Signing Up for a Google Account

Series Summary

Google built its reputation as the premier search engine on the internet. But the services the site offers extend far beyond basic search capabilities. Google now includes a calculator, currency converter and a dictionary. Now you can also Google stock quotes, flight and weather information, even movie times. And the site offers several ways to narrow down what can be a bewildering number of responses to your search terms.

Another advancement Google has made is to create an interface for maps and directions. In this free step by step instructional video series, watch as expert Drew Noah teaches how to use Google Maps. Learn how to navigate Google maps, how to get directions, how to get the different views, how to set up My Maps and Street View, how to get public transportation, how to put Google Maps on cell phones, and how to attach a Google map to a blog or email. Get started with Google maps today and don't ever get lost again.

Video Transcript

"MAN: Hi. In this series I'm going to be talking about Google Maps, and it's a free Web-based mapping program from Google and it's a very useful program. I'm sure most of you out there maybe have tried some kind of mapping program before and maybe even tried Google Maps, but I just want to show you everything you can do with Google Maps 'cause there might be some things you didn't even know about. And then once you've learned these things, you'll be able to use it much more efficiently and be able to find stuff easily and use some of the cool features that it has. One of the cool things I'm going to show you how to use is the My Maps section where you can actually create your own maps, and it's pretty cool. Another reason Google Maps is really cool is I really love the way they do their search results. Say, I search for Mexican food in Austin, I just click on these little things right here and they come right up, and they've got all these other information, details, reviews, photos, Web pages. So that's pretty cool. Google does directions really well too. You can see over here I can go to any step in the directions, I get a little map. I can also alter my directions by pulling the line like that. And one--a cool new feature they have that you may not know about is Google Street View where certain major cities in the U.S. right now have this 360-degree real street view. So you can go to pretty much any corner or intersection or any street and all these major towns and get this really awesome view and just navigate your way around. So you can get not only directions, you can see where you're going, what it's going to look like. So to get started to use some of the features in Google Maps, you need to have a Google account. Mainly the My Maps feature, you'll need a Google account. And for Google to save your favorite locations, you'll also need to be signed in to Google. So just real fast, how you create a Google account is just go to Google and search for Gmail or go to gmail.com, and you'll get to this page and just sign up for Gmail. And this is just the easiest way I know to get a Google account, and Gmail's actually a really useful program too if you ever want to get into that. But--so you just fill out all this information, your name, desired log-in, enter a password and a security question and then you've got just a word verification, then you want to read through the terms of service. And if you accept, you click right here and you create my account. And then once you've got your account, you can use the My Maps feature and Google will save your favorite locations like I said. But for most of what we're going to talk about with Google Maps, you don't need a Google account. So you don't necessarily have to do this right away to learn more about Google Maps. So I'll show you in detail what you can do with Google Maps in the following clips."