Google Maps with My Location Video

Google Maps with My Location Video Transcript

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>> Hi, I'm Jessica Dolcourt with CNET Download.com. In this first look video we're gonna see how the new My Locations feature in Google Maps for mobile makes searching for directions and places a whole lot easier. It's hard work typing your location on a really condensed keyboard like this, especially if it's a long location. What the My Location feature does is it illuminates much of that need to type. So what you do is you open up the app, you press zero, and in a few seconds your location will show up as a blinking blue dot on the map. This feature really comes in handy when searching for nearby businesses or directions. If I want to get directions somewhere, I can select use my location as the starting point, and then either enter an address or select a point on the map as my endpoint. Then I can see written directions for my route, I can press the pound key to see the route on the map, I can press six to get the next direction, and four to get the previous direction. And I can always get back to the written list by pressing the pound key again. It works about the same way with search. If I want to search for pizza nearby for example, I'll just go into search, and I'll get a list of results of nearby places. And again I can see the results mapped out by pressing the pound key. So how's this all working. The My Locations feature isn't GPS, in fact it's imitating GPS by pulling down signal from nearby cell phone towers to approximate your location within about a mile. Since most cell phones aren't equipped with GPS, Google's offering this as the next best alternative. If it's not close enough for your tastes, you can always go in and manually enter your address. To get this latest version of Google Maps for mobile with the My Location feature, point your mobile browser to Google.com/gmm. I'm Jessica Dolcourt, and this is Google Maps for mobile. ^M00:01:42 [ music ]