not to mention similar efforts on Bing. That is why EveryScape is taking partner-driven strategy,” says CEO jim Schoonmaker. He confirms that EveryScape’s relationship with SK will go beyond the investment, but can’t share any details beyond that. He also says more partnerships are on the way, and claims to have a cost advantage over Google and Microsoft in creating these immersive photo-based virtual environments because as a startup EveryScape has been forced to use off-the-shelf equipment. Signing up more partners will be the key to its survival.

Over-sharing the minutiae of your life is already difficult, so why complicate things with Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare when you only need one service to rule them all? That’s where Google Buzz comes in and makes annoying your friends with news about your snacking habits that much easier.

Google Buzz is rolling out today, and over the next few days it should appear in everyone’s Gmail accounts. With Buzz, you can share status updates, images and videos like you can on social networking sites like Facebook, but it’s more streamlined in Buzz. Videos play within status messages and images pop open into a gallery for quick stalking browsing.

It might seem overwhelming and unnecessary when you’re already using so many other social networking services, but Buzz allows you to integrate Picasa, Flickr, Twitter and your Google Reader so you can be as transparent as ever right in one place. And, of course, I’d imagine that the bulk of our sharing takes place while on the go, so there is a mobile version, too. For now, let me step aside and have Google explain the new service along with how the mobile version works.

[via Google Buzz]