Version 1.5 is available to download for all compatible mobile phones and includes some significant changes that, we think, make Map My Tracks even more useful.

What’s new in this version?

Offline tracking

It’s now possible to use Map My Tracks in an offline mode. This lets you track your activities without needing to have a persistent internet connect. This great for using Map My Tracks in remote areas where there is no mobile phone network. It can also help to keep any data charges down. At the end of an activity it’s easy to sync the session to your online Map My Tracks activity log or share it on Twitter with others.

My activities

This version introduces and activity log stored on the phone so that you can review and analysis each session without having to go to the website. It’s possible to manage each activity session direct from the phone: analyse, share or delete any activity created.

Set up Map My Tracks the way you want it

A host of new settings let you set up some default preferences. These include map options, activity type, sync status, privacy status, location sharing with third parties and backup frequency.

Making the most of Map My Tracks

To get the best out of this version we strongly recommend that you set up the application’s permissions on the phone. This ensures you can avoid any unnecessary authorisations message that appear during an activity session. Read the user guide for guidance on how to do this on your Nokia or Blackberry phones.

We’ll be covering more of the new features in more detail over the next week. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the new release. Download it now.

Using the mobile event manager is simple

To use the mobile event manager browse to www.mapmytracks.com/m/ on a mobile phone then log in to the My events page. You’ll need to first create your event from a desktop browser but having done so everything else can be managed from a mobile phone.

Once the event in place new races can be added direct from a mobile phone. Active competitors will appear within the event manager ready to start or stop race tracking when required.

We hope you enjoy using the mobile event manager. If you have any suggestions of new tools or features we’d like to hear from you.

Twitter is all about real-time conversations with people so it made sense to let event organisers post tweets when managing events.  It’s super simple to use and has the added benefit of letting other Twitter users join in conversations about the event.

So how does it work?

As an event organiser you may already be using Twitter to promote your event and have conversations with people. If so, simply add your Twitter account details when creating an event. If you don’t have an account then all race news is posted to Map My Tracks on Twitter. Either way, race news can be posted from within the event manager or through Twitter. All tweets using the event’s tag will be displayed to spectators watching the racing action on Map My Tracks.

For example, the upcoming Round the Island Race has an event tag of RTIR2009 on Map My Tracks . All race news (tweets) from the event organiser will carry the hashtag of #RTIR2009. The really great part is that this tag can also be used by any other Twitter user to join in the conversation and have their tweets part of the event on Map My Tracks.

We really hope you like this new feature. Please do let us know what you think.

Building on the first release that permitted the retrieval of activities we have added ways to track. One of the most exciting features of the API is how it lets developers track live if required. In short the API now also includes:

• Start activity
• Update activity
• Stop activity
• Get time

More information about how to use the API in our developer section.

If you’re a developer and interested in using the API go right ahead. If you have any questions please contact us at support@mapmytracks.com. 

What’s new in this version?

Version 1.4.6 is available for all compatible mobile phones includes a range of improvements that we think you’ll like. Here are eight good reasons to upgrade today:

• Improved interface design
• Maps can be turned on or off during an activity
• Activity type option now available when starting a track
• Event tracking optimised
• Elevation data added
• Clock counter optimised to avoid lag caused by phone’s with a lower memory
• Current and fastest pace calculation corrected
• Various minor performance enhancements

As ever, we strongly recommend that all users upgrade to the latest version. Upgrading is easy. To get started simply use your phone to browse to http://www.mapmytracks.com/install and download the latest version direct to your phone. Alternatively, download the latest package to your desktop and install it using your phone’s desktop suite.

Thank you to all the users that have given us some feedback on how you use Map My Tracks and way to make it even better. Keep the suggestions coming and we hope you enjoy the latest release. 

The Event Manager is free to use for event organisers and for competitors in races up to one hour long. For races longer than one hour competitors need to subscribe to the Map My Tracks Pro Plan giving unlimited tracking for £5.99 per month. Map My Tracks shares this fee with event organisers helping them to increase revenue from each event competitor.

The web-based Event Manager also allows the race to be shown on a big screen live to spectators and to online viewers. The built in tools provide each competitor with a comprehensive breakdown of their race performance as well as a print-out of their track itself. The Event Manager can also help event organisers monitor the safety of participants through accurate and reliable GPS tracking.

Map My Tracks MD Nick Tatt said “Our events customers told us they wanted low cost tracking that was simple to set up. With our new event system and revenue sharing plan, we have delivered everything an event organiser needs to easily incorporate GPS tracking into their event.”

The Map My Tracks Event Manager can be used to track a wide range of sports including sailing, running, cycling, orienteering, walking, canoeing, hot air ballooning, windsurfing, paragliding, hang gliding and rowing.

View more information about the Map My Tracks event management system
View the World Rally Championship event replay

We’ve made it easy to analyse the profile of the activity over the distance of the activity or over the time of the activity. Both offer something a little different and provide some interesting viewing. The graph tools let you zoom in to a particular phase of the activity to really get a close look at the data. 

The elevation data is drawn from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data and, in our experience, provides a more stable impression of the elevation in comparison to a lot of GPS elevation data acquired directly from a mobile phone.

Do let us know what you think. And, as ever, give us your feedback on this new feature and any other tools you’d like to see on Map My Tracks.

We’re really excited about this new feature and best of all it’s available free, under both the Free and Pro Plans, to use and upload as many activities as you like. Up until now it has only been possible to add activities directly by using the Map My Tracks mobile application but now it’s open to other devices.

Uploading an activity

Uploading an activity is easy. First export the GPX data file from your device then go to your My Activities page on Map My Tracks. In the sidebar click on ‘Import track data’. Fill out the form to give it a title, description and activity type then browse to your GPX data file you created earlier and click on ‘Import my activity’. It’s that simple.

Once uploaded the activity slots right in with your other activities and can be replayed, compared or shared just like all the other activities.

What is a GPX file?

Not sure what a GPX file is? In short, it’s a handy file format to move GPS data around. In the words of Wikipedia, “GPX, or GPS eXchange Format is an XML schema designed for describing GPS data between software applications.”

At present, the data import needs to be in a GPX file format. Most devices allow you to export your track data in this format. If your device doesn’t directly export as GPX there is a handy convector available from GPSBabel to help in the process.

As ever, we hope you enjoy this new feature. Let us know how you get on.

Once configured Friends on Fire shows your last know location as well as any friends you share with on Facebook. It also updates your activity wall with location and any signals that you make.

Set up your Facebook

To get started you’ll first need a Fire Eagle account. Set one up here if you don’t already have one.

Once you have your Fire Eagle account you’ll need to configure your Map My Tracks account to start sharing your location with Fire Eagle. This is set up your Map My Tracks profile page.

Click on Enable in the the Fire Eagle section. This will let you confirm that you wish to share your Map My Tracks locations with Fire Eagle.

The next step is to set up Facebook with Friends on Fire. Follow the onscreen prompts and you are all set up.

To update your location all you need to do it switch on sharing in Map My Tracks on your phone, adjust the frequency of updates and start ‘Where am I?’ or begin an activity.

Best of all, using Map My Tracks Where am I? tool is free to use with no limits on the amount of updates made. This makes it the perfect way to update your location with Fire Eagle and many other compatible applications. For more location sharing fun check out the for a full list of applications that Map My Tracks plays nicely with through Fire Eagle.

We hope you like this new addition as much as we do. Please let us know what you think by posting a comment below or getting in touch by email.

So what does this mean? If you’re reading this and wondering what an API is then skip this message and save yourself. For those of you who know your APIs from your apples then you’ll be interested to hear that you can start to retrieve Map My Tracks activities and track data as XML.

To start with, if you know the username of a Map My Tracks user you can get:

• their full list of public activities; and
• all geo data for each activity.

If you also know the password of a Map My Tracks users you can also get:

• their full list of private activities; and
• all geo data for each activity.

Read more about how to use the API in our developer section.

It’s just a start of course. There is a lot of data about activities and users on Map My Tracks, and we plan on making a lot of it accessible to developers. Make sure you let us know what you’d like to see in the API in the future. Leave us a comment.

The web-based event manager provides event organisers with a comprehensive suite of tools to manage all aspects of their event and race tracking. It continuously communicates with each participating competitor’s mobile phone and provides controls to start and stop tracking. As a web-based application it allows event organisers to control the tracking of their event from any internet-enabled computer.

The powerful Map My Tracks event manager is a practical solution that provides GPS tracking for mass participation sports events. It lets event organisers:

• Simultaneously track multiple competitors and display a bird’s eye view of the activity on the web
• Show it LIVE on the web for those that couldn’t make it
• Show it LIVE at race HQ on the big screen during the race for spectators
• Brand the race viewer with club or sponsor’s logos
• Entertain competitors with replays after the event
• Provide each competitor with a race breakdown of performance and a print-out of tracks
• and much more.

The Map My Tracks Event Manager combines tracks, add marks, controls all GPS devices and publish the races to the web. It’s great away for sports associations or clubs to benefit from affordable real-time GPS tracking to clubs.

Who should use the event manager

It’s simple. Anyone organising an outdoor event. It’s a great way to bring the action at events to a wider audience. It’s perfect for sports events like sailing, motor racing, rallies, cycling, running or just for fun.

Get started

The event manager is now in beta and open to use free of charge. To get started go to Events then click on the ‘Create a new event’. To create an event you will need a Map My Tracks account. Events can be created by users with Free or Pro Plans.

We hope you enjoy using the event manager.

You can download the most recent version or use your mobile browser to install the files over the air at www.mapmytracks.com/install.

For optimum performance on Blackberry devices, set up the network access and GPS permissions. This avoids annoying pop up dialog boxes when you start to track.
Navigate to Options->Advanced Options->Applications->Map My Tracks and set the relevant permissions to “Allow”.

This can also be done for S60 phones. This is typically available at Dashboard > Settings > Data mgr > App mgr > Map My Tracks > Options > Open. Here you can set the default access points and the connection permissions. This is quite useful when using Map My Tracks at an event as it avoids having to authorise a connection for a second time.

• share your sporting activity in real-time with others;
• get a breakdown of your activity (e.g., pace, split times, distance, speed);
• see where you are overlayed on maps direct from your phone;
• and much more.

Map My Tracks activity viewer
A powerful web-based activity viewer that let you explore your sporting activity or other public activities. It lets you:

• watch other LIVE public activities
• track your race with Map My Tracks and discover where your race was won or lost
• replay your tracks overlayed on street or satellite maps
• analyse distance, top speed, average speed, direction, and much more
• compare and replay two tracks together and watch your performance
• and much more.

Map My Tracks mobile viewer
A handy mobile web browsing tool that is great to follow other public activities directly from your own phone. When publically sharing your activity others can follow your progress by launching mapmytracks.com/m on their own mobile phones. This is compatible with any internet enabled mobile phone that has a mobile web browser. It’s great for friends, family or spectators to be able to follow your progress when you are out and about. You can find others around your area or log in and review your own activities.

Map My Tracks event manager
A powerful event manage system that lets organisers of mass participation sporting events to track and broadcast real-time locations of competitors live to the web. It lets event organisers:

• Simultaneously track multiple competitors and display a bird’s eye view of the activity on the web
• Show it LIVE on the web for those that couldn’t make it
• Show it LIVE at race HQ on the big screen during the race for spectators
• Entertain competitors with replays after the event
• Provide each competitor with a race breakdown of performance and a print-out of tracks
• and much more.

Last location map
Show your last location on your blog or website. The last location map updates a map each time you make a public track using Map My Tracks. This can be set up on your profile page.

Activity and location sharing
It’s easy to share your activities and location with other sites that you may use. Update your activity on sites like:

• Twitter
• Fire Eagle
• FriendFeed

This can be set up on your profile page.

There is a lot more that you can do with Map My Tracks. At events it’s possible for spectators to use their own mobile phones to follow competitors or see who’s approaching their position. Competitors can analyse where races were won or lost. It’s great as a training tool that can benchmark your performance and make it easy to review your progress over time.

Let us know how you use Map My Track.

Map My Tracks mobile is FREE and can be used on its own to follow others or can be used together with the Map My Tracks tracking application to update and view your progress. Think of Map My Tracks mobile as your mobile virtual spectator.

Accessing Map My Tracks mobile is easy. It’s web-based so point your mobile’s browser to mapmytracks.com/m/ to get started. Existing Map My Tracks users can log in and review their track activity directly from their phone. As it’s web-based it means that most internet-enabled mobile phones can use it to find and follow other Map My Track users.

We’re really excited about this new addition to the Map My Tracks service. When used in conjunction with our event tracking it is now possible for track-side spectators to follow the progress of competitors direct from their mobile phone. There’s a number of additional features planned in the pipeline but we hope you find it as useful as we do.

How does this differ from the tracking application I hear you ask? Map My Tracks mobile is specifically designed to view activity not to track your activity. To track your activities you still need to use the tracking application. On many phones it is possible to start tracking and also launch the phone’s web browser to watch your activity that way instead. Not that you need to do that as the tracking software gives you more stats and info but you might like to try it anyway.

For more information check out the summary for Map My Tracks mobile.

As with all surveys it is difficult to predict what our customers think of Map My Tracks. We spend a lot of time judging what our users’ are experiencing but having direct feedback from you all is infinitely more useful to us. The range of mobile phones and network carriers on the market make each users experiences unique and with their own challenges.

We’re pleased to see that the vast majority of responses have been very favourable with over 85% of you confirming that you would recommend Map My Tracks to others. For that, we can’t thank you enough. However, that still leaves 15% of our users not quite ready to do so which suggests to me that we have some more work to do.

We’ll be taking some more time to analysis the survey results and will try to incorporate some of the great feature requests that have been made. As ever, we wish to thank all of the survey participants for taking the time out of their day to complete the survey and look forward to having more sightings of you all on our horizons.

The new event management system works in conjunction with the Map My Tracks mobile phone GPS tracking system used by thousands of sportspeople worldwide. It allows race officials, sports clubs or coaches to easily connect with, and track the progress of each competitor that has a compatible mobile phone.

Following a year of development and rigorous testing, including a demonstration at last month’s World Rally Championship rally in Wales, the Map My Tracks system is now compatible with more than 100 mobile phones with more added all the time.

“Map My Tracks is leading the way in bringing clubs and events of all sizes innovative real-time tracking technology that fits their budget. Many clubs and events forgo the benefits of tracking an event because tracking systems have traditionally been out of their budget,” explains Nick Tatt, Map My Tracks founder. “Now with the launch of our event management system events of all sizes can broadcast live action on the internet.”

View more information about the Map My Tracks event management system
View the World Rally Championship event replay

We’re keen to hear your thoughts on how we are doing. 2008 was a busy year for us at Map My Tracks and we want to make 2009 even better. To help us we need your feedback.

It’s your chance to let us know what you think of Map My Tracks. Can we do better? Are there some tools or features that you would love to see included in the service? Did the service work as you expected? If so, let us know by filling out a short questionnaire that should take no more than a couple of minutes to complete. Any feedback you can provide, good or bad, is very much appreciated.

By way of thanks, we will enter each registered user that completes the questionnaire into a prize draw to win a six month Map My Tracks Pro plan subscription worth over £35.

Small print

To enter the draw you must be a registered user of Map My Tracks and have completed the questionnaire. The draw for the six month Pro Plan subscription will be carried out on Monday 19 January and will include all users that have completed the questionnaire before midnight (GMT) on Sunday January 18. The winner will be notified by email.

As ever, we strongly recommend that all users upgrade to the latest version. Upgrading is easy. To get started simply use your phone to browse to http://www.mapmytracks.com/install and download the latest version direct to your phone. Alternatively, download the latest package to your desktop and install it using your phone’s desktop suite.

Thank you to all the users that have given us some feedback on how you use Map My Tracks and way to make it even better. Keep the suggestions coming and we hope you enjoy the latest release.

Small change no. 1

Live track indicator - it’s now easier to see all live tracks when exploring tracks. The explore page markers now highlights the user’s live location to let you easily follow their progress.

Small change no. 2

Tracks near you - we’ve made the explore page first focus on tracks from your country. We’ve been overwhelmed with the number of users around the world that are using Map My Tracks. However, this meant that the explore page had grown to show the world map at all times and made it difficult to see the tracks and locations. Our solution - switch the the focus of this page to first show tracks near you. At present it zooms to show the tracks in your country . You’re not missing out on any tracks as all the latest tracks are still available in the side bar. Scroll over any one of them and you’ll zoom to the location.

Small change no. 3

Multilingual support - Tracks titles, tags, descriptions and comments all now support language characters from around the world. Yet another small but important change that makes it easier for local languages to be used with personalising track data.

We hope you like the changes and find them useful. As ever, keep your ideas coming. It’s always good to hear them.