Unlike other mapping apps that help you find a destination (a “where?” app), Waze is a “why?” app. It provides drivers (but preferably passengers), the ability to learn why they are in a traffic jam.

Waze was acquired by Google in 2013, but some of its most popular community-oriented features had not made it to iPhone’s Google apps — until now. (Android’s Google Maps app received the “why” features earlier.)

Here are features coming to Google Maps that are Waze-inspired.

iPhone Google Maps users will now have the ability to monitor reported up-coming auto crashes, speed traps, and traffic slowdowns — all right from your iOS device.

Google Map iPhone users (see caution, below) will be able to report the following types of incidents

• Construction
• Lane closure
• Disabled vehicles
• Objects on the roadway

If you see the appearance of an icon representing one of those potential obstructions, you can use it to make alternative driving plans.

How it works | To report an incident, tap on the + sign and then on “Add a report.” 

Notes of Caution | Drivers should not interact with mapping apps while operating a moving vehicle. That’s what helpful passengers are for. Please, don’t update driving conditions from behind the wheel. Here are the Waze terms of service with lots of information and warnings about using technology while driving. Also, U.S. law enforcement has been critical of using this type of technology to report checkpoints to identify those under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and other types of police presence, something they say heightens safety risks on the road.

NEWS & WEATHER

CNN
CNN’s Apple Watch extension lets you browse news in 12 different categories, all of which can be set to your preference. (Free)

DARK SKY
Dark Sky’s Apple Watch app is not a downsized version of the main app. It provides a week’s forecast and will display weather notifications on rain, extreme weather, or government alerts. ($4)

PODCASTS & RADIO

CASTRO PODCAST PLAYER
Working almost like an email client for podcasts, the Castro app makes it easy to log, download, and listen to podcasts, no matter how many you subscribe to. The Apple Watch app lets you control playback, including choosing new episodes to play. (Free, in-app paid features)

TUNEIN RADIO
This Apple Watch app provides access to 100,000-plus radio stations featured on the iPhone TuneIn app. (Free)

TRANSPORTATION & TRAVEL TOOLS

UBER
Everything you normally do on the Uber iPhone app can be done from your wrist on the Apple Watch.

TRIPIT
The Apple Watch version of the excellent online app of Tripit. Compiles trip information including flights, hotel reservations and car services into one list.

ITRANSLATE CONVERSE
Tanslate your words into another language directly from your Apple Watch. Say what you want to say into the watch, and it will translate the phrase into one of 38 languages. Includes a visual, text-based translation. (Free for trial period, then a subscription fee)

WORK TOOLS

CURRENCY
Convert one currency into to another currency, all without using your iPhone phone. (Free)

CANARY MAIL
A third-party email clients for Apple Watch. Reading email, quick replies, dictation. With Apple Watch Series 3 with 4G LTE — it will sync email without your phone. (Optional encryption: $10)

CALBOT
Make it quick and easy to perform calculations on the move, without the need to grab your phone. ($2, more for additional themes)

EVERNOTE
The Watch app receives notifications and reminders, lets you view notes and update them, and create new ones using dictation.

DRAFTS
Grab text from anywhere, or dictate it on the move, and share it with almost any other app or service. Dictate it directly to your Apple Watch, view the result, add more, and save it in your inbox. ($20 Subscription)

CHEATSHEET WIDGET
Take a quick note, called a cheat, then it’ll appear as a complication on your chosen Apple Watch face. The app also integrates with iMessage on iOS 10 and has a widget for your iPhone. An in-app purchase unlocks iCloud syncing, too

FANTASTICAL 2
Calendar and reminder app that goes all out on the Apple Watch, allowing you to add events using dictation, view upcoming calendar entries, and have it all displayed in a Watch face complication. ($5)

MICROSOFT POWERPOINT
With PowerPoint for the Apple Watch, you can go forward or back, pause, or end the presentation without touching your phone.

SLEEP & RELAXATION

HEADSPACE
Headspace offers guided meditations to help you relax.

SLEEP CYCLE
A companion app to the Sleep Cycle app for the iPhone. A silent wake up alarm based on sleep phases, plus a snore stopper feature. This uses vibrations to encourage a position change, minimizing snoring. (Free, more for in-app features)

GettyImages | Apple.com

If your business provides free Wi-Fi to customers and you’ve listed that feature on your Facebook business page, the social networking company will include your location on a new Facebook mobile app feature called Find Wi-Fi. Launched regionally earlier this year, the feature is available worldwide and on both Android and iOS apps. If you haven’t listed you have free WiFi on your Facebook business page, update your information and it will be added automatically to Find Wi-Fi. 

How does Facebook know there is Wi-Fi nearby?

Find Wi-Fi helps a customer locate available Wi-Fi hot spots using the information businesses have shared on their Facebook business page. “So wherever customers are, they can easily map the closest connections,” explains Facebook engineering director Alex Himel.

Using that information, here’s what people (preferably, customers) see when using the new feature.

1 | User sees their location and free Wi-Fi locations nearby.

2 | Clicking on a location indicator reveals information about the restaurant or merchant, along with the company’s valid Wi-Fi identification. (Note: Security on a public network is always risky.)

How to use Find Wi-Fi

Would you like to use Find Wi-Fi to locate free Wi-Fi when away from the office? Here’s how.

1 | Make sure you’re running the latest version of Facebook on either Android or iOS. (As of June 2017, that’s version 131.0.0.29.69 for Android or version 99.0 on iOS).

2 | Open the Facebook app and tap the hamburger button (three horizontal lines) found in the upper right in the Android app and bottom right on iOS.

3 | Scroll down and tap Find Wi-Fi.

4 | A map will appear on your screen (see video, below)

The first time you use the Find Wi-Fi feature, you will have to activate it by tapping “Enable Find Wi-Fi.” Once you do, you will be taken to a map video of your current location. Wi-Fi hotspots around you are denoted with red circles with a white center. Tap on any of the circles to preview where the hotspot is located. You can tap Visit Page to view more about the location or navigate there by tapping Directions.

Also on SmallBusiness.com

How to Reduce the Odds of Being Hacked While Using Public Wifi

(Update at end of story.) More than half (52%) of U.S. adults live in households with cellphones but no landline telephones, according to the latest GfK MRI Survey of the American Consumer. This represents a doubling of no-landline-telephone-households since 2010, when it was 26%.

Percentage of Americans with no Landline Phones (by Age)

71% | Millennial (born from 1977 to 1994) household
55% | Generation X (born 1965 to 1976) household
40% | Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964)
23% | 65+ years old

Percentage of Americans with no Landline Phones (by Ethnicity)

67% | Hispanic or Latino
54% | Asian Americans
51% | Whites
50% | African Americans

The recurring history of new-fangled phones

Changes in how people’s phones connect to phone wires are a part of the history of the telephone. Here is a 1930s-era movie-theater public service announcement that taught people how to use their rotary dial phones.

Clarification: The research does not take into consideration that nearly 77 percent of American homes have broadband connection to the internet. These connections can support telephones using voice over internet protocol devices (VOIP). The statistics in the article refer to traditional phone service vs. wireless service.

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Last August, we shared that Google would start penalizing mobile sites that contain certain types of interstitial messages or ads this month. So there’s no surprise that Google has now announced the”interstitial penalty” has begun.

Google’s interstitial ban is meant to improve the mobile user experience. When accessing a site the penalty targets sites that:

• Show a popup that covers the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results, or while they are looking through the page.
• Displays a standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content.
• Uses a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold.

VIA | Mike Blumenthal

istock

Also on SmallBusiness.com

Google Will Start Penalizing Your Website on Mobile if You Don’t Stop Doing This | 2016

The Gmail iOS app today (November 7, 2016) received its biggest overhaul in nearly four years.

Some features of the retooled IOS Gmail App

• Undo Send | Just like you do on the desktop, to prevent email mistakes
• Search faster with instant results and spelling suggestions
• Swipe to archive or delete, to quickly clear items out of your inbox

Feature updates on Google Calendar

• Month view and week view in landscape view. Seems like a small feature change, but a welcomed one.
• Spotlight Search support so that you can search for events, reminders, and goals in Apple’s Spotlight Search.
• Alternate calendars. If you often look updates in a non-Gregorian calendar — like Lunar, Islamic, or Hindu — you can now add that calendar to see those dates alongside your current calendar easily.

Images | Google.com

While speculating on the future of Apple products by observing the tea leaves of the company’s patent grants is not a part of the SmallBusiness.com beat, this news item was too fun to pass up.

According to several rumor websites, Apple was recently granted their first patent covering a foldable (or bendable, flipable?) mobile device. Apple filed the patent under an engineer’s name to avoid detection, according to Apple watchers.

There are many reasons that can explain the patent, including throwing off those who track Apple patents. However, some practical reasons could involve the development a wider range of iPhones that serve various marketplaces or the ability to use a panel for features that interact with Apple Watches and other devices. Who knows? There may be a two screened iPhone in the future.

While some are calling this a “flip phone,” it’s not likely to be that hip or retro. But no matter what it is, we predict there will be people standing in line to buy one on the day they are released.

In another nail to the coffin of Google+, the search engine company has removed metrics related to a business Google+ listing found on its business listing dashboard, Google My Business. The search engine is replacing Google+ statistics with data related to the performance of a Google business listing that appears on Google Maps and Google Search.

The new feature is “designed to let users see where and how people are finding a business via Google,” according to Tom Pritchard, Google My Business product manager.

The new feature is another tool that emphasizes the importance Google is placing on helping businesses keep their information up to date — a service that is valuable both to small businesses and Google. By encouraging businesses to update their information, the search engine giant can provide more accurate and timely information in Google searches.

Also on SmallBusiness.com | How to start using Google My Business

As we’ve suggested for months, it’s important to update your business information on Google Search and Google Maps. Using the “Google My Business” dashboard, you can update both Search and Maps simultaneously.

According to Google, the average well-maintained Google My Business listing gets five times more views than listings which haven’t been claimed by their owners.

What the new feature will report

Though some people search for your business on Google by name, others search more generally for what you have to offer. (For example, “pizza restaurants in [your town].”) The new feature will allow a user to see the number of people who visited their listing after searching for it directly, and how many discovered your business while looking for a broader category (like pizza restaurants).

VIA | Google Small Business

Parkopedia, a Yelp-like web-based service for finding parking lots, has announced it will start providing data to users of Apple Maps.

Parkopeida, accessible via its website or mobile apps, allows drivers to find the closest parking to their destination and tells them how much it will cost and whether or not  a space is available. Parkopedia also allows drivers to pay for parking online, through a mobile app.

Users will now be able to find parking lots via the Parkopedia iOS app and then click through from Apple Maps to more detailed information including pricing, user reviews, special offers and real-time space availability. Users will also be able to make reservations.

Parkopedia has information about parking lots in 75 countries and provides information to drivers of several models of cars, including such as BMW, Ford, Jaguar Land Rover, Peugeot, Toyota, Volvo, an VW, as well as via devices from companies like Garmin.

Parkopedia provides information on 40 million parking spaces in over 150,000 facilities across 6,000 cities in 75 countries; including real-time parking space availability information in over 500 cities in 30 countries.

VIA | MacRumors

graphic | SmallBusiness.com

The “phone” part of the word “smartphone” keeps getting less relevant to the array of ways we use the mobile devices in our pockets and bags. Activities and tasks keep migrating from desktop and laptop to those small, but powerful, machines. But no matter what business-focused work we do with our iOS or Android phones–videoing, photographing, texting, selling, researching, buying or playing games–and yes, occasionally talking–one thing is clear: The time we spend using these devices is making it harder and harder to have enough battery life to make it through the day.

We’ve provided tips on extending battery life before. But smartphones and apps evolve. So here are some battery life extending tips that are current during mid-year 2016.

Note | Rather than spend time explaining why each of these tips works, we’ve added some links at the bottom of the page where you can find the why’s to go with these how-to’s.

| Enable your phone’s power-saving mode

Duh. Here’s an obvious one. Manufacturers have heard the battery complaints. So several newer phones have a power-saving mode that turns a phone’s screen to black and white, darkens the display, and turns off non-essential wireless features to reduce battery drain. (Partial list of phones that have power-saving mode: iPhone 6S, Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, HTC 10, LG G5, and Moto G)

| Use auto-brightness for the screen, manually-dim your screen or adjust your time-out feature

These are all variations on the same theme: Dimming your screen provides the most bang-for-the-buck when it comes to extending your battery life. How much? In one hourlong test, The Wirecutter (see link below) found that an iPhone 6s used 54 percent less battery power with the screen brightness at minimum as compared with maximum brightness. An Android test phone used 30 percent less

| Use fewer wireless features

Here are some things to disable unless you know precisely why you are using them (and there are many good reasons to use them, if you know why): GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. (Disable them in your phone’s settings or on an iPhone, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and on an Android, swipe down.)

| Turn off (or use fewer) push notifications

Do you really need to know instantly that someone has commented on your Instagram cat photo? The push notification of every email you receive, rather than a filtered group of specific types of email, is an example of how tweaking notifications can save power.

| Tweak your email

In addition to managing push notifications related to email, most phones can be configured to check for new email on a schedule — say, every 30 minutes — or only when you manually tell your email app to refresh. The default setting is typically much more often which uses more battery.

| Know your apps

Some apps drain your battery more than others. For example, typing notes or reading an ebook use little power. Streaming Netflix or shooting a 4K video uses more.

Here’s how to know which apps are using the most power: On the iPhone’s battery usage screen, tap the clock button to reveal information about how much of your battery life each app is consuming when you’re actively using the app (“screen”) compared with when you’re not (“backgd”). On Android, the most useful information are the timers for “CPU total” and “CPU foreground.” Foreground is how much time you had the app open; subtract “foreground” from “total,” and you’ll know how much time the app has been busy in the background.

| Play downloaded music, podcasts instead of streaming

Streaming is the most popular way to listen to music with services like Spotify, Pandora and Apple Music. But streaming uses a river of power. Download a few personal favorite playlists or podcasts rather than streaming on those days you’ll be away from a re-charging opportunity.

Sources and helpful information

NYTimes.com | Tips and Myths About Extending Smartphone Battery Life
The Wirecutter | Reviews and recommendations related to mobile devices
Yahoo Finance | 6 easy ways to extend the battery life of your smartphone

Image: ThinkStock