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How can I text message an iPhone map to a friend?

I don't know how the heck he did it, but my boyfriend just texted me a pushpin from his iPhone and when I tapped on it, it transferred the point to my iPhone map application. I want to be able to do the same, so can you enlighten me please, Dave? You're my last hope of saving face!


Dave's Answer:

Well, I can't have you feeling like your boyfriend has an edge in the technology department, so I'll share the secret technique with you. The thing is, you have to swear never to tell him about this site, so you can tap into all of the many tips I have and impress him with your geek prowess. You can tell your mates, but not him. Deal? :-)

Now, before I get accused of inciting trouble in your young relationship, I will point out that the way I figure out how to do things on my iPhone is to just dabble, play and experiment. There are tons of barely documented features you'll find!

But, starting with this task, you'll want to launch the Map application on your Apple iPhone.

It'll look like this:

iphone share map location 1

Want to speed up the Map application finding where you are? Tap on the small triangular arrowhead icon on the lower left corner of the app and it'll recenter itself on your current location:

iphone share map location 2

The first step is to tap on the folded paper icon on the lower right corner to drop a pushpin. If you've never done this in the Map app, you'll find that it shows a number of quite interesting options:

iphone share map location 3

For this task you'll want to "Drop Pin". Now on the map you'll see both the blue indicator of your current location and a purple pushpin that you've just added.

iphone share map location 4

Now that you have a Dropped Pin, tap on the ">" just to the right of the address in the balloon and you'll see more information about that spot:

iphone share map location 5

You can guess what to do here, I bet. Click on "Share Location" on the bottom and...

iphone share map location 6

There ya go. You can email the map location and information or you can send it via text message (known as "MMS" or multimedia messaging service). Since your goal is to duplicate what your boyfriend did, you'll want to tap on "MMS" here.

Now you'll see it pop up as a special sort of text message:

iphone share map location 7

Enter the recipient's name -- in my case, it'll be my friend Steve Oatney -- and you're just about read to go:

iphone share map location 8

A tap of the "Send" button and not only is the map pushpin sent, but it shows up within the stream of text messages between you and the recipient, as shown here:

iphone share map location 9
That's the secret. I hope you are not only satisfied that you know how to do this particular trick, but that you're inspired to experiment a bit with your iPhone too!

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Categorized: iPhone and Cell Phone Help   (Article 9657, Written by )
Tagged: apple iphone 4, google maps, iphone 3gs, iphone map, text messaging
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Reader Comments To Date: 1

shivalik said, on November 30, 2010 10:52 AM:

That is pretty cool. I love experimenting with my iPhone. Tons of cool tricks I have found so far.

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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