Google Maps Adds Real-Time Location Sharing, Including Trip Progress

google maps location sharing

Google Maps is getting a pretty awesome new feature on Android, iOS, and the web. How would you like to share your location with friends, family, or colleagues you are meeting up with? What if you could share the progress of a trip on any platform? It’s coming. Real-time location sharing via Google Maps is on the way.

Google would only announce today that location sharing is rolling out “soon,” but they did share a fun little video that shows how it will work. You can watch it above to get the basics. 

Once live, you’ll be able to open up Google Maps and choose to share your exact location with one or many people and even set how long the share lasts. If you take off for a trip with navigation, you’ll also be able to share that trip with people, so they can see your exact progress along the way. As you arrive, the sharing will stop. There are reminders or icons within the app to let you know that you are sharing, plus you’ll be able to stop sharing at any time.

We’ll let you know once it starts arriving on devices.

Play Link

Via: Google

Google Maps Adds Real-Time Location Sharing, Including Trip Progress is a post from: Droid Life

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How police unmasked suspect accused of sending seizure-inducing tweet

The man accused of sending a Newsweek writer a seizure-inducing tweet left behind a digital trail that the Dallas Police Department traced—beginning with the @jew_goldstein Twitter handle, leading to a burner mobile phone SIM card, and ending with an Apple iCloud account, according to federal court documents unsealed in the case.

Rivello with driver's license.
Enlarge /

Rivello with driver’s license.

Court documents

John Rayne Rivello was arrested Friday at his Maryland residence and is believed to be the nation’s first defendant accused of federal cyberstalking charges for allegedly victimizing an epileptic with a strobing, epileptogenic online image—in this instance a GIF sent via Twitter.

According to court documents, when Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald of Dallas, Texas opened his Twitter feed on December 15, he was met with a strobing message that read, “you deserve a seizure for your post.” Eichenwald, who has written that he has epilepsy, went into an eight-minute seizure where he lost control of his body functions and mental faculty. His wife found him, placed him on the floor, called 911, and took a picture of the offending tweet, according to court records.

Three months and several search warrants later, Rivello was arrested at his Maryland residence Friday. He is now free without bond and has not entered a plea, federal prosecutors said. No plea date has been set. An e-mail Ars sent to Rivello went unanswered, as did a phone call left for the Salisbury man and an e-mail to his attorney, Matt Hennessy.

Picture of offending tweet taken by victim's wife.
Enlarge /

Picture of offending tweet taken by victim’s wife.

Court documents

Court documents show that a search warrant to Twitter concerning the @jew_goldstein handle provided the authorities with information that the account was created on December 11 with a “PhoneDevice.” Twitter also divulged the device’s phone number and said that the carrier was AT&T. Some of the direct messages to other Twitter users on the account, according to the documents, said, “I know he has epilepsy,” “I hope this sends him into a seizure,” and “…let’s see if he dies.”

The Dallas authorities next obtained information from AT&T that the telephone number used to start the Twitter account was a burner SIM card with a Tracfone prepaid account “with no subscriber information.”

“However, a review of the AT&T toll records showed an associated Apple iPhone 6A Model 1586 (Apple iPhone),” Nathan Hopp, an FBI agent in Dallas, wrote in the criminal complaint (PDF).

The police then sent a search warrant to Apple “for the iCloud account associated to the telephone number” used to open the Twitter account. Apple provided a wealth of information that ultimately doomed Rivello. Cupertino gave the Dallas Police Department his Apple ID e-mail address, his name, home address, and registration IP address when the account was created in 2012.

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Soaking in a Hot Bath Yields Benefits Similar to Exercise

Many cultures swear by the benefits of a hot bath. But only recently has science began to understand how passive heating (as opposed to getting hot and sweaty from exercise) improves health. At Loughborough University we investigated the effect of a hot bath on blood sugar control (an important measure of metabolic fitness) and on energy expended (number of calories burned). We recruited 14 men to take part in the study. They were assigned to an hour-long soak in a hot bath (40ËšC) or an

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Twitter suspends 377K accounts for pro-terrorism content

Twitter suspended nearly 377,000 accounts in the last six months of 2016 for promoting terrorism.

The company made the announcement Tuesday in its twice-annual transparency report, which publishes data on requests Twitter has received from the government and other legal entities to police content from its platform.

Of the 376,890 accounts Twitter suspended for posting terrorism-related content, just two percent were the result of government requests to remove data. Twitter said 74% of extremist accounts were found by “internal, proprietary spam-fighting tools.”

This marks the first time Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) included its efforts to combat violent extremism in its transparency posts since the company began publishing the reports in 2012. And the company said it plans to continue including that information in future reports.

Related: Twitter accounts vandalized with anti-German and anti-Dutch messages

Twitter first announced efforts to combat extremism in 2015 and doubled down on those efforts last year, announcing in February 2016 several initiatives including partnering with outside organizations, training its policy team and attending government-sponsored summits.

In total, Twitter has suspended 636,248 accounts for extremism between August 2015 and December 2016.

Related: Jack Dorsey: Twitter shows best and worst of democracy

Social media companies are tackling violent pro-terrorism content in a variety of ways as it proliferates on social networks. Facebook (FB, Tech30) and Google (GOOG) use automated tools to identify and remove extremist videos, for example. Facebook also encourages “counter-speech” on its platform, or creating and distributing content that contradicts hate speech messaging.

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