Google has made it easier to check-in to places, rate or review places, and find transit directions using Google Maps for Android. Google Maps 5.5 hit the Android Market yesterday, and it features redesigned Place pages, and updated transit information.

When you open a Place page for a restaurant, museum, or other institution, you can now find buttons at the bottom to rate, review, or check in using Google Latitude. You can also now change your home or work address in Google Latitude using the mobile app, which should make your Latitude history more accurate.

Google has also updated transit station pages, making it easier to view scheduled bus or train departures at a glance, see color-coded descriptions of which transit routes stop at the station, and what other stations are nearby. Google offers transit information in 440 cities.

Google Maps 5.5 is available as a free download for Android 1.6 and up.

Google has rolled out an update to the mobile web version of Google Maps, offering many of the features that were previously only available in the company’s native iOS and Android apps.

You can now visit maps.google.com in your phone’s browser and view your current location, search for nearby businesses or attractions, get driving, transit, biking, or walking directions, and view traffic and other layers.

The app also shows Place pages with photos, business hours, user ratings, and other information. And if you’re signed into your Google account you can view starred locations or My Maps.

The new features are available in Android and iOS mobile web browsers.

The update is part of a growing trend toward mobile web sites offering more app-like features. Google recently rolled out a more powerful version of Google News for mobile which uses your location to find local news, and Twitter’s mobile web site now looks an awful lot like a native app.

Unfortunately the updated version of Google Maps is much more resource-intensive. When I tried out the app on my iPod touch the browser crashed repeatedly — something that rarely happens when viewing other web sites in the mobile browser.

Car-sharing service Zipcar has offered an iPhone app for ages which lets customers sign up to rent a car by the hour from their phone, manage their reservations, and even unlock the doors of your reserved car when you get close enough. Now the company has finally gotten around to launching an Android version. It’s still in beta, but it has most of the features you’d expect, including:

• Find cars by time, location, and type of automobile.
• View existing reservations.
• Lock or unlock your reserved car using your phone.

If you don’t have a reservation, you can still use the app to make noises by clicking the horn, lock, or unlock buttons. Sure, the noises don’t actually mean anything, but they make the app a little more fun to use if you don’t happen to have a car rental coming up.

The app doesn’t currently allow you to see past reservations, manage your bill, or do some of the other things you can do from the Zipcar web site.

Zipcar beta for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market and supports Android 2.1 and up.

Google has been showing some love for its mobile Maps applications pretty often this year, and the company has just rolled put yet another update for its Android app. Version 5.4.0 captures your search history and places it into your Google web history.

This new ability to search your account’s history could certainly be useful to someone who, for example, typed an address on one device but wants to recall the address on a different device at a later date.  By centralizing your search history on your account, Google’s made staying organized a little easier and added a level of convenience to Maps.

Other features include additional business details, which include the star rating beneath a business’s name in the main map view. On a restaurant, for example, this adds the type of cuisine, parking, and meals served along with the opening date and neighborhood.

You can also now report a destination that Google Maps hasn’t already added to its vast database. On the rare occasions Google has ‘missed a spot’, you can easily report a location spot and Google will review and presumably add it. This has the potential to greatly improve on Maps’ accuracy and the user experience.

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

Google has pushed out an updated version of Google Maps for Android. Version 5.3 adds a new dashboard which shows your location history, so if you use Google Latitude to track your location or use the check-ins feature, you can see where you’ve been and how much time you’ve spent at each location.

That might not sound that exciting… but for stats junkies, it’s actually pretty cool. You can see how much time you spend at work, at home, or at other locations at a glance thanks to some pretty graphs and charts.

Google Maps 5.3 also lets you add “aspects” for different places. So for instance, if you’re rating a bar, you can rate the beer selection. If you’re rating a restaurant, you can rate the authenticity of the Mexican food.

In other Google Maps news, if you’ve been baffled by regional restrictions on Google Maps Navigation, there’s a hacked version of Google Maps 5.2.1 making the rounds that will let you get driving directions in multiple countries.

Zipcar is a car sharing service that lets members take out cars by the hour. What makes Zipcar different from a normal car rental is the fact that you don’t have to go into a rental office to fill out paperwork and pick up keys every time you need a car. You get a member card which you can use to unlock a car that you reserve online. I use Zipcar in Philadelphia, and there are a number of spots near my house to pick up a car, so I don’t have to take a bus to a train station every time I need a car.

The company has offered an iPhone app for a while, which lets you manage your reservations on the go, and even unlock a car without your card. But Android users have had to rely on the mobile web site — which is useful, but it doesn’t have that nifty unlocking feature. Now Zipcar has confirmed that an Android version is in the works.

There’s no word on when the Android app will be available, or if it will function exactly like the iPhone app.

via Android Central

Google has rolled out an updated version of Google Maps for Android which doesn’t just show you live traffic information for free… it can automatically reroute your directions to avoid congested areas.

Earlier versions of Google Maps would generally attempt to pick the fastest route from point A to B… but it didn’t take traffic conditions into account. And as anyone who’s ever tried to drive in a major metropolitan area during rush hour can tell you, sometimes a straight line is not the fastest way between two points.

The app will also look at historical traffic data, which should help if current conditions aren’t available, or if there’s congestion right now but it’s likely to clear up shortly.

Google Maps 5.2.1 is available as a free download from the Android Market. The app supports Android 1.6 and up.

Google has pushed out a new version of Google Maps for Android. The latest version doesn’t make it any easier to find places you’re looking for, but Google Maps 5.2 does make it easier to tell the world about those places.

The first big change is improved support for check-ins using the Google Latitude service, which tracks your location. If you see friends near your location on a map, you can “ping” them to check-in at your location instead of sending a text message or making a phone call. It’s a quick way to either ask your friends if they’re free for coffee, or to annoy them endlessly. Your pick.

The app also makes it easier to find the place you want to check into. If it doesn’t show up in the drop-down list, you can click the “search more places” button to find the location. This can come in handy if you’re in an area that’s jam-packed with restaurants or other businesses available for check-ins.

Google Maps 5.2 also lets you share reviews of the places you visit on Twitter.

You can download the app for free from the Android Market.