My Tracks -- An app that makes maps

By Chris Guld, GeeksOnTour

Last summer we spent some time in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We didn’t have time to do a lot of sightseeing, so when we did take a day trip around the area, we wanted to record it. Using an App called My Tracks on my Android smartphone, I made this map simply by tapping on a button to Record when we started, and a tap on Stop Recording when we finished.

 I like having this map to put into my blog for the detail it gives of our little trip. I can easily take a screen shot of it so I have a picture of the route in the blog post, or I can go to the website and grab the embed code to have an interactive map. If you click on the link for “View Larger Map” you will get to a Google Maps screen where you can zoom in and out to see all the detail that Google Maps offers, complete with the layers options of photos, and even webcams.

I also turned the My Tracks recorder on at another time, when we took our kayaks on a paddle near the mouth of the Peace River. We were with a group from Riverside RV Park who knew where to go when the river developed lots of side channels. Now, with this map, we could recreate the trip on our own without fear of getting lost!

My Tracks is a Google product, so it integrates with Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Drive. If you use Google Drive your Tracks are automatically saved there, so you can access them from your computer, or whatever device you like. This also makes them easy to share with others. After you record a track, you should be able to open your Google Drive and see a folder called My Tracks. This folder can be on your computer as well as in the cloud if you download the Google Drive Desktop. Simply clicking on a Track will show you the track on a map – a Google Map! From there you can change the view to Satellite.

The one big problem with My Tracks is that there is no App for iPhone (yet), just for Android phones.

Name: My Tracks
Website: http://www.google.com/mobile/mytracks/
Author: Google
Cost: Free
Available for: Android phones and tablets