“Unfortunately. Maps has stopped”

I’m a recent convert to an Android phone and so far I’m really pleased with it. It seems to offer me the flexibility that I want (and didn’t get from my old iPhone). Recently, however I’ve been getting this error message from Google’s Maps application.

Google Maps Stopped Error

 

This isn’t just a minor annoyance when I’m using the application, it pops up all the time. I presumed that this may be a problem that was only affecting me, but when I saw it on my wife’s Nexus 7, I realised that it must be more widespread.

I had a quick look on the PlayStore and saw that there were a number of comments/complaints about this same problem. I was not alone…..

I decided to try a reinstall, but this isn’t possible for built-in applications. You can uninstall and then reinstall the updates to the built-in application, but that didn’t work for me. The error came back.

The only way to stop the error from occurring is to downgrade Maps to the factory installed version. This is how you do it.

First open Application Manager.
Swipe down from the top of the screen and click the “cog” icon in the top right-hand corner. Then select the “More” tab and press “Application Manager”.

Scroll/swipe until you see the “Maps” application.(like the screen below).

AppInfo

 

Press “Uninstall Updates”

 

Uninstall

Press “OK” to confirm that you want to uninstall the updates.

At this point you’ll be warned that the upgraded application will be replaced with the factory version.

REplace

Press “OK” and you can revert to using the older version. The application will prompt you to upgrade it from time to time, but you can ignore those prompts to upgrade and restore your phone/tablet to working order.

My only worry is that when the KitKat 4.4 upgrade for Android comes along, it’ll bring with it the newer version of Maps, this could be a reason for holding back on that upgrade until you know that other users are happy with it and that this problem doesn’t reoccur for KitKat users.

What’s my IP address?

Posilan is the hosting company that Pixel8 use for the Trust IV blog and website.
They have a handy (and ad-free) IP checker on their website:

The first one is for conventional browsers.
http://www.posilan.com/ip

The second one is useful in case you don’t have a complex browser.
http://www.posilan.com/ipplain.php

For example in UNIX you could type:

wget http://www.posilan.com/ipplain.php


this downloads a small file to your machine containing your IP address.

V. Handy 🙂

TFL’s new website coping well during #tubestrike

I recently read an article in ComputerWeekly describing how TFL had redesigned their website using HTML5 to optimise performance across multiple device types. I was interested to see how the new site was handling the likely increase in traffic due to the tube strike.

Prior to the HTML5 re-write the last major redevelopment of this site had been in 2007, well before the  proliferation of mobile devices, now used daily to check for travel updates or plan journeys. 75% of Londoners visit the TFL website regularly and there are 8 million unique visitors per month.

I was in London earlier this week so I,  along with millions of other commuters, wanted to keep up to date with the news of the tube strike. I, like many others, turned to my smartphone for answers. The site performed well on my Android phone, so I wondered whether the increase in traffic had caused any performance degradation.

At Trust IV we have developed an in-house application to test the performance of websites, we monitor performance for several hundred sites, each of which is categorised into a relevant business sector. TFL was already being monitored in our “travel” category. I was impressed to see that the website was the 3rd fastest travel site monitored today with a page response time of <1.2 seconds. The site developers should be pleased with themselves.

TFL_WPT report

 

Although occasional spikes in response times were observed (which is common when monitoring in this way); on the whole the site remained responsive throughout the day. Average response times appear no slower today than they were last week (the chart below shows response times in milliseconds).

TFL_day

If only more of the sites that I visit regularly performed as well as this.

Get in touch for more information about our “Test The Market” monitoring application and how it can give you insights into your own website performance and see how your performance compares with your competitors.

 

See more articles like this, and download the response time report at:
http://blog.trustiv.co.uk/2014/02/tfls-new-website-coping-well