Google+ Games

Google Maps is making headlines in a variety of ways this week.

A Jan. 10 update to the Android application made noise at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show yesterday. The Google Maps upgrade claimed to increase battery life while improving location tracking within Google Latitude.

The latest version Google Maps also improved Transit Navigation and more closely estimates location position when GPS signal is lost. The update even increased the number of possible transit routes from three to four.

The final update includes indoor maps that can —well— navigate around various indoor venues in the United States. In this particular update, maps for CES in the Las Vegas area were included (hence all the commotion).

“We hope that these indoor maps will come in handy when finding your way through the slots and to the shops,” announced Google on its LatLong blog. “And for those of you who catch gadget-fever with CES in town, we’ve also partnered with a number of Best Buy stores in the Las Vegas area.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OPR1ZGSXLOs]

More information on the updates are available below.

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Google has announced on their Commerce Blog this evening that they are now rolling Google Checkout into Wallet. Since Checkout’s focus was to simplify online checkouts, Wallet will now be rolling out to more places over the web including the Android Market, Google+ Games, YouTube, and even more Google sites.

Since both products have a similar goal, to simplify purchasing items, it makes sense for Google to roll the products together. For current Commerce users they will be able to setup a Wallet account when logging again, while merchants won’t have to make any changes. Wallet looks like its ready to roll for this Holiday season.

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