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This is part of our Road Trip 2016 summer series "Life, Disrupted," about how technology is helping with the global refugee crisis -- if at all.The main street in Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesvos, wraps around the green-tinted Aegean like a horseshoe. Brightly painted buildings line the road while wooden sailboats bob near the pier. It's beautiful.It's also where I bump into Waleed, a young boy I'd met earlier that day at the gate of the Kara Tepe refugee camp just outside town.He was fishing with two other migrants.I ask where his mom is. He points back toward the camp. "Kara Tepe," he tells me.And his father?"Dad. Syria. Psh, Psh," he says, pointing a finger to his head while imitat...

Enlarge ImageThe two Koreas. Google South Korea has delayed its reply to Google's request for mapping data, a Reuters report said Wednesday. The Alphabet property first reached out to South Korea in June, requesting access to govement-held mapping information for distribution to outside servers. This would allow Google to offer complete Google Maps services there. South Korean officials had previously agreed to reach a decision by Wednesday but have now pushed their decision to November 23. According to Reuters, the information would improve South Korea's maps, but officials want to take more time to weigh sec...

[embedded content] Blizzard unveiled a new map for its team-based shooter Overwatch at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany this Tuesday. Eichenwalde, set in Stuttgart, Germany, joins the 12 other inteational destinations that serve as arenas for players to explode each other over control points and payloads.Eichenwalde is an Assault and Escort hybrid map, which looks like it will have the attacking team escort a battering ram up to the castle gates before storming the keep. Prepare your best Reinhardt laugh (and your excuses for when you charge the German knight directly off the edge of the map).Overwatch recently surpassed 15 million players and is cur...

Most people think of Greece as a great place to escape from the stress of everyday life. But not to the more than 57,000 people now trapped there. In 2015, thousands of refugees and migrants fled war and chaos in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq and headed to Europe seeking shelter. A year later, many are living in squalid camps and abandoned buildings in Greece, waiting for asylum or a chance at legal residence in the European Union. During a 10-day trip in June, we talked to officials, migrants and activists in Athens, Lesvos -- the Greek island where most refugees first set foot in Europe last year -- and Thessaloniki, near the closed border of Macedonia, shutting migrants' way out. Our m...

How much is it worth to Uber to reduce its dependence on Google Maps? Try half a billion dollars.That is how much the San Francisco-based ride-hailing company is getting ready to invest in an ambitious global mapping project, the Financial Times reports Sunday. In addition to weaning itself off Google's map app, which currently powers Uber, the investment is expected to aid the move to driverless vehicles, according to the report.Fresh off raising $3.5 billion last month, the 6-year-old company is using some of its $11 billion war chest to reinvent public transportation. Other companies working on technologies to support driverless cars include Google, Ford, Nissan and General Motors.In a bi...

Another big free update arrives for Doom tomorrow, July 29, and will be followed soon after by the game's first premium downloadable content. That consists in part of new maps, something that could be problematic for the game's player base, but developer id Software has a plan to avoid that.Typically when a multiplayer game receives premium DLC maps, it breaks up the user base--those without the DLC can't play with those who do have it except on servers only ruing the original maps. That will still be the case in Doom, but it avoids splitting up groups of friends. Through a feature id calls PartyPlay, Doom allows people who don't own the DLC to play on the DLC maps as long as they're in a pa...

RoadshowNewsCar IndustryApple Maps, Parkopedia team up to make parking, charging easierEnlarge ImageIf you want more info than is displayed on Apple Maps, you can click over to Parkopedia's website or iOS app. Andrew Krok/Roadshow From poorly labeled pricing to a lack of lights or any semblance of security, finding good parking is a pain in the ass. Your phone's map might not offer much help, either. But that's changed if you have Apple Maps, as the tech giant's teamed up with Parkopedia to make finding a spot significantly easier.Now, when you search for "parking" in Apple Maps, you'll get more than just a l...

We're kicking things off this week by acting like excited children after seeing the new line of Star Wars drones headed to retail shelves later this year. They're even equipped with lasers!In other news, scientists are just about ready to begin using a new brain map for studying evolution and neurology. The new map was created by combining healthy humans' patient data and machine leaing. New brain map developed using real patients and machine leaing (Tomorrow Daily Podcast 396) ...

Google Maps now contains "areas of interest" that are covered with an orange shade. Google Google on Monday unveiled a new version of Maps that has a cleaner look and incorporates smart areas of interest. The new look does away with elements that aren't absolutely required, like road outlines. This allows for more room to display useful information, such as traffic and transit lines. In addition, the typography has been improved to make street names, point of interest, transit stations and so on, more distinguishable from other items on the map. A new feature called "areas of interest," not to be confused w...

RoadshowNewsCar IndustryFord pumps cash into company creating maps for self-driving carsDearbo's on a bit of a spending spree, but it's still cheaper than trying to do all this by itself. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images Knowing that the road ahead is best forged with teamwork, automakers are throwing serious money behind tech startups with an interest in self-driving cars. Ford is already deeply involved with these sorts of investments, but its portfolio is growing once again with an investment in a company building maps for self-driving cars.Civil Maps' goal is to create a set of high definition maps that self-dr...

A major congratulations to NASA, as the space agency successfully completed a second test on a rocket booster created for the SLS program. This is part of NASA's roadmap to Mars, so it's exciting to see progress being made toward sending a crew into deep space. We're also taking a look at Zero Latency's newest partnership. One of our own reporters checked out a test run of Zero Latency's demo last year (and it looks/sounds amazing); now, the company is teaming up with Sega to bring its tether-free VR experience to Japan. ...

The upgraded satellite image of New York shows details like skyscrapers and baseball fields compared with the older version on top. Google If you've just tued on satellite imagery for your Google Map or Earth apps and wondering if your eyesight has gotten better, well, the answer is probably no. Google has rolled out an update that upgrades the satellite imagery on both apps with a lot more detail and better colors.Using the new Landsat 8 satellite launched in 2013, the search giant has been busy building up a new mosaic of the world to replace the images obtained with the previous Landsat 7 satellite. If you...

Open up Google Maps on your phone and, depending on where you are, you'll see some streets, some buildings and a blue dot. That blue dot is you, in "YOU ARE HERE" form. When you move, it moves. The dot is helpful when you're walking around outside, but if you're indoors -- in an airport, a mall, or even a conference venue, like I am today -- you might as well be in no-man's land.Google wants to change that with something called Tango.The initiative, previously called "Project Tango," is Google's ambitious plan to map the indoor world. Google Maps is already wildly popular, with more than 1 billion users. But whereas Maps is a cartographer's dream on steroids, Tango isn't conceed with streets...