The new Field Trip app for Android phones clues you in to nearby hotspots — and not the wireless variety.
Google launched a new local search app for Android smartphones Thursday. It’s called Field Trip, and it’s a mixture of a hyper-local discovery tool and one of those city guidebooks you buy in tourist shops.
Field Trip grabs your location (via cell tower, Wi-Fi or GPS) and shows you nearby points of interest: restaurants, parks, art shows, cool shops, and historical factoids about the area you’re in.
It’s the latest exemplar of Google’s continuing investment in local search, from the company’s acquisition of Zagat a year ago, to May’s launch of Google Now, its voice-powered local search tool (and Siri competitor) that’s built into the latest Android OS. It also comes at a time when the company is scrambling to recover from Apple’s ceremonious dumping of its mapping partnership in iOS 6.
I tested it on a Galaxy Nexus. It’s Android only for now, with an iOS version “coming soon,” and it’s not optimized for tablets, so it’s clear Field Trip is meant to be a phone-thing. You’re given three choices for how to consume the information: a list, a map and instant notifications. You can also leave it on as you drive around, and it will talk to you, reading the local highlights aloud as you cruise through a city.
After giving it permission to access my location data (more on that later), Field Trip started filling up.
Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/googles-new-hyper-local-city-guide-is-a-real-trip/
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