You can change the details of the invasion in any way you choose: Zombie speed, infection rate, number of civilians, percentage of civilians armed, number of highly effective police and more.

You can play around with it to either defeat the zombies (boooooring), let them take over the city and pretend like some of their more gruesome kills are of your opposition politician of choice (take that, Michael Atkinson!), or try to make the odds even and see who really wants it more.

Warning: Turn down your speakers if you’re at work. The eerie post-rock soundtrack is accompanied by the expected array of flesh-hungry moans, which is the kind of thing that’s sort of tricky to explain away as part of your quarterly PowerPoint earnings presentation. [Class 3 Outbreak]

The download is live in the App Market – just download the newest version of Maps, and it’s hidden in there – and Google’s free turn-by-turn navigation software is mostly identical to the version found on the Droid. Almost:

Some features of Android 2.0 are not available on Android 1.6, for example, the ability to use the “navigate to” voice command as shown in our demo video. However, you can still create a shortcut that will allow you to launch Navigation and start getting directions to a specific place from your current location with just a single touch from your home screen. For example, you can create a “Home” shortcut to quickly navigate home, no matter where you are. Just use the “Add” menu item from the home screen, then choose “Shortcuts”, then “Directions”. Please visit our forum to give us feedback, or our Help centre to get help using Google Maps Navigation.

Still though, free turn-by-turn for all, unless you have a Hero or one of Samsung’s ditties, or outside of the United States, for which you are permitted to make one extremely sad face. [Google]

It’s basically a ritual now: Fresh feature debuts on new Android phone; hack-happy HTC Dream owners see new feature, develop seething jealousy; said owners work tirelessly to steal new feature. Last week, Google Maps Navigation hit the Droid. Today, the G1.

AU: The G1 is called HTC Dream in Australia, but I wouldn’t bother trying this as Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US at the moment. _-EH

Google Maps Navigation will be part of Android 2.0, and Android 2.0 is expected to come to most — if not all — Android handsets on the market eventually, so given how complicated this hack is (fairly!), and that it requires a rooted phone, it’d be prudent for most folks to just wait this out. That said, there’s no saying on how long it’ll be until Eclair seeds out to older handsets, and there’s no guarantee that the G1 — an old fart in its little corner of the universe — will ever get it. Anyhow, here’s what you need to do, from XDA:

Download here

Make sure you have CyanogenMod 4.2.3.1, by the way.

1) Unzip zip to desktop
2) Run Part 1.bat
3) When prompted to press any key, do so; the phone will reboot
4) When your phone is running again, run Part 2.bat
5) When prompted to press any key, the installation process is done.
6) Make sure GPS is enabled
7) Open Maps and press OK
8) Press Menu
9) Press Directions
10) Enter an end point
11) Click Go
12) Just under “Show on map”, click Navigate.
13) When prompted to install the voice codec, do so.

And there you have it: Free, not terrible turn-by-turn navigation for your G1 without Android 2.0. [XDA via Engadget Mobile via IntoMobile]

The search engine has collaborated with the US Department for Health and Human Services and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention to add a Google Maps service that will locate the nearest seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccine programs in the US. Just go to this site and enter your city or postal code. Google says that the project has just started, so there are still locations with no information:

At the moment we have data for locations of flu vaccine directly from 20 states and counting. We are also continuing to add information from chain pharmacies and other providers in all 50 states; today, you’ll find results from chains such as Walgreens, CVS and PDX participants, such as Kmart, Duane Reade, WinnDixie and Giant Eagle.

After reading about the many problems with the vaccine in countries like Sweden — where they have top notch healthcare — I think I will pass on this round, thank you very much.

Urban Cursor is an art installation by Danish designer Sebastian Campion. He made it for the festival Ingràvid in Figueres, Spain. As people moved it, the GPS sitting on top recorded the motion, sending the coordinates to Google Maps and publishing photos. [Urban Cursor via Design Boom]

TomTom owns Tele Atlas, who drives the roads of the world in order to make maps, and until recently was a major map provider for Google. Nokia owns the only major competitor, Navteq, who has also provided maps for Google. Look at Google Maps now, though, and you’ll see that the entire US bears just one single copyright: Google’s.

Street View wasn’t just a neat way to get imagery to accompany the data already found in Google Maps. As it happens, it was a way to drive the same roads that were already in Google Maps, tracing them with Google’s own road teams, and—through efficiency and brute force—do away with those costly map licenses. Google has mapped the US, and will surely map the rest of the world soon enough.

Garmin might have a long-standing relationship with Navteq, but they don’t own any maps. How can they compete when they still have to pay? TomTom owns the maps, but they make money licensing maps to car makers, competing GPS makers and web services — like Google. Before, Google was a fat revenue source for TomTom; now Google is a sprightly competitor.

If a unique supply of data was the only thing keeping TomTom and others on the Google chuck wagon, who will be next to fall off?

I was always afraid of spiders growing up, not because of the eight legs or the umpteen eyes, but because of the way they kill their prey. They get them in a nice convenient position, then they use their venom to hollow out their victim’s insides, until they’re just dead-eyed shells. To be killed in such a manner is my worst nightmare; perhaps I should ask TomTom how it feels.

I am a fan of Google products, and a daily user of them. This is not an attack of Google’s business practices, but an explanation of the sort of destructive innovation that has made them so huge so fast. (It’s also a warning to consider carefully any entities that gets this strong, especially if you plan on going into business with one.) Though predecessors like Microsoft experienced similar explosive growth, and grew a similar sudden global dependence, we’ve never seen the likes of Google. The GPS business isn’t the only one that will be consumed by its mighty maw before its had its run.

We’ve already seen the devaluation of the office apps that make Microsoft rich; we’ve already seen how Google’s experiences with Apple and others helped it create telecommunications platforms (both mobile with Android and completely virtual with Google Voice) that threaten its former partners’ existence; we’ve already seen how Google converts photos, videos, news wire stories and other former commodities into freebies by smashing the false notion of scarcity that “service” providers had literally banked on.

So who is next? What other hallowed brands will go the way of Garmin and TomTom? Reuters and AP? Corbis and Getty? Warner and Disney?

This is a tale already told, bound to be told again, but the fundamentals are worth studying (even if we use Google Docs spreadsheets to do it). I have never spoken with a spider, but I am certain they’re not evil, despite what fantasy lore tells us. They’re just doing what comes naturally, and doing a hell of a job.

Seth at ComputerWorld, who put this together, points to a post on GigaOm last year detailing the awesomeness of PlaceBase vs. Google Maps — mainly, customisation and tons of ways to layer multiple kinds of data sets onto maps, with an API that makes it easy to layer on those data sets.

So maybe Apple wants these kind of intensive, custom geolocation mapping powers for the iPhone (and other stuff), or maybe Apple just wants to roll its own maps, so it’s not depending on Google for the tiles. Which would actually go along with the same kind of independent streak we’ve seen in other areas from Apple, like designing custom chips for the iPhone (and maybe the Tablet) using its PA Semi acquisition, instead of using the same chips anybody can buy.

If Apple’s got a new Maps app coming that’s totally un-Googley, does that mean we can finally get a real Latitude app, since it won’t confuse us anymore? Either way, Apple’s definitely doing something with their new toy. [CW]

Powered by Intelematics – the guys behind the SUNA traffic channel for your satnav device – the Google traffic service appears on the maps as a coloured line over a major road or motorway. Green means, good, yellow means average congestion, red is heavy traffic and red/black means you’d be better off walking. The info is updated every few minutes, so it’s always ready to go.

In all honesty, this probably isn’t the most practical way of transmitting traffic information – exactly what is the difference between a yellow and red line, for example – but if it helps just one person avoid being late to a meeting because they went a different way to avoid traffic, then I guess it’s all worth it…

[Google Australia Blog]

Each player starts with $US3 million. They can buy any street in the world to erect houses, stadiums and even skyscapers allowing them to collect more and more daily rent (ranging from $US50,000 to $US100 million per property). The goal? “Play to beat your friends and the world to become the richest property magnate in existence”.

Streets will vary in cost, of course, with the White House’s Pennsylvania Ave. listed at $US2 million, while Downing Street (London’s home to the senior British cabinet) goes for just $US231,000. (America, f–k yeah.)

If anyone sees a spot to register, please say so in the comments. So far we’ve only tracked down the game’s official site and blog. And if we don’t start playing right when this game starts, we’ll lose out on another rare opportunity to be financially humbled by the real estate market. [Monopoly City Streets via Daily Mail via DVICE]