Mail me that map
We are, of course, big fans of the iPhone’s Map application, and now reader Derek Mendenhall weighs in with a tip that makes a great feature even more useful for that next extended road trip:
Something I just found today while I was e-mailing my wife directions, I was on my computer at work, went to maps.google.com and searched out some directions. Then I clicked the send link, which gave me the option of e-mailing it to myself as well, so I did.
I opened that e-mail on my iPhone, which is essentially just a long link back to that specific page. The iPhone opens the link using Maps, not Safari, and laid in the directions for me. I thought if you’re going on a trip and need multiple sets of driving directions for different places and things that you may want to see along the way, you could look up the different routes, e-mail them to yourself, and now the directions are just a click away in Mail! Very handy while driving.
Indeed. My modus operandi for travel has been to print out the Google driving directions in advance of the trip, and having whoever’s riding shotgun handle the task of navigating via print-out. Derek’s tip certainly saves the hassle of hauling along a stack of driving directions the next time I travel.
Category: Reader Experiences, Tips & Troubleshooting
ABOUT iPHONE CENTRAL
Get the latest news, reviews, and opinion about Apple's groundbreaking iPhone from the Apple experts at Macworld.
Want more information? Be sure to check out our complete iPhone coverage.
iPHONE VERSION
Our site's pretty iPhone friendly. But if you'd like to test an iPhone-app-like version of our site, click here and give it a go.
MACWORLD'S iPHONE REVIEW
How does the iPhone stack up? Read our in-depth review.
iPHONE QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?
Send your iPhone thoughts:
via e-mail
via voicemail
and we may use them on the site.
RECENT COMMENTS 
- maclia on Google's Vic Gundotra on the iPhone
- Philip Michaels on Google's Vic Gundotra on the iPhone
- Daniel Chow on Google's Vic Gundotra on the iPhone
- Nathan on Google's Vic Gundotra on the iPhone
- Liz on Google's Vic Gundotra on the iPhone
- Stuart on MegaPhone now PhoneView: an app by any other name would smell as sweet
- mc mike on iPhone Love, Italian-Style
- rg on Aliph Jawbone goes double or nothing
- PJ Mudd on iPhone cleans out your wallet (in a good way)
- backguy on New Google Reader is iPhonerrific
CATEGORIES
- Accessories (39)
- AT&T (43)
- Hacking (31)
- Hardware (26)
- Musings (101)
- News (204)
- Reader Experiences (4)
- Reviews (51)
- Software (138)
- Tips & Troubleshooting (78)
- Videos (9)
- Wi-Fi (15)
BLOG ARCHIVE
- May 2008 (24)
- April 2008 (34)
- March 2008 (33)
- February 2008 (50)
- January 2008 (34)
- December 2007 (33)
- November 2007 (42)
- October 2007 (45)
- September 2007 (53)
- August 2007 (67)
- July 2007 (111)
- June 2007 (82)
Comments (9)
I tried this and the link opened in Safari, not in Maps. ???
Posted by Lance Hall | September 20, 2007 6:01 PM
I tried it and it worked for me.
Posted by Dan Garcia | September 20, 2007 7:21 PM
Maybe another good solution will be to put the link in a bookmark and synchronize it to your phone. That should do the trick too.
Steve
http://inewsonly.com
The first ZUI news aggregator for iPhone & iPod touch
Posted by Steve | September 20, 2007 10:27 PM
Great tip. Works great if you do not alter the route that Google initially comes up with. E.g. I mapped out a trip from Florida to Mass. but did not want to take I-95 the entire way, so I customized my route by selecting the blue line and dragging it to another Interstate to change the route to effectively go around DC. This feature works great in Google and receives great when you get it on another Mac/PC. However, when you send it to your iPhone, you get only the first leg of the trip. i.e. to the point where you first altered the route. Don't know if this is an iPhone quirk or a google one. Suspect its iPhone related as it works great on my Mac and PC.
Posted by Mike | September 21, 2007 1:20 PM
Not bad, actually something that was unexpected. My gripe is still that you cannot go the other way and that is to text the turn by turn to another cell phone. I have had only a few occasions where that would have been handy, either for myself or when I get a call from a person coming to see me that needs additional directions.
Posted by James in Utah | September 21, 2007 6:09 PM
LOVE this tip!
~C
Posted by Benford![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://iphone.macworld.com/nav-commenters.gif)
|
September 23, 2007 10:42 PM
I tried this trick. Worked great for sending a map. However, here is what happened when I obtained directions in GoogleMaps and emailed that to myself from the link at GoogleMaps: I opened the email on my iPhone and clicked on the link; the destination address and surrounding map appeared but I got an error message that said "Search Failed" and the directions did not appear--only the destination map.
Posted by Randall | September 24, 2007 3:26 PM
Tried the directions trick again. As I noted in an earlier post, there was a failure when directions were received on iPhone. I repeated the search in GoogleMaps, emailed it to my iPhone and it worked. The only difference was that I listed the origin as "CVG airport" rather than just "CVG" when I did the search in GoogleMaps. In Googlemaps, apparently, "CVG" is enough to do the directions search but not enough on iPhone. go figure.
Posted by Randall | September 24, 2007 3:35 PM
They should make it so you can text yourself a link to the directions. Heck, they should make it so we can MMS, period!
Posted by Corey | October 5, 2007 8:57 AM