Patent ID: 8369867

Claim:
A method comprising: presenting a graphical placemark on a map display, the graphical placemark corresponding to a geographic location; obtaining a selection of the graphical placemark; in response to the selection of the graphical placemark, presenting a graphical object that includes information associated with the geographic location; receiving a selection of the graphical object; in response to the selection of the graphical object, presenting a user interface for specifying two or more mechanisms for sharing the geographic location; obtaining input to the user interface specifying a mechanism for sharing geographic location data for the geographic location with a device, wherein the mechanism is one of email or text messaging; encoding the geographic location data, where the encoding reduces a size of the geographic location data, wherein the geographic location data comprises a uniform resource locator; presenting a messaging interface in response to obtaining input specifying a mechanism for sharing geographic location data; sending the encoded geographic location data with a message to the device using the specified mechanism, where the message is modified to signal the presence of the geographic location data associated with the message, comprising: displaying in the messaging interface a graphical message object having a graphical element indicating that the message is associated with the geographic location; receiving textual input; and displaying the textual input in the graphical message object.