ReadWriteWeb

As mobile becomes normal for the Web, location becomes key. The next phase of location apps are live, right there with the user as she goes about her business. When it comes to mapping the outside world, the space is pretty crowded. It's hard to argue with Google Maps, whose free consumer service powers the maps on both dominant smartphone platforms. For businesses, it's crucial to be on the map, and Google Places can't be overlooked.

But there's another frontier of mobile mapping that matters, and the exploration has just begun. Indoor mapping of big buildings - like airports, convention centers, museums and stores - is the El Dorado of mobile location. Google has begun its expedition inside buildings, and businesses can sign up and offer their floor plans. But there's another option: Use a platform like Meridian and build your own inside map. Which is better for business?

Google Maps and Google Earth just got their second update of 2012 to add 45º imagery, which now covers 17 U.S. and seven international cities. These 45º views cause buildings to cast shadows and rotate with real perspective. It's an almost-3D view that makes the satellite view of a place more realistic while still supporting most systems.

45º views act as a transition between the standard top-down view and Google's new Google MapsGL, a full-3D Maps experience powered by WebGL in the browser. That part won't work on certain low-end graphics cards, but for those who can run it, Google Maps gets pretty magical. Google has good reason to push the envelope on 3D maps. Its competitors are working on magical maps of their own.

National Geographic Maps has partnered with AllTrails, an online network for outdoor enthusiasts, to launch a co-branded service at alltrails.com. The site aims to be a comprehensive destination for people planning hikes or other backcountry outings. Its 200,000 users can browse nearby or search for trails, post reviews and photos and share trails with friends. Users who have completed a trail are listed on its page.

Trail profiles give time and distance measurements, weather forecasts and routes overlaid on topographic maps. AllTrails initially used Google Maps data but found it to be too inaccurate for safe planning of wilderness trips. After Google began to charge for access to the Google Maps SDK, AllTrails began to explore other partnerships. Today's announcement with National Geographic is the beginning of an integration that will move AllTrails away from Google.

Google announced a partnership with the World Bank today to make Google Map Maker data more accessible to government organizations in disaster scenarios. Google Map Maker is the tool for crowd-sourcing the editing and maintenance of Google's world map. Its user-generated data include locations of hospitals, schools, settlements, water sources and minor roads.

Access to these data will help governments, NGOs, researchers and individuals plan without waiting for the changes to be approved and added to the official maps. World Bank partner organizations, such as government and U.N. agencies, can contact World Bank offices to request access to the data. Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Zambia, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Moldova, Mozambique, Nepal and Haiti will pilot the project.

Microsoft announced enhancements to its Bing Maps, including a change to the algorithm that allows the service to process directions requests twice as fast and help drivers avoid traffic.

Those changes, along with a newly-awarded patent for a feature that allows Bing Maps to route pedestrians away from unsafe neighborhoods, suggest Mcirosoft is driving to surpass Google Maps, which has dominated the space since surpassing MapQuest in site traffic and queries in 2008.

Google Maps just went indoors. Starting with Google Maps 6.0 for Android, users of Google Maps can now navigate inside of mapped locations such as airports, malls and IKEA stores. The program launches with selected partners, and any business owner can apply to have a floor plan included.

This is a key move for Google's mobile business, which up until now could only take you to the front door of the place for which you were searching. Google Maps on the desktop recently got 3D photo tours of small locations, an extension of Street View, but this is a bigger step. When Google Maps goes inside, Google can take you all the way from searching for something to holding it in your hand, advertising and data-gathering all the way.

Google Maps is an incredible technology. Built by acquired startups and licensed commercial data, it's refined, repaired and extended by thousands of everyday people around the world using Google's Map Maker editing service. Just today a big batch of new citizen contributed roads and landmarks went live in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But what about when there's a mistake? Let's say that an address or landmark is wrong on Google Maps and someone, somewhere uses Google Map Maker to fix it. How long does it take to show up in Google Maps? And how long does it take to populate out into all the embedded Google Maps around the world that are powered by the Google Maps API, the most popular API in the world? According to the company this week, it now takes as little as fifteen minutes. Even a market leader like Google Maps has to stay on its toes because there's a whole lot of competition trying to win the hearts of developers who use maps in apps.

Two months later, Google has joined the international community in recognizing South Sudan's independence and adding it to Google Maps. After uprisings at the beginning of the year, South Sudan declared independence on July 9, 2011.

As we reported this summer, most of the major Web mapping services have lagged on this update. Google is the first to make the change.

Bing just released a helpful app called We're In for Windows Phone, which helps organize get-togethers by creating an event at a location that contacts can join. You create a title, location and timeframe and send an invitation to people in your contact list. Users without Windows Phones can join via a Web link.

The app allows participants to post status updates, and it displays their locations on a map, though they can tap 'leave' at any time and stop sharing their location. When the event expires, everything gets automatically cleaned up, and location sharing stops. It's kind of like Glympse but with group messaging features. We're In is currently only available for Windows Phone users in the U.S., but the post says the team is "working on bringing this app to more devices."

Google just introduced a weather layer to Google Maps, and WunderMap better watch out. It's a simple overlay of local weather icons with temperatures, and clicking them pops up more information including humidity, wind speed and a forecast. Google is not new to the weather game; Google Earth has been displaying weather information since 2007, adding real-time weather and animations last year. But the addition of this layer to Maps means that users planning an outing or a trip can do it all from one free, Google-powered, ad-supported place.

The data come from Weather.com, although Google's blog post mistakenly says it's all from the U.S. Naval Research Lab, which also provides some of the data for Google Earth's "Clouds" layer (look at the bottom left of the screenshots). The Weather Channel used to offer a Google Maps mapplet, but that's unnecessary now. Google Maps has no radar view or interactive components, so The Weather Channel still has something unique to offer on its own site, but whenever Google gets into a new vertical, be it weather, shopping or email, competitors should proceed with caution.