Just got a Milestone and am impressed with the hardware but disappointed with Motorola’s attitude towards European customers regarding the closed bootloader. [An official statement from the manager of the technical team behind the MOTODEV program at Motorola] says “This practice is driven by a number of different business factors” but does not explain further – what are you hiding, Motorola? You seem to be underestimating

• (a) the potential of a technology community which promotes collaboration rather than hindering it (why do you think Android grew so quickly in the first place?), and

• (b) the importance of regular, open communication with your customers.

Sadly if this continues, I expect HTC and your other competitors will leave you far behind.

1. In MyTracks, copy the track to SD card as a KML file
2. Plug the phone in via USB and mount the SD card’s filesystem
3. Copy the KML file from the kml directory to a local directory.
4. Open the KML file in an editor, search for 7f0000ff (light orange) and change it to ffcc66cc (purple) or something more visible
5. Ensure the track name is correct
6. Go to http://maps.google.co.uk/ (ensuring I’m signed into my google account)
7. Click “My Maps”
8. Click “Create new map”
9. Click “Import” and upload the KML file
10. Edit the route if necessary and save changes.
11. Sometimes it’s necessary to click on another route and back to this new one, in order to make the “View in Google Earth” link appear.
12. Copy the URL of the “View in Google Earth” KML link and paste it into the Google Maps *search* bar (yes that’s right, *not* your browser address bar)
13. Click “Link” near the top right
14. Share the link with friends and/or paste the embeddable HTML into a new blog post.

The copy of the “View in Google Earth” KML link back into the search bar in step 12 is necessary to stop Google Maps from splitting the route up into multiple pages, which would only show shorter segments (“lines”) of the overall route at one time.