Skip to main content

Map

See All Stories

Etsy Local alerts iOS app users of nearby sellers when on the move

Etsy has long been an online marketplace for unique, often handmade items available directly from their creators, but a new feature of the app will connect shoppers with nearby sellers in the real world. The new Etsy Local feature, available from within the Etsy iOS app, will alert users when they are close to a seller’s real world location, including pop-up shops, flea markets, craft fairs, and local stores.

Sellers will just have to add their local store and event information in order for it to appear for app users. For users, this is how it works within the app:

When a shopper opens the Local tab in the app, recommended nearby retailers and events are tailored to their tastes, based on shops and sellers they have previously engaged with, through favoriting, purchasing, and browsing. Buyers can also discover great new places to shop by viewing local boutiques that carry Etsy merchandise — just one more way to support local communities online and off.

You’ll find the new Local feature on the app’s home page on both your iPhone and iPad, and you’ll be able to view store info and navigate to local shops and events from within the app.

You can access the new Etsy Local feature through the Etsy app for iPhone and iPad.

Apple explores customizable layers for future Apple Maps app – new patent application

Site default logo image

We’re pretty selective in the Apple patent applications we cover here, simply because Apple patents all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, and for every one of them that makes it into an Apple product, there are hundreds of others that never will. But this is one we think might.

The core concept is nothing new: layered maps. The existing Apple Maps app already allows us to choose between standard mapping, satellite view or both, and Google Maps on the web allows us to switch on or off layers like traffic, weather, public transit lines and so on. But what the Apple patent application describes would, if you’ll excuse the pun, take this idea to a whole new level … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Site default logo image

iOS developer cleverly adds Street View app as a routing source for iOS 6 Maps

Recently launched on the App Store, a 99-cent app from developers FutureTap called simply “Street View” will allow users to quickly access Google Street View from seemingly within the stock iOS 6 Maps app.

When Apple first launched its new Maps app with iOS 6, one of the features many users missed was Street View’s 360-degree panoramas made popular by Google Maps. Things got a little better with the introduction of the Google Maps iOS app months later, but there are still a few reasons why many have not completely migrated away from Apple’s stock Maps app.

The biggest (at least for non-jailbroken users) is the inability to use third-party apps as the default mapping application. That means when tapping links for addresses or using Siri, for example, Apple will still default to its stock iOS 6 Maps app. Thankfully, with the 99-cent Street View app, you can continue using Maps and still be able to quickly pull up Street View without ever feeling like you’ve left the app.

Here’s how it works:


Expand
Expanding
Close

Site default logo image

Apple now credits Open Street Map under iPhoto acknowledgments

When Apple released iPhoto for iOS on March 7, many quickly realized that Apple was not using Google Maps as it usually does for mapping, but rather maps from the OpenStreetMap project. Apple offered no official credit to the non-profit project, which collects a series of maps from over 500,000 people worldwide. However, it appears that Apple has finally credited OpenStreetMap in its latest iPhoto update, as the non-profit project tweeted the news last night.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/#!/openstreetmap/status/198101512201834497[/tweet]

While OpenStreetMap is available for anyone to use, the project does ask for one-line of attribution (via TPM). Apple now mentions OSM under the iPhoto acknowledgements in settings.

That wasn’t so hard?

Manage push notifications

notification icon
We would like to show you notifications for the latest news and updates.
notification icon
You are subscribed to notifications
notification icon
We would like to show you notifications for the latest news and updates.
notification icon
You are subscribed to notifications