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Google MyMaps: Not Quite Ready for the iPhone

As Tizmanian covered a few month back, Google’s MyMaps are customizable.

In theory, it should be perfect for the iPhone. Of course, you’re all familiar with Google Maps. You type in a business name, a city or an address and you hit return, in literally seconds, it spans the globe and you a pin placement literally.

Google MyMaps (see tab on the Google Maps page) takes it one step further, letting you personalize & save bookmark/pin placements all over the world.

This is perfect for those of us who wants some restaurant links for some nearby town, or a great review for a restaurant on your next trip, an interesting hotel or a place to check out next time you’re on the road and you drank too much NyQuil and you really, really want to stop in Alexandria, IN and visit the world’s largest ball of paint? Who can keep a text list and have to remember where it is? Or keep a giant file folder and no time to look back through it? Or even if you remember, how far is that street from your hotel or the conference hall? Is it worth a $30 dollar cab ride to eat the best pulled pork in NC? (you are asking the wrong person 🙂 )

Type in the business, restaurant, hotel, etc …

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You can even read the review’s link. If it’s the one or you want to add it to your maps, just click on SAVE TO MY MAPS. You will be asked which MAP (you can name different ones … MISTRESS … WIFE … Just Kidding!)

You even have a space to add in comments like “Haggis, not so good, Peach Cobbler – good”

You can even choose the icon “pin” so you can do your own visible database.

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There are also other tools for drawing lines and boxes, etc …

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So, Google Maps works great on a computer browser but sadly, this potentially great tool is not ready for the iPhone just yet.

On the iPhone, the left scroll bar disappears so if you have more than 20 listings, they are not visible as the left page has no scroll feature in the iPhone … also, the normally handy Google Maps slider to zoom in does not allow finger taps to zoom in and out, it just becomes a scroll so pages just move around and the zoom is a tedious tapping on the +_ signs … the only way to make it less painful is to bookmark the url of a city on the computer and email or sync with your iPhone.

So, if this sounds like something you’d like to re-program for Google or let them know you’d like it iPhonized, drop by their forum and become a squeaky wheel!

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29 July 2007 Apple, Computing, Internet, iPhone, Mobile, Travel No Comment

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