Sharing Your GPS Tracks & Sat Nav Routes
Sharing Motorcycle & Other GPS Tracks, Trails & Routes
One of the cool things about using a Satellite Navigation System (GPS) is that it gives you the ability to share your trip data and to use other peoples GPS ‘Tracks’ and ‘Routes’. There are lots of ways to do this, many online resources for sharing GPS routes and online repositories of uploaded GPS route files ready to download.
I’ve recently been having a look at EveryTrail.com where you can Map trip routes from your GPS enabled phone or GPS Sat Nav system, add trip photos to the maps you create and you can then add your maps & photos to your blog or website.
Here’s an example: Weston Super Mare to Popham Airfield
Maps can be downloaded for viewing in Google Earth or in GPX (Garmin GPS) file format – see below for links on conversion of GPS files from one format to another.
EveryTrail – EveryTrail is a global web2.0 platform for geo-tagged user-generated travel content that’s changing the way millions of people share travel experiences and plan trips. EveryTrail makes it easy to share travel experiences, through interactive maps that include photos plotted along your trip route.
EveryTrail is free and useful for a wide variety of trips – including road trips, sight seeing tours, sailing trips, hiking, cycling, flying, hang gliding, geocaching, skiing, kayaking trips and more. EveryTrail has trips from over 80 countries in all corners of the world.
EveryTrail quick review: Online application, no program download required, upload GPS files from your PC or direct from your SatNav or draw your own trip. Upload photos from your PC, Flickr or previously uploaded to EveryTrail, all of which can be GeoTagged. Plenty of scope to add trip and photo information/details. Uses Google Maps. Integrates with FaceBook and Twitter.
The Find Trips feature is good, e.g. 17,660 for the Uk, 77,999 for the USA to date which are divided into a large list of subcategories, motorcycling being the obvious one here 🙂 I found 106 motorcycling trips within 240 miles of me. Impressed, although I’ve not tried the alternatives yet.
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LINKS
Motorcycle Ride Routes – a few good links to online resources where you can view and/or download motorcycle and other GPS routes.
Useful software (freeware):
TYRE TomTom GoogleMaps GPS Route Mapping Utility
WinGDB GPS Software Utility – Convert Tracks to Routes and Vice Versa
ITNConv – GPS Routes (Mapping) & Route File format conversion utility
Creating GPS encoded photographs – for free!
http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/gmaptogpx/# – a utility that will create a GPX track of your route. In some GPS’s you can import this as your route. If not then GPSBabel may be able to convert it for you.
http://www.nearby.org.uk/multi-to-kml.php – another utility for Google Maps. It’ll save the map as a KML file which can be used to import to Google Earth. Possibly use as a route for some GPS units.
Garmin ActiveTrack(NVM) to GPX – a utility to convert Garmin’s Active Track into GPX format. Good utility if you don’t have save and export capability on your Garmin
http://www.gpsbabel.org/ – a utility to convert various GPS formats to other formats.
Have fun! 🙂