Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Named Map Pins - get it right, Google!

Marking a location in Google Maps and remembering what it is has pretty much always been a pain in the neck.

Don't get me wrong... I know how to mark a place. I can pull it up in Google Maps on a computer and "star" it, or I can do basically the same thing on my Android. When I do, it comes up as a star on my phone or on my computer whenever I view a Google Map.

I also know the convoluted way to get the location to have a name. You star it in Maps, then of all places you go to Google Bookmarks (!) to change the name. Once you've done that, the place name comes up on Mobile when you view "My Places".

Sometimes it does, anyway.

Actually, more often than not, I still see the address in My Places, even when I've given the bookmark a name in Google Bookmarks. I've tried and tried to find a rhyme or reason to this, but I just can't figure it out.

Why, Google, why?

I don't know what person a specific address goes with, any more than I know what person a specific telephone number goes with. And if I want to find Bill's house, I'd darn well better know his address, even though the very reason I starred his house in the first place was so I would be able to find it later without having to look up the address!

Actually, that's not entirely true. I've figured out some work-arounds. If Bill is in my address book, I can put his address in there, and it's clickable to go to Maps. That's terrific as long as the latitude/longitude coordinates that Google resolves to for his address are perfectly correct. But I actually wound up resorting to installing a third-party Google Bookmarks app just for this purpose. So now instead of opening maps, I open that app, find my bookmark for the starred location, click it, and then the Maps app opens.

Don't even get me started on how the stars in the desktop version don't display my bookmark name... at all. Ever.

Come the heck on, Google. Knock it off fiddling with Google+ for just a day or two and get these technologies working together.

If you don't, I may never find Bill's house again.