Google has launched an updated version of its Maps application for Android smartphones, bringing a number of interesting new features, most importantly voice search.
So, if you’re an English-language speaker with an American, Australian, or British accent, you can now search Google Maps using your voice; how useful that really is, we’ll leave to individual users to decide, but talking into your phone on a crowded street will probably get you nowhere.
There’s a host of other improvements, though. First, Google has added transit and walking directions for over 250 cities, including New York City and San Francisco. A bug that caused background location updates to periodically stop in Google Latitude has been fixed, as long as you have the “Detect your location” option selected in the Latitude privacy menu.
Finally, there’s an interesting experimental feature called Updates which lets you communicate with friends. Start Latitude, click the “Updates” tab, and post messages to your friends. This feature will only work for users who have the latest version of Google Maps for Android.
Bear in mind that this update won’t be automatically downloaded to your phone; you have to download the new version in the Android market.
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