Using Google Classic Maps with the Android My Tracks app

By Mike Lewis

Figure 1

Until recently, I used Google's My Tracks application to track my hikes and bike rides, and to share these via My Places in Google Maps. This worked perfectly for over a year. Unfortunately, Google then decided to drop the app's support for Google Maps. Overnight, the app became much less useful – to the extent that I almost gave up using it. In this blog post, I'll explain the problem in a little more detail, and tell you how I solved it.

In a nutshell, My Tracks is an Android app that uses your phone or tablet's GPS receiver to trace a journey: a drive, hike, bike ride, or whatever. Once you have completed the route, you can choose to save or export it in a variety of ways (Figure 1). One of the options was to export it to Google Maps. This was trivially easy to do. You just chose a single menu option, and a few moments later your route appeared on the map. Perfect.

In the latest version, you can still export the map, but it now goes to the new Google Maps Engine. Despite the similarity in name, this is not the same as Google Maps (which is now called Classic Maps). The new tool has several advantages over the classic version, but there are a number of reasons that I – and many other people – prefer not to use it.

Use Dropbox to host icons for My Places maps

By Donald Ritchie

In my tutorial on adding custom icons to My Places in Google Maps, I mentioned that you can't use Dropbox to host your icons. That's because it requires a log-in. Hex Central reader Jamie Barber wrote to say that you can indeed use Dropbox for this purpose, provided you place the relevant files in your Public Folder. I have amended the article accordingly.

Once you've uploaded your icon file to your Public Folder in Dropbox, all you have to do is right-click on the filename, and select Copy Public Link (see screen shot). The file's URL will appear in a pop-up box, from where you can copy it to the clipboard. If you prefer a shorter - but more cryptic - version of the URL, click on "Shorten link".

You can then go ahead and paste the link into the Placemark Editor, as I described in the article.

There's one other update to the article. When I first wrote it, custom icons didn't show up properly in printed versions of a My Places map. Google has now fixed this problem. Now, when you print your map, all the icons will appear as expected.

French IGN 1:25,000 now available for Anquet Maps

By Mike Lewis

In my article on transferring data from Anquet Maps to Google Maps, I mentioned that Anquet only supplies maps for the UK. The company had told me that mapping would be available soon for other countries, but they didn't put a date on that.

I'm happy to report that Anquet have now introduced a set of 1:25,000 topographical maps covering the whole of France (including Corsica). This is the highly-regarded Série Bleue of the Institut Géographique National (IGN). If you've ever used any of these maps, you'll know what superb quality they are. Like their British OS Explorer equivalents, they show a vast amount of detail, and are an excellent resource for hill-walking, cycling and most other outdoor activities.

And, of course, it's possible to use Anquet software to plot a route on these maps, then transfer it to Google's My Places, in the way I described in my article. More information about Anquet's products can be found on the company's website.

Privacy and sharing settings in Google Maps : A clarification

By Donald Ritchie

In my article, Getting started with My Places in Google Maps, the description of the privacy and sharing options was a little misleading.

These options appear in the left-hand panel while you are editing the map. They allow you to make your map either "public" or "unlisted". I said (correctly) that the options don't affect how you share the map. Regardless of the setting, anyone who knows the map's URL will be able to see it.

I also said that choosing "public" allows the map to appear in Google's search results. That's not quite right

Allowing other people to edit your Google maps

By Donald Ritchie

This dialog lets you add collaborators to your custom map

After I wrote my tutorials on using My Places to create customized Google maps, a reader wanted to know if it was possible to allow other people to edit his maps.

The answer is yes - provided the people in question have a Google account.

Here's how you go about it. First, open the map in My Places in the usual way. Then click the Collaborate link, which is near the top-left corner of the left-hand panel. This will open a dialog like the one in the screen shot.