Improvement for Travellers' Blogs?
 

For some strange reason (Googling something unrelated) I ended up at this website:

http://triptracker.net/

Pretty cool system of hosting travellers' blogs with satellite photos as maps and decent sized (1024x768) photos available in a slideshow format. They link photos to places if you upload your GPS tracks too.

Any chance of getting something similar or is it too much like work?

REALLY hard at this point - but YES it's on the list. :)

Great find Ekke, best example of this I've seen yet. I'd love to just buy their technology and plug it in. OR get a programmer who likes it and wants to help add it.

We ARE working on partnering with others for GPS and tracking tech, so more to come this spring and summer.

have a great New Year!

A very nice example indeed!

I uploaded all my track-logs from my Island trip in 2006 to test the functionalities.
http://triptracker.net/trip/1489/

It works very well. Although the map is a bit slow on my computer. But I uploaded 2.3MB track-log :biggrin3: It takes a while to load the tracks, please be patient.

As a programmer I wanted to make a website like this for a long time. Very nice to see this one! The website is quite smart. You can make log entries, and the website maps the corresponding track-log automatically by date.

[edit]
And it automatically links certain track-points to places, and uses this places in the log entries. Very nice. The only thing you have to do, is add all the log entries and after that upload all the track logs. That's it! That's takes some time to develop I think. Perhaps its best to integrate existing software.

have a look at this. similar and quite fast too
http://www.travelpod.com

liked the "Where are people travel blogging from right now?" section

Or perhaps we could integrate the google maps api. You could build any website around that one an has many options.

Looks nice too:
http://blog.devogel.net/index.php/tracklog2006/

Planning - it's on the list!
 

The http://blog.devogel.net looks good, nicely done.

We have someone working on a Google map system to get all the Communities and repair shops etc on, and this would be a very cool addition to it. The only negative is the requirement for Google Earth to get the advanced stuff, but the basic web based one is probably good enough for our purposes, although you can't zoom in as is.

Anyone care to spec what we DO want?

I think:

1. Visitors should be able to see a track ala: http://blog.devogel.net where a traveller has been.
2. Need to be able to zoom in to get more detail when it's available - and face it, Google does NOT have a lot of detail for most of the earth, but will of course get more
3. Traveller needs to have easy input method from GPS device
4. System needs to integrate into a users HU blog.
5. An interface where visitors can download a track and input to their own GPS or map system.
6. Info on the track, more than just the map - e.g.
   1. road conditions, problems
   2. Food and gas stops
   3. Average speed
   4. Police problems
   5. Camping spots
   6. Rating of the route/ride/conditions/fun factor
   7. etc.
7. Video footage / photos
8. Comments - others need to comment / rate / update the track and conditions once they've ridden it.
9. must be more! Think about it from two viewpoints - the person out for a day ride at home, AND the traveller far from home. Remember that they could be on the same road but with a very different perspective and need for info.

Any input on this thought is much appreciated - we do plan to do it, but it's all priorities, and unfortunately it's not top of the list, other more important stuff like basic infrastructure, new blog software, new shipping and border databases, and meeting management system is taking all my attention right now. Once all that's done this is very much of interest. If someone - or someone's - would like to work on it in parallel we'd be delighted! :) We can't pay much but we can pay a little. Any volunteers? :)

Thanks,

I have mapped HU communites with google maps. Do a search there is a link somewhere. I would like to develop this but things like broken legs have gotten in my way.

I have mixed feelings. On one hand it is somewhat inevitable. On the other, I do not feel that the spirit of people who visit this website desire an ¨virtual motorcycle trip¨ If there is too much information will people stop exploring and finding hidden gems by accident. This stopped me from buying a gps until my current trip and I am converted, but I do not use it to navigate, I only pull it out when I am lost.

Also, remember google earth requires a client side program unlike google maps. It will require a lot of work for people to save their gps data and upload it with the details-- near impossible while on the road. I could envision a blog with information or a photo of a location and a click on a button or the image would take you to the map. Or looking at a map at getting a list of blogs with links to locations in the area. It would take some serious javascript programming.

Personally, I would like a map that integrates the information on this site such as HU communities, repair shops, moto friendly hotels, etc. Maybe even use it for Grant to sell more sponsorship ads. Another idea I had was for people to plot where they are and facilitate meeting fellow travelers on the road.

Remember the site mentioned are very relatively simple websites basically doing one thing. They do not compare to what HU is running, from what I know. Don´t get so excited by the latest website with a short skirt that says beta in the header. :)

Find the gems
 

Hi BklynDakar,

You know, on second thought I think you are absolutely right. Actually, the reasons you mentioned is also the reason why I still didn't put my own site together. And that's why sites as http://www.berndtesch.de have its charm. Find the gems! Even better, I am even thinking of putting my travel stories (I write a lot when I am on the road) not on a web page, but in a book, the good old paper stuff.

But of course people do not have to use the new features. And I think it should only be added as an extra. But I like the the technical issues involved :-)

Hans

If you are interested in the technical stuff, I have a lot of raw gps data that I could use some help formating for a database.

Excellent post! I agree wholeheartedly.

As for an app for HU with all this, perhaps Magnabagger and BklynDakar could chat about it offline. And anyone else interested? Skype or MSN or Yahoo etc good for a chat. Let me know who is interested and we'll see what we can put together.

See my post above for more.

Thanks!

Seems to me that http://www.motor-hotels.eu is just about exactly what we want. :)

I'm talking to him now, any comments?

I'm writing a little app right now for our trip to russia in september - it will take the csv files from the tom tom rider, and turn them into a routable map on google maps.

CSV files come compliments of this app

http://www.webazar.org/tomtom/tripmaster.php?lang=uk

At the moment I have to take the CSV file off the tom tom and upload manually - I'm looking at how I can hack the rider to do it automatically via the mobile... so any thoughts gratefully appreciated.

As soon as it's sort of working I'll post the link up and all the files etc needed to make it work... might be worth starting an open source project on this?

Actually thinking about it - as the app uses csv files which just contain names, long and lat values - as long as you can get your GPS to output that data in that format (ready to be converted to xml) then it would work....

Grant - motor-hotels is a handy little site - the google maps are quite simple to set up - would be more than happy to share all the code I make for my trip with HU.

Hi Matt,

thanks for offering to share your code, much appreciated! As for an open source project - sure! :thumbup1: I'm all for open source, especially as we can't afford to pay big bucks for a programming team to build all we want.

Anyone interested in being involved in an open source mapping, gps routes, etc as above project let me know by email (contact Horizons link at the bottom of page) - we can easily set up a central clearing house and area / temp web site to work in.

One comment for the purposes of HU - it's important that it's completely a browser based app - anything else is no good in an internet cafe. Google Earth for instance is gorgeous but of no use to us.

A Google Maps mashup certainly seems the way to go.

Fab - well consider me in - I work for the BBC and I run BBC Backstage - which is the BBC's Developer Community - it's a big melting pot of ideas and developers making stuff from BBC content - the guys involved are really into all this stuff in a big way so I'll post something to the list and see if anyone else wants to be involved in actually making the code.

m

Now then
 

I'm currently teaching myself perl/cgi/html and soon some php.

All this is going to be self taught, coming from a UNIX scripting backgound.

Question is, can I be of any help?

I'm looking for projects to get me some experience, but perhaps do not have enough experience to help yet.

Anyhow, basically the offer is there is I can help in any way.