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With 6 updates in the past six months Google has once again  been busy adding new features for Google Maps 4.4 for Android OS 1.6 or newer. You can download the app by searching for “Google Maps” in the Android Market. The most recent update has added a dedicated places icon that opens a dedicated menu page of your favorite searches.

The menu page comes preconfigured with Restaurants, Coffee, Bars, Hotels, Attractions, ATMs, Gas Stations and a button to add additional custom searches to your main places page. The add searches menu options allows you to personalize your page to whatever is of interest to you.

Unfortunately there does not appear to be a way to reorder the page to change the order in which the icons are displayed. They are currently displayed in the order in which they were added. Also the default searches have beautifully detailed icons subsequent additions show a generic icon with the first letter corresponding to the first word in the search, for example hospitals search would have an icon with the letter “h” added to your places page.

Google maps for me has become an indispensable tool both personally and professionally and another reason it would be hard for me to abandon the tight integration of Google Maps on the Android platform.

(Original posted 05/11/10)

Google maps 4.2 adds:

• A Biking Layer – Access biking directions, lanes and trails from your Android phone.
• Navigation Shortcut – adds a “clickable navigation icon” to facilitate going from home screen to Navigation mode.
• Sharing – Share you navigation searches via email, text message, Google Buzz, Facebook or Twitter.

Update your application by searching for Google Maps in the Android Marketplace from any Android 1.6+ phone.

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