Places Pages
Do you need more information about a location? If so, then the Places page on Google Maps is the place to go. On Android, each location has a well-organized Details page. Double-tap a location or tap the location bubble, and you’ll see the details about that location, as shown on the right.
Not every location will have as many details as you see for Liberty Hall; what you do see will depend on the information available for a given location.
Some details you can find include reviews, the location’s website, a phone number, its hours of operation, an average review, related locations, and a picture of the place.
You can also check in to the location, add a star, or tap the More button to share the location on social-networking sites.
Google Places
Rather than randomly finding spots on a map, you can search for nearby attractions by using your tablet’s built-in Places 
app (see Figure 11–5). This app lets you browse for locations by category or search for them individually. One you find a location, you can then go to that location’s Details page.
TIP: You can also use the More button in the Places app to download map information within a 10-mile radius of a place. You won’t see satellite images or 3D buildings, but the downloaded map information can help you navigate to a place when you’re outside of Wi-Fi range. You can also use this app to download maps of your vacation spots before you hit the road. Downloaded maps are deleted from your tablet’s cache after 30 days.
Figure 11–5. The Places app
Starring Locations
You can also use the Details page to add a star to a location. Tap the Star icon in the upper-right corner of the screen, and the starred location will display a glowing yellow star to the right of its name. To remove the star, simply tap the Star icon again. Using stars is like saving bookmarks for web pages; it enables you to easily find locations you visit frequently or need to find quickly.
You can access your list of starred items in Google Maps in two simple steps:
- Tap Menu.
- Tap Starred places.
NOTE: When you travel for business, put a star on your hotel and your conference’s convention center before you arrive. This will give you instant access to the addresses and phone numbers for both locations. It will also give you driving directions between the two locations and a list of nearby restaurants.
Google Street View
Google used cars with mounted cameras and other equipment to take 360-degree photos of roads everywhere in the US and many other countries.
That aside, Google’s Street View feature is an amazing tool for figuring out where you need to be, as shown in Figure 11–6. You can use it when you have an appointment at a new location to see what the building for the meeting location looks like before you get there. You can also use this feature to see if there’s any parking or tricky intersections along the way.
Figure 11–6. Google Map’s Street View feature
Follow these steps to get to the Street View feature:
- Go to a location’s Places page.
- Tap the Street View button, which looks like a person with a triangle on his chest. Not every location has a Street View; if this button is grayed out, the feature is unavailable at that location.
- Navigate by dragging your finger around the picture; this will pan around the scene.
- Go further up or down the road by tapping the arrows. The yellow line shows you the path the Street View car took as it traveled.
- Exit Street View by tapping Go to map on the bottom of the screen.
TIP: Google’s Street View uses large pictures and requires some bandwidth, so you should only attempt to use it if you’ve got a fairly strong signal or are in a Wi-Fi hotspot.
You may also notice that Street View has a Compass mode. This feature performs a neat trick: it allows you to see the area around a given Street View by spinning around slowly with your tablet in front of you.