5 FANTASTIC Google Maps Features You Want To Know About

love them or hate them you have to admit google has done an amazing job with google maps and how it integrates with the entire google ecosystem i'm constantly blown away by the different things that we can do with google maps so today i thought i would share with you what one two three four five five things that i think are really cool about google maps that you may or may not know about that is today on dottotech [Music] steve dotto here how the heck you doing this fine day google maps is our topic today google has done an incredible job with google maps there are so many layers to what is in google maps and how it integrates with the google ecosystem almost every time i dive into google maps and start poking around and exploring i get lost for quite a bit of time and i'm constantly impressed by the technical the technical skill set that google brings to the play to the table in google maps so today we're going to take a look at five different aspects or different tips that i have as far as using google maps now you may know some of them but some of them you may not know or you may have forgotten about now one thing i will point out is google maps is not necessarily a completely equal player in both desktop and mobile version the mobile version as you do probably i typically use for navigation i use it when i need it to get to a location i don't spend a lot of time exploring on google maps on the on the smartphone application however on the desktop version when i open google maps even if i'm looking for direction somewhere i start to explore i use the different views i use the different layers i use the different features and i spend a lot of time just poking around in google maps when it's on the desktop so we're going to start with that we're going to start with the desktop version or or the the browser-based version of google maps and what i'm going to share with you is what i think is a tremendously useful extra feature and that is the ability to measure distances let's have a look of course we all know that when we use google maps for directions for turn-by-turn directions to get somewhere it gives us the distance in the estimated time that it's going to take us to cover that distance but google maps will also give us distance as the crow flies which is really useful especially when we use some alternate transportation methods for example i've got a little boat that we run around the vancouver area in in in the interior and i was thinking about doing a day trip from where we live to uh to another community on the fraser river and i don't know how far that's going to be i want to figure out exactly what the distance is to determine whether or not a it's a good idea for me to take my boat on that trip and roughly how long it will take and how much fuel i might require so let me show you the process it is very cool what we're going to do is we're going to start with a beginning pocation now this is actually where we would end up putting in right here that's a there's a little boat launch right here in in right here i'm going to right click my mouse watch this i'm going to right click my mouse and here in the pop-up i have the opportunity to measure distances when you first find this you're going to play with this so often so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go click out here in the channel and it's going to take me from that starting point out into the channel i'm going to zoom out a little bit and i'm going to start my journey up the river where i want to go ultimately is up to way over here in westminster where it is right there there's a key here that i want to get directions to so i'm going to go up the fraser river here and i can just click my mouse and it's going to drop kind of way points that measures the distance of each of these different legs and we'll take the south arm of the river on the way up it's a little wider channel uh we're going to go up there and then we will zoom in a little bit to kind of bring us right to and where's the key right there there's the waterfront park in the lonsdale key park right there so i'll just go right there and so i see it is 17 kilometers from that point to that point so so i can figure okay that's not too bad that's not too bad it'll take me about an hour or so at a reasonable speed at a nice slow speed going up which is and i've got plenty of fuel in my boat that's going to be a trip that i think i could do and if it was if i discovered it was like really long i would then be able to rethink things so this ability to be able to measure distances as the crow flies is a feature built in to google maps but there's a kiss and cousin of this feature which i want to show you and for that i'm going to change our view i'm going to switch over to the satellite view and i'm going to zoom in on just somebody's house i don't know whose house it is i'm just going to zoom in on a house let's zoom in on a house in richmond somewhere here let's zoom in on our house now i love the satellite do you do have you looked at your house in the satellite view i've looked at my house many times in the satellite view but let me show you something which i think is uber cool if i had say oh these hoses aren't perfect oh here's what this is what i'll do if i had a house like this house here and i had the backyard to say i was going to be fertilizing my backyard and it the on the bag of the fertilizer tells you how much you should be doing per square meter or per square foot but i don't know what the square footage of my yard is i just don't know that i guess i could go outside with a tape measure but this is so cool right click your mouse measure distance one more time and just frame the area that you want to measure the square footage of the area of and when you complete it gives you down here see this the distance the total area is 1300 square foot or 130 square meters that is phenomenal that is so useful for a variety of things maybe this homeowner needs a new roof and uh they're getting quotes from the roofing companies and they say well what's how many square meters is the roof they're going to ask you that because it's going to do the quota i don't know how many square meters my roof is so once again we'll do quickly we'll measure the distance and we'll frame out this time in this case here a slightly different quite a complex area and here we go it's actually 3200 square feet or 303 square meters that is the measurement capabilities that's built in to google maps but this ability to be able to measure distances accurately for planning or for just plain curiosity just an awesome feature now changing the view that we did as measuring the distance from the map view to the satellite view so we could actually measure the rooftop the rooftop area or the yard area that shows us some of the different views in the different ways that google gives us to be able to view the same information so we've seen the satellite view we've seen the map view but if you look down here in the bottom of the screen you've got the little guy the little stick man the google stickman which as you probably know if we drop on the map we'll give us something called street view which is the street level view of the location that we're looking at and we've probably by now seen the google cars going by that are doing in the 360 photo photographs of an area but let me show you an additional feature that's built into google street view which ah man i just love i'm gonna go back into my old neighborhood my old haunt and i'm gonna scroll in on my grandparents house and there is my grandparents old house right there i'm gonna drop the street view right there this was nona and nono's house and i'm gonna drop it right there i believe that is it let's take a look here and is that it yeah there it is right there so here is my grandparents old house that i grew up visiting it was walking distance from where we lived and there it is right there oh that brings back memories just looking at that actually my dad built this house so it makes it even more special for me so if you take a look at street view of any location if you look up in the corner here there's a little clock and that allows us to go back and see within street view when google began taking pictures of this particular location and you can go back in time and see what it looked like in this case back as early as 2009 and this i just love this so let's take it let's go back to 2009 and let's take a look at oh yes what a difference and look the houses have been replaced but this really brings back some memories i'm actually feeling a little bit emotional because this is what it looked like back a lot closer what it looked like when my grandparents lived there and if we scroll forward in time we can see the same location uh just how many years just uh two years later they tore down the house on the right-hand side and they built a bigger house and then two years after that uh they oh you see the trees are growing up the tree is blocking the view of my grandparents house let's scroll over there it is and let's go two more years down the road the houses look their house is looking remarkably similar still the same but look what happens now when we move up to closer ah here just a couple years ago they started taking down other houses in the neighborhood and this is typically what happens in my in vancouver and oh here construction in the house next door but nona nono's house is still in place you can go to any location on google maps drop down in the street have a look around see a 360 degree view of that location and you can see what it looked like it is back now as much as in this particular case uh 12 14 years ago you can see the history so street view is another one of the real gems that you maybe you aren't going to find super useful the street view history in google maps there are going to be cases of course where it is useful but just for nostalgia purposes just to go and look around this is what i mean when i say when i look at google map features i end up just browsing and exploring for a long time street view street view history is one of the things that i always spend time with one thing that always impresses me with google maps is its integration with the other applications in the google ecosystem specifically calendar and gmail and how it integrates between your desktop and your mobile version through your google account so the next thing i want to show you i'm going to actually not start in google maps but instead i'm going to start with a kind of a real world scenario about how google maps can integrate in this entire system so i'm going to create an appointment let's say that we i've got a meeting coming up next week at our local um our local institute of technology so i'm going to add a location and i'm going to type in bcit this is just a local school a local technical college let's say that i have a meeting there now look as i start to fill out in google calendar mind you the meeting location i have an option to preview this in maps and if i tap on that out comes a little sidebar that shows the location in maps if i choose directions right here it is going to give me directions on how to get from my location to bcit now it gives me transit directions it'll give me driving directions it'll give me walking or biking directions it'll give me all those different directions and i can add them back into the calendar if i say well i'm going to choose driving because that's where i want to go i'm going to add those back into the calendar so now it is living inside my calendar so i can view it in my calendar as well but look at this this is where it gets really cool i can send these directions to my phone and you can see i get a notification right here in my phone that i've got directions to get to bcit from my location now this is so cool if i scroll down to the bottom of these directions look at the option that i have here this is something which i really like it says remind you to leave on time what google maps will do then is it is talking back and forth with google calendar and here's the dialogue that's happening steve has to be at bcit at 10 a.m google calendar to google maps google maps says oh okay and it checks the current traffic time and it says well in that particular case we better remind him to leave at 9 15 because there's heavy traffic and it's going to take more than 34 minutes so i'll get a notification on my phone you know how you get a notification you have a meeting in 10 minutes i'll get a notification you should be leaving now in order to make it to your meeting on time how cool is that this integration of our apps talking to each other through the google ecosystem so the integration between google calendar on our desktop google uh google maps on our desktop and our smartphone and the way they talk back and forth it's just i it's so cool you gotta say it's cool before i leave this direction screen there's one other thing i want to show you is the uh if i scroll up to the very top you see this image here this is a elevation gain that's because we have chosen cycling in order to get there that's the map that i actually ended up sending uh but it's it's uh another additional feature that google maps recognizes if you're biking what are you concerned about turn by turn directions of course but going up and down hills that's a big deal on a bike so this tells us what the elevation gain is and where it happens in the ride so that we are prepared that's another nice feature and that this that ability within google maps to be able to choose your mode of transport from public from public transport and it's constantly updating based on the times that the transportation system is delivering through to walking through to oh even rideshare how much in an estimated cost if you're using rideshare so you've got all these additional features to get there on your smartphone that are built in to google maps you're going to be glad you stuck around because i think this last tip that i'm going to share with you might have the biggest impact in your lives long term and that is using location sharing within google maps uh with especially with family and friends now there's two ways that i know of that you can share your location with others using google maps you can drop a pin which puts a location where you are where you happen to be and you can choose to share that by clicking and tapping down and holding on that clicking share and that will then share that location so if you're at a bar if you're at a restaurant and you want to let a friend know where you are you can drop a pin at the location and you can share that location with them as a one-off i'm here right now come see me and that's not a dynamic link it's just a directions to that particular location other location features are dynamic in other words when you move when the phone moves the location will move with you which is a great way to be able to keep tabs on family and friends if they're moving around and you need to know where they are if you're at a large amusement park together you can be tracking each other that way and let me show you how you invoke that you tap on your profile picture and it with under the profile you will then find your options and if location sharing is available in your location and it's not available worldwide some jurisdictions don't allow it for privacy issues but if it is available you tap on location sharing and up comes your instructions you share your location you choose within your list of family and friends who you want to share your location with and you choose the duration of how long you want to share this is a great safety feature it's a great convenience feature this past christmas my kids were home for christmas and one of my daughters was going to visit friends of hers but there was a snowstorm she was a little bit nervous driving out there so she turned on location sharing so we could track her journey out to her friend's house and make sure that everything was okay and we could find her if we needed her there's a lot of ways that you might want to use location sharing and within google maps in the whole google ecosystem we have the option to be able to do it it is it it i think it provides a level of safety it provides level of security it's uh provides a massive level of convenience and it is just straight up cool tech there are lots of cool features in google maps and if i haven't touched on your favorite feature here in this video please in the comments please share with me your favorite google maps feature maybe it will be the basis for a future video here at dottotech and i hope you found this video to be useful and enjoyable and if you have a like and a thumbs up and a share would be greatly appreciated as well please don't forget to subscribe to this channel now before we leave one last thing every week here at dottotech we host a free weekly tutorial webinar called webinar wednesday where we teach some aspect of productivity or content creation the link is right here i encourage you to join us they're free they're awesome i'm sure you'll have a great time and i would love to see you until next time i'm steve dotto a fun storm in the castle [Music]

Channel: dottotech

Views: 1,675,589

Keywords: google maps, google maps secrets, google maps tutorial, google maps tips and tricks, google maps tricks, google street view, google maps hidden features, google maps street view, how to use google maps, street view, google map tricks, google maps api, google maps location sharing, location sharing, measuring distance on a map, measuring area on google maps, google maps features, google maps tips, google map, google street view tutorial, google maps lyft

Id: RGBmqfo9Fl0

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 20 2022