Google Maps Timelines and my 2007 maps hack

I just saw a blog post from Google announcing the timelines feature in the new Maps app for Android. The feature extends the previously available (though often hard to find) location history view with photos from Google Photos.

I am really glad this exists now. I have wished for something like this for a very long time. I even started making my travel maps back in 2007 manually using Google Maps “My Map” feature. In my case the photos were coming in from Flickr and embedded with text in an iFrame. I even started working on an app that would do this but lost interest halfway through (story of my life 😉 )

The fact that its automatic is very convenient, though I wish I could add non-google data to this. Am also surprised that these timelines don’t integrate with the Stories feature of Google+ Photos Google Photos.

Author: Arpit Mathur

Arpit Mathur is a Principal Engineer at Comcast Labs where he is currently working on a variety of topics including Machine Learning, Affective Computing, and Blockchain applications. Arpit has also worked extensively on Android and iOS applications, Virtual Reality apps as well as with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML and Ruby on Rails. He also spent a couple of years in the User Experience team as a Creative Technologist. View all posts by Arpit Mathur