Finally, real interaction between GPS handhelds and Google Earth. Trimble has partnered with Google to integrate GPS data with phones and other handheld devices with the Google mapping software. Get the layer for the google earth software and you will see little green hikers on the map. Clicking the hiker icons will reveal data, comments and photos from other users who have done that particular hike.
A quote from their blog forum:
through partnerships with magazines including Backpacker, Bicycling and Mountain Bike… resource for outdoors enthusiasts, or anyone who wants to do a little research before setting out on a hike. You can access lots of multimedia info on fitness and outdoor adventures, including routes, points of interest, pictures, video segments and even audio clips. With Google Earth, you can view hundreds of hikes that have already been logged and completed, and view personalized web content.
So you can view other peoples hikes with photos at specific points of interest! I can’t wait to get this software, the only downside I see is it appears to only work on Windows 🙁 Tremble, this looks like a fantstic product, please start a blog and make a Mac version!
The Frightened Turtle (I love this name), Wild Rye, Team Geared Up, E-Learning Service, Arcane, Lifehacker & Today’s Technology have a writeups and Soft Saururs has a review of the software.
I hope this product increases awareness of the outdoors and encourages more people to get out into the hills.
4 Responses
Sounds like a lot of fun to test out. I don’t have a GPS enabled phone, but it wouldn’t take too much to rig up something with a handheld and camera. Hmmm. Sounds like a project. 🙂
It looks like there may be some interesting synergy using Google’s new “My Maps” feature where you can save marked routes on a Google Map. You can download a Google KML file, and I imagine import it into Google Earth.
Hey SBB thanks for the info. i have a Garmin 60cx and am interested to see how this integates. I assume that with a GPS enabled camera phone, images would automatically be tagged with latitude and longitude coordinates.
Thanks for the shouts on the name.
I too am looking forward to really using this. I’m currently using MotionBased with my Garmin 301 to track my biking activity. May have to start carrying around a camera more often to put images on Google Earth.