Mobile GPS Cell Phone Software For Busy Net Surfers

If you are like me and own more than enough gadgets (well, according to my significant other, anyway), then the ability to get GPS functionality on your mobile phone or PDA is essential. After all, who needs that Garmin or Tom Tom cluttering up their dash, or the extra price tag of an in-dash navigation system? I had Nextel for a while (pardon me while I slap myself upside the head a few times in memory of my craptacular Nextel experience), which offered a passable GPS service, but the convenience of having a GPS enabled phone before most other people did was simply not enough to counter the great suck that is Nextel.

I have Cingular now (no, AT&T, I am not going to call it AT&T, and I am deeply annoyed my cute little orange man is gone from the face of my phone now). Cingular offers GPS, but I have found it extremely hard to use. It may be because my phone is still a Motorola E1 ROKR while I hold out impatiently for the iPhone to come out this summer. The ROKR has a smaller screen than my honey's RAZR, which makes it a bit more time consuming while you try and surf 4 - 8 lines of text at a time in the phone's browser. In hopes of a solution, I turned to the web.

I found a few paid apps that had the same functionality and poor interface as my cell phone provider. None of them were what I was looking for. Then I found Google Maps Mobile. From the moment I downloaded it to my phone it has been easy to use. If you want to try it, you can get it for free by going to the Google Maps Mobile site here, or by adding this url to your mobile phone and l straight to your cell phone's Java applications if you have a Java enabled phone: http://www.google.com/maps/gmm It only takes a few minutes to install, and it's as simple as two clicks.

Once it is on your phone, you can use it to do a variety of things to help you find your way from Point A to Point B. Call it up from your Java App feature on your phone (on my Cingular MOTOROKR, it is under MyMedia, Tools and Apps). This pulls up a generic map of the United States with the word Zoom in one corner, and Menu in the other. You can search for a location using Zoom, or you can click Menu for the more specific features. Personally, I find more accurate results with Menu. Calling up the Menu gets you these options:

1) Find Business

2) Find Location

3) Directions

4) Satellite View

5) Clear Map

6) Zoom

7) Help

8) Show Traffic

9) Quit

The features I personally use most often are Find Directions and Show Traffic. I've used Find Business and Find Location in a pinch, but I find that I've usually printed a MapQuest or GoogleMap from my Mac before I left the house for where I'm going. I need the GPS more for when I get lost, when I need to change plans on the spur of the moment, or when I want to avoid getting stuck in traffic.

Using Find Directions is easy: start typing your address, and the software starts helping you by filling in some of the letters and making it easier to select what you want. This helps greatly on a small screen like mine. No more slowly and carefully scrolling down to enter text one small character at a time, trying not to screw up. Now it's so much faster! Once the Start Address is entered, do the same with the End Address, and tell Google Maps Mobile to find your directions for you. It's that simple. Some cell phones and PDAs have a voice feature that will speak your directions to you, and others you will be able to navigate the map as you drive. You can make your Start Address and End Address a favorite, or save any map or directions you find for use again later.

If you have a meeting or event you can't be late to, you will want to try Show Traffic. This is by far my favorite Google Maps Mobile feature. It even works where I live, which is out in the toolies. That's saying a lot, when even the rural areas are included in the sweep for information. If there is traffic on the way to your location, the show Traffic menu will highlight trouble spots in green. This allows you to choose whether you want to risk going that way, or choose an alternate route. This has gotten me to many places on time the last few weeks. Meetings I would have been late, pick ups for flight arrivals I would have missed, all have been handled with ease by the Show Traffic feature on Google Maps Mobile.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this application. For a free application, it works really well - better, even, than the GPS software offered by the phone company. Try it - if it doesn't work in a way you find easy, just delete it when you are done. If you have a PDA, I welcome comments on how it works on your PDA, by the way, since that is one gadget I haven't purchased yet.