Simon’s Blog

This morning I took a stroll around the reflecting pool.  I have a nice map of my journey because all photos shot with an iPhone 3G are geotagged.

I had to lay down on the sidewalk to get the sun to bloom through the tree without cutting off the top of the Washington Monument.

This Saturday it was so sunny and pleasant outside we decided to visit the cherry blossoms in DC. We drove to the metro station which was thoroughly packed, when the train pulled up it was packed too, even though there is only one station before us. At each stop more and more people packed in, the crowd was full of murmurs about cherry blossoms.

The metro ride was worth it because the cherry blossoms were beautiful. We were lucky enough to run into a badass peditaxi rider (a bicycle with a two person carriage attached). He took us from the Tidal Basin to the White House in only a few minutes, weaving through cars and once or twice on the wrong side of the road, it was awesome.

This is my second HD YouTube video. I used Path Tracker, an iPhone 3G application to track our movements for over two hours. Below is the raw GPS data from Path Tracker.

Here is another Google Earth animation created from GPS data recorded with my iPhone.  This time I recorded a 21.5 mile track as I drove on the highway up to Wintergreen.  There are 1792 data points in this track, so the animation is smooth.  The colorization represents an ascent from 500 to 3200 feet.

While I was happy with the GPS data I recorded during my previous post, I couldn’t help but think that the rich data I had for each point was going to waste. I wanted to use the time stamp to animate my snowboarding track. I also wanted to colorize the track according to the speed I was going. Fortunately, I was able to export my path from Pathtracks.com in a GPX format, which I was then able to convert to an animated, colorized Google Earth file with GPSVisualizer.com. I then uploaded this Google Earth screen capture to YouTube (my first HD YouTube video):

Click here to watch in HD

I use the GPS capabilities iPhone a lot, navigating, finding restuarants, but the coolest feature is it’s ability to record GPS tracks.  There are 2 apps I use for this, Path Tracker and GPS Tracker.  Both of these apps allow you to export the saved data to Google Maps and Google Earth (.kml files). Then you can use Google Earth to make a badass video of the 3D terrain:

Path Tracker is $.99 on the app store and is worth it if you want to record and save your tracks of biking, hiking or whatever.  It is very easy to use, just click start path, and when you are done you hit save, and your track is immediatly available on pathtracks.com.  The better satellite coverage you have, the more data points your path will have.

Each data point on the path contains handy info like lat/lon, timestamp, and current speed.

It also automatically generates nice speed and elevation graphs.

Path tracker doesn’t require a your phone to have data connection, you can record your track and then save it when you return to coverage.  GPS tracker however does require a data connection, because it tracks your movement in real time on Google Maps.  You can send your family a link and have them track your progress in real time, you can also save your tracks and export them to Google Maps/Earth like Path Tracker, but it’s not as easy.  Path Tracker is specifically designed for recording and sharing paths, GPS tracker is a more general utility, best used when you want a 3rd party to be able to track you in real time over the internet.

GPS tracker is a great new GPS app for the iPhone.  You make an account on instamapper.com, then when you run the app on your phone you can track it’s progress from any computer in the world on a google map.  The app is really simple and the tracking is accurate.  And don’t worry about snooping, it says right on the site that snooping on other peoples locations isn’t allowed.