I recently transitioned to using Google Photo’s for managing photos on my iPhone as I became increasingly frustrated with how difficult it was to simply download photos from my phone. This was a time consuming process but eventually managed to get all my photos for the last 10 years uploaded to the cloud.

The Google photos set up is great for work too, simply take photos, and when you get back to WIFI, they will upload to the cloud ready to download and share. But recently I found another feature that makes this process even better.

Google My Maps is a pretty useful but somewhat hidden platform for creating your own online maps with the Google platform. After a little exploring and assuming that it must be possible I discovered you can import photos into you Google My Maps map straight from Google Photos. Assuming you have location services turn on on your device when taking photos, these will automatically geo-locate to where they were taken; generally accurate to 5 - 10 m.

Check out the map of my recent construction monitoring visit to Malo:

https://drive.google.com/a/thewai.co.nz/open?id=1sA-YvYbVzlqatKbozdXJTSCWA-giLGrh&usp=sharing

These points can then also be exported to Google Earth to get a rough idea of elevation as well. Pretty dam handy. Seems like technology is finally catching up to make these kind of things that you assume should be easy,  actually easy. 

My iPhone was recently displaced after some rather exuberant Birthday celebrations, and now the owner of a Moto G4, googles original flagship phone, which makes the process even easier.

Disclaimer: no privacy issues have been considered in this shameless promotion of Google.