The Trail Log

Gizmodo has a blog post about an unnamed GPS maker being “Scared Shitless” by the prospect of the iPhone having a GPS unit. I call BS. If anything, I think the GPS-enabled iPhone is going to make people more aware of GPS and possibly boost sales in the long term.

I’m salivating at the thought of a GPS-enabled iPhone device. Services like Brightkite, and my own personal projects rely heavily on location. Having that in my phone is going to be awesome. But the market for GPSes is far and wide. Is the iPhone going to replace automotive GPS devices? That have the maps preinstalled and work locally? No way. Hiking devices? Not a chance. Having the topo data in the middle of nowhere is key.

My hope is that the iPhone will actually get more people thinking about how GPS can be used in all aspects of their lives. The one area where the iPhone might affect sales is maps. I hate having to pay for updated maps. I sort of get it, but I think it’s annoying. If the iPhone can change how the GPS companies sell maps, that will be a good thing for consumers. I’m willing to pay for updated maps like I do with a data plan, but right now they seem way too expensive for me.

Today is the 55th anniversary of the very first ascent of Everest. I’ve been reading a book, Mountains of the Mind, that is a great read and today seemed like a pretty good day to mention it. The book attempts to answer the question “why do all of these people risk their lives to climb mountains?”. Even today climbing Mount Everest is dangerous. 55 years ago it was completely insane. Gear wasn’t as good, technology wasn’t as advanced, and getting help if something went wrong was much, much tougher. Hillary and Norgay were tough, tough dudes

The book works its way through the philosophical history of mountaineering. It talks about how humans first thought of the world and how mountains went from being seen as annoying obstacles to thrilling adventures. It’s a great read for the history, the psychology, and the stories from the mountains.

Backpacker.com recently rolled out a new website with a bunch of Web 2.0 goodness including a mini Flash UI and integration with the ever-awesome Google Maps Terrain feature. The site also added some community aspects so that you can submit trip reports, gear reviews, video/photo uploading, and rating features. They’ve also added a bunch of social bookmarking links so you can share with all of your social networking friends (though it doesn’t work on individual trips sadly - I think it’s a bug). All in all it’s a pretty good revamp and it’s made Backpacker a heckuva lot more useful to me.

I have a couple of nitpicks about the site however. One is that with all this Ajaxy goodness they didn’t take the time to make photo uploading easy. Instead of letting me upload any photo and doing some basic cropping and resizing I have to stick within the guidelines. Also, when using the trip finder, it’s hard to find things by activity. For instance, if I’m looking for a backpacking trip instead of a hiking trip I’d like to be able to see that before I click on it. You can sort of tell with mileage but it’s not perfect.

But in general it’s a great site and a great way to find interesting places to go. Once you drill down on a trip you can download the waypoints, see the trip plotted on a map, comment, and rate the trip. Another great feature of the enhanced Google Maps that they use is you can get the Topo data as well as the Terrain data. I think Backpacker.com will have an easier time of building a community than, say, Outdoorzy, just because of the built in readership.

But no APIs show we’re still in the infancy of Web 2.0 in the outdoors. But the new Backpacker is a good start.

National Geographic just rolled out a beta of their new TOPO! Explorer website. It’s got a really nice Ajaxy-Google Maps interface but with real, genuine topo data, something that’s impossible to get on the web. I took a look at the source and they’re using all of the technology-goodness of Google maps but sadly there isn’t any kind of API so we can start creating topo-mashups of our very own.

The site has some great features. You can upload GPX data, geotag your photos and videos, then share all that data as a trip. You can also buy Topo maps (a key feature for National Geographic). Having all of this Web 2.0 goodness with the Topo data is awesome but it does leave me hungering for more. I’m totally fine buying software to sync with my GPS. And I think freeing the data and letting people do awesome things with it would only drive more sales. But what do I know.

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