Whenever I meet someone who finds out that I work on the directions team for Google Maps, the first question I'm asked is often "So when's Google Maps going to add biking directions?" We're big biking fans too, so we've been itching to give you a concrete answer. I don't want to keep the good news a secret any longer, so the answer is: right now! Today we've added biking directions and extensive bike trail data to Google Maps for the U.S. My team has been keeping close tabs on all the public ..   show all text

The social networking site plans to roll out features next month that will give its 400 million users the option of sharing their location with friends as part of their news feeds.

The magnitude 8.8 quake that struck near Maule, Chile, Feb. 27 moved the entire city of Concepcion 10 feet to the west. Precise GPS measurements from before and after the earthquake, the fifth largest ever recorded by seismographs, show that the country’s capital, Santiago, moved 11 inches west. Even Buenos Aires, nearly 800 miles from the epicenter, shifted an inch. The image above uses red arrows to represent the relative direction and magnitude of the ground movement in the vicinity of t..   show all text

The move potentially leaves about three million cable customers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut without access to the Academy Awards telecast on Sunday night.

Did you know that blocking ads truly hurts the websites you visit? We recently learned that many of our readers did not know this, so I'm going to explain why. There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only o..   show all text

The origins of Facebook have been in dispute since the very week a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg launched the site as a Harvard sophomore on February 4, 2004.  Then called "thefacebook.com," the site was an instant hit.  Now, six years later, the site has become one of the biggest web sites in the world, visited by 400 million people a month. Read the rest of this story »

Apple filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against HTC this week in an indirect attack against Google’s Android platform. That got us to wondering: If Apple wins this suit, just what would a Google phone, such as the HTC-built Nexus One, look like? Realistically, Apple and HTC are going to reach a settlement outside of court, and the impacts on actual hardware are unpredictable. But we thought that rather than barrage you with boring patents to explain the suit, we’d illustrate the suit’s pot..   show all text

Critics of the teaching of evolution are gaining ground by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both should be taught in public schools.

It’s March, which can only mean we’re on the cusp of that Great American Workplace Productivity Suck known as the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. Usually, the three weeks of March Madness are passed by updating office-pool rankings, watching split-screen highlights on CBS, and checking if you still qualify for Yahoo’s $1 million grand prize for submitting a perfect bracket. But today, the college basketball bigwigs have upped the ante. In partnership with Thought Equity Motion, ..   show all text

The first time I was ever published in a book was 1997. It was because I found Roger Ebert's email and asked him a question. You can find the link right here, from Ebert's book Questions for the Movie Answer Man. Here's the question: This was not the first question I had asked Ebert. (Considering the royal "we" construction I would use during my days as editor of Deadspin, it has a certain historical irony.) Ebert was an alum of the University of Illinois, and he was the reason I was ther..   show all text

At 3:34 am local time, today, February 27th, a devastating magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. According to Chilean President-elect Sebastian Pinera, at least 120 people are known to have been killed so far. The earthquake also triggered a Tsunami which is right now propagating across the Pacific Ocean, due to arrive in Hawaii in hours (around 11:00 am local time). The severity of the Tsunami is still not known, but alerts are being issued acr..   show all text

A massive quake struck Chile early Saturday, shaking the capital of Santiago, bringing down buildings and setting off a tsunami. At least 78 were killed with the toll rising.

The Associated Press will create paid subscriptions through the Apple iPad for itself and other news organizations.

​Last night, we asked Jonathan Weber, newly installed editor of the Bay Area News Project, if his Warren Hellman-funded start-up was going to be a nonprofit San Francisco Chronicle with a pretty ... Continue reading "Bay Area News Project Editor Introduces Himself to Ravenous Journalistic Audience" >

Publishers should think twice before worshipping the iPad as the future platform for magazines and newspapers. That is, if they value their independence from an often-capricious corporate gatekeeper. The past week’s controversy swirling around Apple’s retroactive ban of sexy apps in the App Store seems trivial, but the implications of Apple’s arbitrariness should be disconcerting to members of the press and those who rely on the media for unbiased information. Apple last week began removing ..   show all text