EveryTrail
Wednesday, January 31st 2007 | Ismael Ghalimi
From time to time, you stumble upon an new application that radically changes the way you look at things around you. Mosaic changed the way I look at computers, Google Earth the way I look at the world, and EveryTrail the way I look at my trips. Today, I had lunch with Joost Schreve, EveryTrail’s CEO, and got to use his application for one of my favorite activities: flying with friends in the San Francisco Bay Area.
EveryTrail is one of the most interesting mashups I know: it lets you upload the GPS log of your trip in order to generate a trail on Google Map. It also lets you geotag your pictures, allowing you to add snapshots along your trail. Then, it lets you publish your trip on a community website, where users can share experiences and useful pieces of advice.
For today’s lunch, we opted for Half Moon Bay (KHAF), and flew there. The map of our trail shown below clearly demonstrates the power of the tool. It shows that we took off in San Carlos (KSQL), flew through San Francisco International Airport’s Class B airspace, got asked to do two left 360 turns to avoid heavy jets taking off on runway 28 Left or 28 Right, flew over the city, made a right 360 over Alcatraz, flew over Sausalito, then went back through SFO’s airspace, because the coastline had only marginal VFR conditions. We then cut directly across the hills, landed in Half Moon Bay for lunch, then flew back to San Carlos. The system is so good that it even shows that my first attempt at landing back in San Carlos was not that great, and that we did a go around. The second attempt was a lot better, and we logged 1.4 hours of VFR flying.
Please follow this link if you cannot see the picture above.
Currently, there are 5 million portable GPS devices in circulation, which makes for a fairly limited market. But if you believe that most cellphones will be equipped with GPS capabilities by 2010, and remember that there are 900 million cellphones in use today, the opportunity for EveryTrail quickly looks a lot more interesting. I think these guys are up to something quite significant.
The company is three months old, and is quickly building a very nice user base. Moving forward, it will develop vertical applications, with different types of maps, such as topographic maps for bikers and hikers, or aeronautical charts for pilots. Joost is an all around nice guy, and a very driven entrepreneur, so I strongly encourage you to take a look at his application. And if you happen to be a blogger or a journalist, I’m sure he would not mind some free publicity.
Editor’s note: More on my flying there.
Entry filed under: Social Networking
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Can’t think of a better way to do a test! Excellent post!
[…] I don’t actually have a GPS receiver at present, but IT|Redux has a very good point about the site. GPS is becoming more and more common in phones (mine has it, but I haven’t paid to activate it). As GPS starts to become ubiquitous, trip planning of this nature becomes pretty impressive. […]
Ismael,
Neat tool, but it reminds me that the last time I last saw those sights was nearly 10 years ago. Can’t wait for the next time! One thing that I would suggest is provision for annotating the photographs, and tool tips.
-Bob
Bob,
Give it a couple of years, and I’m sure we’ll see cameras with in-built GPS that can store location details into the EXIF data. Then a real killer application—or more likely a mash-up—can emerge to look at the EXIF, take the GPS location, lookup Google Maps (or similar), and create a meta data tag (possibly in the EXIF comments) naming the place.
As memory and processing power become cheaper, this could all be done in the camera itself—after all, geographic locations don’t change that quickly, even though place names may. It would give a good “first idea” label, which users can expand upon later if they wish.
Of course, if your camera stores files in formats other than JPEG, or for other reasons does not maintain EXIF metadata, this approach won’t work. Similarly, if your post production graphics manipulation software strips the EXIF, you are similarly out of luck.
-Andy
Whoa! This makes me wanna get a GPS now! I’m trying to map out and share bicycle rides between the historic California missions, and this would make it much easier. And I could add the photos I take along the way. I wonder if the site allows for the addition of mp3 files too. I sometimes stop and make quick recordings about tricky parts of the route.
Dian,
Bikers tend to like the Garmin Forerunner 205. We used it to log yesterday’s flight, and it works beautifully. I do not think that EveryTrail lets you upload mp3 files, but I will forward your request to them.
Best regards
-Ismael
Craig,
Thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated.
-Ismael
Bob,
Let me know next time you’re in the Bay Area. I’ll take you up for a flight.
Best regards
-Ismael
It’s very interesting, almost magical.
Affectionately
-Mom and Dad
Thanks for the comments and lively discussion! I am glad that this post has already catalyzed at least one trip plan (Ismael & Bob’s flight), and one new GPS + EveryTrail user (Dian).
I try to answer all questions below:
Bob: Photos can already be annotated with name and description. The names and descriptions are not shown on the small iFrame above because of lack of space. Cool tips is a great idea. Right now notes are used for this, but it makes sense to have a dedicated section to put tips. It’s on the list.
Andy: I couldn’t agree more! And we are getting there very soon.
Dian: We are creating more ways to add multimedia, including video and mp3. It may take a little while to implement.
I really appreciate all the suggestions and positive comments.
-Joost
Ismael,
Thanks for the offer. I just have to find a way to get there!
Cheers
-Bob
Joost,
Just one more suggestion: sending an e-mail link to people that have put route instructions for their visitors with suitable photos. Having Google’s directions is nice, but a picture route would be great. Or perhaps a set of tour routes with photos to show what it is like in and out of season, etc.
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