We are finally getting some beautiful weather here in Washington State and it is Bike to Work month here in Seattle. This makes for perfect time for Google to announce their Google Maps for Android biking directions capability. Google also added the ability to launch navigation from your Home screen, sharing of places with friends, and more.
Biking directions previously launched on the desktop, but is much more useful on Android devices that you can physically mount to your bike. You will now see a bike icon next to the car, bus, and pedestrian in Google Maps Navigation and after tapping the bike icon you will see the bicycling layer appear on the map with dedicated bike-only trails, roads with bike lanes, and roads that are good for biking and lack a dedicated lane.
The Navigation shortcut places the blue icon on one of your Home screens so you do not have to go through various menus to launch Google Maps Navigation. The sharing feature lets you send a search results page to your friends via email, text, Facebook, Twitter, or Google Buzz.
Matthew Miller started using a Pilot 1000 in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since.
Disclosure
Matthew Miller
Matthew is a professional naval architect by day and a mobile gadget freak at all other times. He purchases his own devices and then sells them on eBay or Craigslist to buy more. Many other devices are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the carrier or manufacturer. If any are provided as “long term loaner units” this will be clearly disclosed in his reviews.
Biography
Matthew Miller
Matthew Miller started using a mobile devices in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since. He is a co-host with GigaOM's Kevin Tofel on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and an author of three Wiley Companion series books. Matthew started using mobile devices with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 125 different devices running Palm, Linux, Symbian, Newton, BlackBerry, iOS, Android, webOS, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone operating systems. His current collection includes an HTC Radar 4G, Dell Venue Pro, Apple iPad 2, HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Nokia N9, Apple iPhone 4S, MacBook Pro, and many more, along with tons of accessories and classic devices like the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 and Sony CLIE UX50. Matthew can be found on various discussion forums under the user name of "palmsolo".
