Google Photos to the Rescue

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I had a very pleasant experience with my phone recently. It was one of those situations where I needed to get an answer quickly, but did not expect to find it. Not only did I find what I was looking for, but the ease of which I found it caused me to give a silent high-five to the developers who made it possible.

My wife texted me and wanted to know the name and location of the apple orchard we went to last year. As she was trying to coordinate plans with relatives, time and accuracy was important. Now, my memory is like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle - I can tell you where I went to lunch last week, and I can tell you what I ate, but I couldn't tell you both. I really needed help to solve this apple orchard conundrum.

I remembered that I had the Google Photos app on my phone, and it seemed to have some search capability, so that was my first stop. I opened the app, hit the prominent search button, scrolled down to places, and hey - there's a picture of my kids by a corn maze. I tapped on that group, and that opened a series of pictures which I immediately remembered as "the" orchard she and I were both thinking of. The location name didn't initially ring a bell, though, but that didn't surprise me. I typically just enter an address into Google Maps and hit "go" without always paying much attention to the specific town name. No matter. I tapped on one of the photos, hit the "info" button and saw a map with a pushpin. I tapped the map, Google Maps opens up, and BAM - there is the name of the orchard! Wait - it gets better. I tapped the location on the map, and a slide appears with the address, hours of operation, and other details. I hit "share" and quickly sent the name and directions to my wife. Keep in mind that this entire series of steps took me less than a minute! What's even better is that I got this on the first try. It was very easy, and very intuitive.

For years, the smartphone industry has been promising to make our lives easier. It usually doesn't work out quite like they say. In this case however, it felt like the technology actually did live up to that promise. Kudos, Google. Well done.

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