People wearing Strava-enabled fitness trackers appear to have been poking around a Thames shipwreck containing nearly 1,500 tonnes of explosives from the Second World War. In addition, other fitness fanatics appear to have been wandering around military training sites – including danger areas used for live-fire tank and …

UK cartographer the Ordnance Survey (OS) has been selected by the government to help it create an infrastructure for driverless cars. With £750,000 from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, OS's "E-CAVE" intends to develop an infrastructure with "open standards and architecture" focusing on "positioning and safety". "E- …

Britain's map maker is demonstrating that machine learning isn't all hot air – but has discovered just how much donkey work is involved. The Ordnance Survey set up an ML experiment to identify roofs from its remote sensing data (satellite and aerial imagery), and found the trial reached 87 per cent accuracy within a week, from …

As wildfires continue to rage around Los Angeles, the local police have asked drivers to be somewhat skeptical about navigation apps. So far, over 200,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes as the fires are spreading fast, helped by dry conditions and 80mph winds. With over 116,000 acres currently engulfed in …

More than a decade ago, boffins at the Ordnance Survey began working on augmented reality. Now consumer mobile tech has caught up and the agency has launched an AR tool for the man on the street and the woman in the hills. It was 2006 when Andrew Radburn, a long-standing research scientist at the OS, published his work (PDF) …

InterviewThe UK’s mapping agency has brought in Vodafone’s director of business intelligence Caroline Bellamy to help define and drive its data offering. Bellamy, who is the Ordnance Survey’s first chief data officer, says her appointment on June 28 – which she also reckons might be a first for any national mapping agency – …

The Ordnance Survey has launched a free online map of Britain's green spaces with an open dataset for developers to get their hands on. The mapping agency's latest offering pulls together geospatial data to create a map of concrete-free areas across the country – everything from your local park to an allotment. The work …

A restaurant owner feared for her business's future this week after it was mistakenly listed as closed down on Google Maps – and the ad giant wouldn't correct the error. Kaie Wellman says that her rotisserie chicken outlet Arrosto, in Portland, Oregon, US, was showing up as "permanently closed" on Google's mobile search …

After a long beta programme, the Ordnance Survey has officially launched its “slippy”-style smartphone app and website - just in time for shivering in a parka on a Bank Holiday Monday, as you wonder who nicked your bike. It marries the Ordnance Survey’s traditional map into a modern, scrollable UI, and was built from the …

HERE, the mapping arm of Nokia that Microsoft didn't buy up when it acquired the Finnish manufacturer, has announced it's no longer going to be doing apps for Windows 10 and Phone devices. "In the last few months, we made the HERE apps compatible with Windows 10 by using a workaround that will no longer be effective after June …

Google has updated its offline functionality for its Maps application allowing wayward or data-bereft travelers the opportunity to download regional maps at WiFi hotspots and receive turn-by-turn navigation without an internet connection. The offline feature is an older feature that has been upgraded to include directions and …

Hands OnSatnav-style turn-by-turn directions are coming to the Ordnance Survey's stealth-mode Maps app. The ambitious next-generation map app won't get a formal splashy launch until 2016 – but I checked in to see how it's getting on, since we gave you an exclusive peek here. OS Maps is a major multi-year project to create a kind of " …

Google is set to reopen its Maps service to user-submitted edits and labels albeit through a new moderating process. The web goliath will use a team of hand-selected users to screen edits to its maps and approve any changes. Previously, Google employees were taxed with monitoring all submitted revisions of Maps. "Map Maker …

Microsoft’s Bing, still lagging Google by a country mile even with Yahoo!, has unveiled some suspiciously Google-like updates. Destinations on Bing Maps now come with results cards, giving relevant information. That means if you’re looking for a shop or restaurant, you get hours of operation and nearby services. Bing Maps' …

Google is once again scrambling to clean up bad behavior by Maps users after a couple of mortifying pieces of online graffiti were found. An unknown user has tagged the listing for The White House with a racial slur, causing the presidential residence to show up when the phrase "N****** House" is searched. A second remark …

Apple is making efforts to improve its locationware by acquiring Coherent Navigation, a startup developing a "high-precision navigation service" using GPS. Founded in 2008, Coherent Navigation had been developing commercial navigation services, based on partnerships with companies such as Boeing and Iridium, which it intended …

From Tuesday, Google is cutting user edits from its Maps after admitting that it simply can't prevent online tricksters from abusing the system. A much less creative attempt, although more to the point Last month, the firm was forced to make some quick edits after a user noticed that someone had created a mythical park in …

UpdatedA huge Google Android robot urinating on an Apple logo in Google Maps seems to have summed up the rivalry between Apple and Google fans. The cartoon can be found at these co-ordinates tucked away in Pakistan. Register staffers were able to access it at the time of publication. While vulgarity is a subjective matter, the image …