Google has rolled out an updated version of Google Maps for Android with three key new features. The first is support for voice and ringtone notifications in Transit Navigation. This allows you to receive an audible alert when it’s time to transfer or when you’ve reached your destination.

The company also says it’s adding support for Transit Navigation to tablets, allowing you to get bus, subway, and other public transit directions on Honeycomb tablets — although this doesn’t seem to be working on the Samsung Galaxy Tab I tried it with today.

Finally, Google is returning the “Bubble Buttons” option which had been removed in earlier builds. You can open up the “Labs” area in the settings menu and enable this option. Then when you tap on a place on the map you’ll see buttons that allow you to place a phone call or get navigation directions to that place right away, without opening the Google Places page first.

You can download the latest version of Google Maps for Android from the Android Market.

Online travel service Travelocity recently launched a mobile app for Android which lets you book flights and hotels, view flight information, or access your saved itineraries from a phone or tablet.

The app has an attractive and relatively easy to use interface, but it’s a bit quirky in places. For instance, in the Book Flights section, the app shows a drop-down box with auto-complete suggestions as you type. But when searching the Flight Schedules section, there’s no auto-completion.

Travelocity for Android is also clearly designed for use on a smartphone. While you can install the app on a tablet running Android 3.1 Honeycomb, the app only runs in portrait mode, and all the icons are bunched together into a small space at the top of the screen.

That said, if you already use Travelocity to book your travel plans, the mobile app provides an easy way to access your trip information on the go. There are also options to view daily deals for hotels, find gas stations, or find things to do in the places you’re visiting, with city guides, event listings, and restaurant and nightlife listings.

Travelocity for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market.

Google just made it a little bit easier to get around in London without a car. The company has added public transportation directions for London to all of its Google Maps products.

That means if you’re using Google Maps for Android, iOS, or BlackBerry or Google Maps in a web browser you can get step by step directions for getting from one place to another by bus, tube, or foot.

Android users can also fire up the Google Maps app to use the recently launched transit navigation beta feature which will let you know when it’s time to exit the vehicle or catch a transfer.

All told, Google offers transit directions for 447 cities including a number of locations in the US, Canada, and Europe

Verizon has added a number of new features to its VZ Navigator application and changed the name to “Verizon Navigator VX.” Customers can try out the new app for free for 30 days.

The update includes the addition of real-time traffic “Smart Routes,” which are updated every 60 seconds with real-time traffic conditions. Instead of just letting you know when traffic is ahead, the app will now map a new route to avoid traffic. Verizon Navigator VX now also offers multitasking support for turn-by-turn voice directions, which means you can still hear directions even when other apps are running.

Other features include location sharing via Facebook (but no Foursquare support, unfortunately,) as well as 3D virtual city driving graphics and a local search functionality powered by Bing. You can ‘favorite’ specific locations that you like, and even find real-time weather, gas prices, movie times and other local information within the app.

The 30 day free trail is available exclusively for new VZ Navigator subscribers, and you can find out if your device is compatible with the service on its official website. Verizon Navigator VX is normally priced at $9.99 per device per month, with weekly and daily prices also available.

Google released an updated version of Google Maps for Android today, and while the company made a big fuss about a new feature that tells you when you’ve reached your stop on a bus, there’s another feature tucked away in the app which is at least as cool.

You can now download maps to your device so you can look up locations, get directions, or even use navigation even when you have no internet connection.

Here’s how to enable the feature:

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Google Maps for Android has long offered the ability to get walking, biking, driving, or public transit directions plotted on a map. But the company has been gradually adding location-based Navigation features as well. First you could get free turn-by-turn voice navigation instructions while you were driving. Then Google added the same option for walking navigation. Now you can also use Google Maps Navigation while you’re on the bus.

In a nutshell, you just turn on the GPS on your phone, find transit directions, hop on the bus, and Google Maps will let you know when you’ve reached your stop or when it’s time to transfer. If you have to walk between stops, it will guide you there as well. Navigation will also work in the background so you can open another app to read the news or play a game and your phone will alert you before it’s time to get off the bus.

Unfortunately since the app relies on GPS, I suspect it won’t work on subways.

The company says the update also includes a beta feature designed to improve battery life when using navigation.

Google Maps 5.7 for Android also has new search features with category icons in the suggest window. Places you’ve previously received directions to will also show up in search suggestions now.

Google Maps is available as a free download from the Android Market and supports Android 2.1 and up.

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Years ago, pocket translators were woefully unhip, LCD-screen-packing, single-purpose devices. Fast forward to today, and our smartphones and tablets have given rise to a whole new generation of on-the-go translation apps. For the BlackBerry crowd, iSpeech Translator is well worth checking out before leaving on your next journey away from home.

The app supports both text entry and speech input, and it’s fairly good at recognizing spoken words. I say “fairly” because when I asked iSpeech to sort out “Would you help me sell my child to the gypsies,” it jotted down “digit sees” at the end of the sentence. The translations aren’t always bang-on either, but they’re certainly good enough to get you out of a jam when you’re trying to communicate with locals whose language you don’t speak. iSpeech shows you a printed translation and will read it aloud as well, and both the Spanish and French examples I threw at sounded pretty darn accurate.

Translations do take a bit of time to process (shorter phrases are faster, obviously), and you’ll need an active data connection since the app is cloud-powered. Despite its shortcomings, iSpeech can be quite useful — and it’s certainly a massive step up from talking more loudly in your native tongue when people don’t understand.

iSpeech runs on pretty well every BlackBerry in existence, requiring only OS 1.0 or better and it’s carrier-agnostic to boot.

via Crackberry

Google has begun offering live transit information in Google Maps. That means you can fire up the Google Maps web site in your desktop web browser to see where the bus you’re waiting for is actually at. But the service is also available in Google Maps for Mobile. It works in the Google Maps Android app as well as the mobile web site for the service as long as you have a supported mobile web browser.

Right now live transit updates are only available in 6 cities: Boston, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid, and Turin. That’s because Google has to partner with transit agencies to actually get this data. Hopefully the service will expand to include additional cities soon.

I live in Philadelphia where the Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority recently rolled out a service called TransitView which shows the locations of SEPTA buses and trolleys equipped with GPS. The service is also available on smartphones, but it would be even more convenient if the data were included in Google Maps.
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