Route Sites Roundup

Since the appearance of Google Maps and the possibility of making mashups with it, a new type of social sites has been growing steadily. I call them route sites, and they allow their users to create routes (manually or by uploading a gps tracklog), search for routes, describe routes, view a route’s elevation, and so on. Here’s a roundup of the ones I’ve found that sport practitioners might find useful. They are all free to use:

• Bikely (www.bikely.com): routes are created by clicking on the map. You can tag the route, download it as a .GPX file, comment on it, see its elevation, tag it and see routes nearby. Especially for bikers.
• WalkJogRun (www.walkjogrun.net), Map My Run (www.mapmyrun.com), Favorite Run (www.favoriterun.com), Gmaps Pedometer (www.gmap-pedometer.com): these are all running route planners. Routes are also created by clicking on the map.
• Wikiloc (www.wikiloc.com): a GPS based route site. It lets you upload your GPS track and waypoints to create your route and share it with other users. This site recently won a mashup contest.
• Every Trail (www.everytrail.com): also GPS based. Similar to Wikiloc.
• Motion Based (www.motionbased.com): owned by Garmin, it allows you to upload your GPS (Forerunner, Edge) and workout data. Besides routing, it has some more features like workout analysis.

If you know other sites like the ones I’ve described please post a comment.

Posted in Route Sites, Web Resources, GPS, Multisport