PreCentral: Drop a marker pin / create favorite places in Google Maps (homebrew)

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At webOS Nation we are big fans of the homebrew Google Maps app by Jan Herman (72ka). It brings many needed features that were absent from the official old-and-defunct Google Maps or the new Bing Maps in an easy to use interface that is still getting regular updates. One of those nice features is the ability to drop a marker pin on any spot on the map and easily recall that address in the future to center the map or get directions to/from that location.

There are actually two ways to drop a marker pin. If you perform a search for a specific location by tapping on the "Google Maps" header bar and then typing in a search, the map will center to that location and drop a pin for easy reference. The other way to drop a pin is by simply tap-and-holding anywhere on the map. That marker pin will contain the latitude and longitude of that location, along with an approximate address for that location. In either situation, you can tap on the pop-up bubble for that marker and select "Info" to bring up a detail screen for that marker and then tap-and-hold on the header bar to rename this location if you want something more descriptive.

Back on the main map screen, these markers provide functionality beyond just a visual pin on the map. If you tap on the  icon on the bottom of the screen, you can choose "Markers" to bring up a list of your current markers that you can tap on to jump to that map location, or on the  icon to bring up the same detailed screen mentioned above. Or instead of tapping the "Markers" option above, when you tap on "Directions" you can access your pin markers for either the origin or destination by tapping the  on the right side of the screen to bring up your marker listing.

It is important to note that these marker pins will be wiped away whenever you close the Google Maps app. If you would like any of your marker pins to survive a app restart, you need to mark those as "favorite" locations. In order to do this, access the Marker Pin detail screen (using either method mentioned above) and then tap the  button on the bottom-left of the screen. You will notice that the marker pin on the map now shows a star on the top of the pin to indicate that it's a "favorite" place, but more important, these favorites will stick around the next time you launch the app.

Google Maps is available in the webOS Nation homebrew feed in Preware and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher

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