Map My Tracks at SXSW
Going to SXSW? Then jump on your bike and take to the Austin streets to join the Mobile Social ride organized by Bike Hugger and proudly sponsored by Map My Tracks.
We’ve teamed up with the Bike Hugger crew to bring a unique blend of bike bling, tech buzz and social biking to this year’s proceedings. It’s a new experience that brings together the buzz of SXSW, biking culture and technology for those at the event and others that couldn’t make it.
We’re inviting everyone to ride along with us at the SXSW Mobile Social on March 15 in Austin and broadcast their rides live on Map My Tracks. Riders can share their progress live on the SXSW Mobile Social Hub on Map My Tracks that includes all the latest activities, tweet and buzz from around the event.
If you can’t make it to Austin don’t fret, you can show some solidarity by getting out on your bike anywhere in the world on March 15 and uploading it to the SXSW Mobile Social Hub by tagging it ‘SXSW’.
All SXSW Mobile Social Hub participants will earn themselves a coveted Mobile Social badge for their profile.
How to participate this year’s SXSW Mobile Social Hub
First get hold of a Map My Tracks app for your phone. Once installed just start an activity tagged with ‘sxsw’ and start riding. To let people follow live make it ‘Online public’. It’s that simple.
All rides tagged ‘sxsw’ will get included on the SXSW Mobile Social Hub for others to follow or replay later. Online spectators can get a live rider’s eye view of the event through Google Street View.
Ride out with everyone
Meet at Brush Square Park Austin, Texas just across the street from the Convention Center on March 15 at 5-7PM.
Map My Tracks is all about getting outdoors, having fun and sharing your passion with others. If you’re at SXSW, into bikes and like creating things then check out Built at SXSW on the Next stage in the new SXSW Trade Show on Tuesday, March 15th 2011 at 12:00pm. The Bike Hugger team will also be on hand at their booth where they will feature the work of the Built speakers, gear, street art, and mingle with the conference-going crowds.
Keep up to date with more Map My Tracks news at SXSW by following us on Twitter or Facebook.
If you don’t already have a Map My Tracks account sign up free and get ready for SXSW. We can’t wait to see all your rides.
Join the March Miles Cycle Challenge and win a signed Team Sky jersey
With signs of Spring just around the corner it's time to dust off the bike (if you haven't already) and put in some miles to get in shape for 2011 in the Map My Tracks March Miles Challenge. To help motivate you to get out riding and put in the miles the winner will receive a genuine Team Sky jersey signed by the pro riders.
The challenge is simple: ride hard and ride long in March and be in with a chance to win a genuine Team Sky jersey signed by the pro riders. The winner will be the person that logs the most miles ridden in March here on Map My Tracks.
First prize is Lars-Petter Nordhaug’s Team Sky jersey signed by fellow team mates including Bradley Wiggins, Alex Dowsett, Peter Kennaugh, Rigoberto Uran, Xabier Zandio, Juan Antonio Flecha, Christian Knees, Davide Appollonio, Dario David Cioni, Rusell Downing, Jeremy Hunt, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Kurt-Asle Arvesen and Lars-Petter Nordhaug.
The two runners up will receive a limited edition Map My Tracks jersey, new for 2011, and everyone that enters will receive a memento of their efforts with a new badge for their Map My Tracks profile. The badges are new so you’ll be amongst a select few that can brag about them.
How to participate
To participate in this challenge simply upload evidence of your rides to Map My Tracks and tag them ‘MarchMiles’. All tagged rides will be featured on the MarchMiles hub that provides a running total of everyone’s mileage so you’ll be able to keep track on what you need to do to win.
The challenge is free to enter and open to anyone that has a bike and can upload their rides to Map My Tracks. Qualifying rides will be any that are done in March 2011 and tagged with ‘MarchMiles’. Rides can be uploaded and tagged directly from a Map My Tracks mobile apps or imported from Garmin devices and any that output a GPX file. You’ll need a free account on Map My Tracks to participate so if you don’t have one already sign up now or log in with your Facebook account to get started.
We’ll be announcing the winner during the first week in April after all the miles have been checked. We’ll be making sure that only cycle rides are taken into account so don’t be tempted to jump in the car instead.
Getting started
To participate make sure you:
- Have a Map My Tracks account. It’s free so sign up now.
- Upload and tag your rides with ‘MarchMiles’
- And finally, get the miles in and keep on eye on the March Miles Challenge Hub.
Good luck to everyone. Stay safe on the roads.
Introducing Teams on Map My Tracks
We recognize that no everyone likes training on their own and that it's important to have the support of like-minded individuals around you when attempting your next challenge. That's way we have added Teams to Map My Tracks. Teams are an easy way to group together all the activities from people that share your interests and passion. They let you build your own community around the activities and topics you are passionate about.
You can start a team for just about anything you want. It might be to:
- Share your activities with other sports club members;
- Show your coach/personal trainer how you’re doing;
- Train for the next big challenge with friends;
- Share your workouts with work colleagues;
- Or, simply to start a discussion around a sport.
Although activities form the basis of a team it doesn’t stop there. Teammates can start discussions, add notes and videos to share their experiences with others.
So how does it work?
Creating a team is easy. Give your team a name and away you go. You can customize your team with a logo and link to external websites.
If you create the team you automatically become the team captain. This means that you authorize who is in your team. You’ll get email notifications when someone wishes to join the team.
Team activities
Once you become part of a team all of your activities will automatically be included in the team profile. Your teammates will be able to see how you’re getting on and comment on each activity. All of the activities from each teammate will be added to the team training room.
Along with the latest activities each team training room features a weekly tally of the activities stats including distances, calories, duration, activities done and a team calendar. For those that like to show off there’s also a leader board featuring the overall distances from each team member.
Notes, discussions and videos can be added by any teammate. These only ever appear within the Team training room and teammates are the only people who can contribute and comment on these.
Joining a team
If you’ve spotted a team that you want to join you can either be invited to join it by an existing team member or make a request to the team captain to join. Team captains must approve each member before they can participate in a team training room.
Team hubs
Every team training room comes with its own team hub on Map My Tracks. Teams Hubs showcase the activities carried out from each team members and include any live activities that are taking place. You can see the Team Sky pro cycling hub here.
It’s over to you
Teams are open and ready to use so go and start your first team. We have plenty more features planned for teams but do let us know what you’d like to see included in your team.
Share notes and videos with your followers
We're keen to make sure that our users have various ways to update their profile here on Map My Tracks and share their passion for their chosen sport. Activities have always been the focus of people's profile but starting today it's possible to add short notes and videos to your profile.
Notes are a great way to add short messages for yourself and your followers. Just like each public activity, notes are visible on your profile page and also on your followers home pages for them to comment on.
There’s no character limit on notes so feel free to write as much as you like. Basic HTML is supported to help add some formating to your posts if you need it.
Videos can be added from any service that lets you embed their videos. Each video added will appear in your public profile and also on your followers home page.
Both Notes and Videos are added from the ‘My Activities’ page. You can see how they look on my my profile.
We have more sharing options planned but for now we hope you enjoy adding notes and videos to your profile. Now let’s see some videos or notes!
Map My Tracks OutFront for iPhone is FREE to download in January
With 2011 now here the New Year brings with it some renewed optimism and desire to stay fit, healthy and active. To help kick start your 2011 fitness goals we are making our iPhone app OutFront free to download during January (normally $5.99). Whether you are into running, cycling, skiiing or walking OutFront will track your progress all the way and with live tracking also free you can share you latest activities with your friends while you are doing them.
OutFront is an all-sport GPS tracking iPhone app from Map My Tracks that measures how fast, how far, how many calories burned, where you went and analyses your performance mile by mile, second by second, stat by stat. It lets you track live to show your friends and family how you are getting on or how you’re doing in races.
Simple one tap to start
When you are ready OutFront will record your activity. Live if you want or simply for yourself.
Explore and discover new routes
It’s super simple to discover new nearby routes and activities by others on Map My Tracks.
Share your passion
OutFront lets you share activities the way you want to. Share it live with friends on Map My Tracks, post tweets when you start or stop an activity or simply update your status on Twitter and Facebook when you’re done with your activity. Not into sharing? That’s not a problem simply keep your activities private and you’ll be the only one to see them.
OutFront is available in five languages including English, French, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese.
Interested in trying it out?
Discover more ways that OutFront can help keep you motivated for 2011. Download OutFront from the App Store.
Already using OutFront?
Keeping fit is more fun with friends. Tell your friends on Facebook or share with your followers on Twitter.
Class of 2010
To celebrate the passing of 2010 and the start of 2011 we've put together the first Map My Tracks Year Book featuring the Class of 2010. It never ceases to amaze us just how many people around the world have chosen to use Map My Tracks and this Year Book goes some way to say thank you and showcase just some of the activities carried out of the past year.
Map My Tracks gets a iCalendar activity feed
We are always looking for ways to make it easy for you to re-use the information within your Map My Tracks profiles. That's why we have added an iCalendar feed of all your activities. Every activity is added to a personal iCalendar feed that you can subscribe to with an iCalendar-compatible calendar program.
The personal iCalendar feed is available on your ‘My activities’ page and includes details of when each activity was done along with a breakdown of how you got on. Here’s how it looks if you subscribe to it on an iPhone.
The iCalendar format is compatible with a range of calendar apps like Google Calendar, Apple iCal or Outlook. Each time you add an activity to your profile on Map My Tracks your iCalendar feed is updated with the details and populates your calendars with the activity.
This small, but useful, update gives you another way to monitor your activities carried out on Map My Tracks.
Hope you enjoy using it.
Show your appreciation for an activity by liking it
As part of an ongoing round of enhancements we have added a small but useful addition to the site today. Now if you like the look of someone's activity you can show your appreciation by liking it. Simple really.
Likes are an easy way to compliment or motivate other user’s activities here on Map My Tracks. Given their simplicity you won’t be surprised to find that they are easy to use. On any activity you can like it by clicking on the Like icon on the map. If you’re on someone’s profile or your own home page then you can like each activity in the list.
And that’s it. As I said, a small but useful addition to help motivate and show your appreciation. We hope you like using Likes.
Create a Hub your club, team or event and take it with you
Last week we launched Map My Tracks Hubs for events, clubs and teams to use as an easy way to group activities and track everyone live. To make Hubs even more useful we made it possible to embed them on your own event or club website.
Since Hubs are a fast and easy way to bring live tracking to an event, team or group’s activities we wanted to make sure that it was just as easy to take a Hub away with you and place it on your own website. Embeddable Hubs let you easily add live tracking to your website or simply to showcase all the activities from your participants in the run up to an event.
Hubs can work really well to bring together everyone’s activities before, during and after an event or race. If you’re part of a sport club then create a Hub for your club. If you’re running an event then create a Hub for everyone to add all the training they do before the event then use a Hub to showcase the event live on the web. Since hubs are so easy to set up you can have as many as you need for your participants.
Getting started with embeddable Hubs
First create a Hub for your event, club or team by simply deciding on a tag. Then tell everyone about it and have them sync or upload their activities on Map My Tracks with the tag.
For example, our local sailing club, Whitstable Yacht Club, uses a tag of ‘wyc’ so that all their members can add their racing to the club’s hub.
To embed a Hub on your website first browse to the Map My Tracks Hub then copy code to use on your website.Hubs appear on Map My Tracks under the address format of mapmytracks.com/explore/tag/yourtag. So to follow the example for Whitstable Yacht Club their Hub is online at www.mapmytracks.com/explore/tag/wyc.
Once on the Hub click on the embed option on the map and copy the code to your own website. It’s that simple.
Whitstable Yacht Club have embedded their hub on the club website which can be used to showcase live or recorded activities throughout the season.
Adding activities to a Hub
Once a Hub is up and running it’s easy to add activities to it. For live tracks simply use one of the Map My Tracks mobile apps and track live with the choosen tag. In the case of Whitstable Yacht Club the activities would be tagged ‘wyc’.
It’s possible to add recorded activities to any hub either from our mobile apps, as GPX or direct from any Garmin device. As long as apply your choosen tag to each activity they will appear in your Hub. At present, it is not possible to upload activities to a Hub using the email dropbox.
Why use Map My Tracks Hubs?
- They are fast and easy to use with no set up or registration
- You can easily create a Map My Tracks Hubs on the fly when you need them just by tagging activities
- They are the simplest way to broadcast live action from your event, race or club
We’ve tried to make Hubs as simple as possible to use so that you can start to add live tracking to your own website. We have lots more planned for Hubs so do let us know what you’d like to see added to make them even more useful.
We hope you enjoy using the Hubs.
Map My Tracks launches Hubs for sports events, teams and clubs
Hubs are a fast easy way to bring live tracking to an event, race, team or group and best of all Hubs are free to use. They are perfect for events and groups of all sizes and require no website set up and no registration - just tag your activities and your done.
Hubs make is super simple for event organisers, sports clubs, team or groups to track their participants or members live for online spectators to follow. To create a Hub for your event, club or team simply decide on a tag, tell everyone about it and have them sync or upload their activities on Map My Tracks with the tag.
Find out more about how to create your own Map My Tracks Hub.
Why use Map My Tracks Hubs?
- It’s fast and easy to use with no set up or registration
- Easily create a Map My Tracks Hubs on the fly when you need them
- Follow everyone live on one screen and use it at your event or race
- Build dynamic online communities around your event, team or club
- It’s the simplest way to broadcast live action from your event, race or club
We’re looking forward to seeing how Hubs get used. If you need a more comprehensive tracking solution for your event or race contact the events team and we’ll put together a dedicated solution for your event.
