Navigation systems and associated methods for providing navigation services are provided. Information associated with a desired route for a vehicle, such as a route between a current location and a desired destination, may be determined. Additionally, contextual information associated with the vehicle may be identified. Based upon the desired route and the contextual information, a direction may be generated for presentation to one or more users, and the generated direction may be output for presentation.

A videogame may be provided to one or more users in which characters controlled by users earn fans that impact the videogame similarly to fans in real life. For example, a character may earn virtual currency, be invited to participate in events and/or teams, obtain sponsorships, and/or experience other impacts associated with fanbase size. The videogame may include one or more primary objectives presented to the user. The performance of the primary objectives by the user may impact the progression of a character being controlled by the user through the videogame. The videogame may further include provide one or more fan objectives within the game which can be performed by the character being controlled by the user to earn fans to be included within a fanbase associated with the character in the game

Device linking is described. In one or more implementations, data is maintained at a network service that describes characteristics of a plurality of devices that are associated with a user account of the network service. A communication is formed to be received by one of the plurality of devices that includes a portion of the data that pertains to another one of the plurality of devices and that is suitable by the receiving device to discover the other one of the plurality of devices to initiate a local network connection between the devices.

Navigation systems and associated methods for providing navigation services are provided. Information associated with a desired route for a vehicle, such as a route between a current location and a desired destination, may be determined. Additionally, contextual information associated with the vehicle may be identified. Based upon the desired route and the contextual information, a direction may be generated for presentation to one or more users, and the generated direction may be output for presentation.

Navigation systems and associated methods for providing navigation services are provided. Information associated with a desired route for a vehicle, such as a route between a current location and a desired destination, may be determined. Additionally, contextual information associated with the vehicle may be identified. Based upon the desired route and the contextual information, a direction may be generated for presentation to one or more users, and the generated direction may be output for presentation.

Navigation systems and associated methods for providing navigation services are provided. Information associated with a desired route for a vehicle, such as a route between a current location and a desired destination, may be determined. Additionally, contextual information associated with the vehicle may be identified. Based upon the desired route and the contextual information, a direction may be generated for presentation to one or more users, and the generated direction may be output for presentation.

A vehicle simulation such as for example a driving game can be provided by displaying an image of a steering wheel on a touch sensitive screen. Touch inputs are used to control the rotational orientation of displayed steering wheel. The rotational orientation of the displayed steering wheel is used to apply course correction effects to a simulated vehicle. Selective application of driver assist and different scaling of touch inputs may be provided.

Methods and apparatus are disclosed for a user interface control that can be used to display individual and aggregated data for a plurality of computer applications. In one example of the disclosed technology, an application hub system provides a user interface control to invoke applications, including an entity browser component configured to generate display data for a selected portion of credibility data and/or personalization items for a selected user including application-specific data views for the selected entity associated with an individual application and system-wide data views including data for the selected user combined across multiple applications. The system further includes a configuration component to select a subset of the credibility data for display with the entity browser component and an application invocation component configured to launch a selected one of the applications using the user interface control provided by the application hub system.

A gaming system, kit and attendant methodology provide users with overlapping real-virtual world interactive play. The gaming kit enables a user's smart phone or tablet type computer to enable virtual gaming upon the visual display thereof. A user-operable control device separate from the computer includes externally ornamental circuitry housing and signal-transmitting circuitry. The user-operable control device generates and transmits virtual object control signals enabled via the signal-transmitting circuitry. A signal-communicating mechanism receives virtual object control signals from the control device and communicates the virtual object control signals to the user's computer. A computer-implementable gaming application is deployable via the computer for providing a controllable and visually displayed virtual object upon the electronic visual display. The virtual object is virtually controllable in a gaming environment by way of the control signals sent from the user-operable control device and communicated to the computer via the signal-communicating mechanism.

There is provided a system and method for image recognized content creation. There is provided a method comprising capturing an image from a camera, analyzing the image to recognize a plurality of elements, converting the plurality of elements into custom content data, and executing an interactive application using the custom content data. In one embodiment, the interactive application may comprise a racing video game, and the image may comprise a racetrack layout for use in the racing video game. Thus, a user can provide a racetrack by drawing simple lines and curves on a piece of paper, which are detected by the camera and converted into valid data assets for the video game. In this manner, even young children can leverage common drawing skills using familiar physical drawing implements for quick and simplified content creation, bypassing the need to use complex, tedious, and proprietary conventional on-screen user interfaces.