One thing that has always bothered me when out ‘Social Hiking’ is that most of my tweets lack context when published to the world. Whilst anyone viewing your map can see the location of your tweet in the context of your overall route (whether that is a short walk, a multi day hike or an epic global adventure), your tweet seems isolated amongst the general noise of a Twitter stream.
A chat with Jilly Sherlock on the adventure so far and what’s next!
On Saturday 9th April 2011 at 11.12am Jilly Sherlock set off from Felixstowe on a heavily laden bike ‘heading East’ – on 9th November, 7 months to the day since leaving, she arrived in China having cycled a whopping 9955km with at least 60000m of altitude gain – with every kilometre shared on Social Hiking. Whilst taking a break before the next leg of her journey, I caught up with Jilly for a quick email chat about the adventure so far and what her plans were for the next leg.
Video integration live and post-event with Bambuser
Before today, video integration was limited to Qik – now essentially a limited and premium app. Judging by the discussion on our Google+ page, video integration seems to be something quite a few users are interested in.
After a suggestion from Hendrik at Hiking in Finland, keen Social Hiker Pilgrim Chris took on the baton and got in touch with Bambuser, a nifty video app, about possible integration. The team there were really helpful and interested in what Social Hiking does.
Thanks to their easy to use API, I am please to announce that Bambuser integration is now live!!
Like the Qik integration, your Bambuser videos can be viewed in-page by visitors whilst looking at your map – we have added a check for live streaming videos and added an appropriate message to notify visitors that your video is live right now (so they can interact with you direct through Bambuser’s website).
Social Hiking will keep an eye on the status of your last 25 videos, and will automatically update the video status (live or not) and the title (so you can update your title later). There is currently no ‘garbage’ collection (removing deleted or videos set to private after being published) – for now Bambuser displays a suitable notification and this feature will be added at a later date with the media management tools on their way.
The most exciting feature of Bambuser however is that, like Audioboo, Picasa and Flickr, the date used for videos is the date the video was created (not the date uploaded) – this means that you can record your video and upload it later when you are back in signal (or have stopped for the night) and Social Hiking will still link the video to the correct location.
Bambuser videos can also be directly geo-located, and in the future an option will be available to use this information to create a beacon on your map (ideal for those users who do not use ViewRanger, Instamapper or SPOT).
For information on how to sign up and download Bambuser, please have a look at: http://bambuser.com/. To link your Bambuser account to Social Hiking, click ‘Linked Accounts’ and choose Bambuser from the list!
A big thanks to Hendrik, Chris and the team at Bambuser for making this happen so fast!
N.B. The integration has been tested for GMT – it should work for BST and other time zones, but this has not been tested. If you encounter any linking issues, just let me know and I will investigate!
Brief summary of new features!
After a huge amount of work, the update to Social Hiking is finally live!
Here is a brief run down of the major new features and changes.
Site update this weekend!
If everything goes to plan, the new version of the site will finally be going live this weekend (on Saturday).
You do not need to do anything during the upgrade, but there are a few things to take notice of:
Sometime on Saturday morning, login to the existing site will be disabled and the media and location imports will be disabled – all existing maps (including those embedded on your websites) will still work, however no new maps will be created
For about an hour or so, the database will be upgraded and transferred to the new site. Although this is quite a major process, backups will be taken in case there is a problem. Once completed, the media and location imports will be switched back on (and will collect any new data sent during the transfer) – and finally the domains will be transferred. Within 24 hours (at most) you should start to see the new site and be able to access the new features.
The domain for the new site will be http://www.shareyouradventure.com – however all existing web addresses and links will continue to work for the foreseeable future.
During the transfer, automatic map sharing will be disabled – this will be switched back on as soon as possible once the transfer is complete.
One of the new features is the ability to set an activity for each map – by default all maps will be transferred as hiking maps, however if you want all your maps to be set as another activity by default during the transfer, please let me know!
The feedback from the testers has been really positive, so please bear with me during the transfer – it will be worth it! Once the site has been transferred, and I am happy everything is working, I will post a series of articles on the new features!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Share-Your-Adventure-Social-Hiking/250030038360410
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/socialhiking
Get Satisfaction: http://getsatisfaction.com/shareyouradventure
ViewRanger adds premium maps to my.viewranger.com
ViewRanger have added a major enhancement to their web-based route planning tool on my.viewranger.com. You can now plan a route using any premium maps (including Ordnance Survey) that you have previously purchased on your phone. You can also pay for an annual subscription to access all the maps in your region – and if you have previously bought maps using their map-creator they are offering a free six months subscription.
Compatibility problems linking your Twitter account to ViewRanger
Whilst I have been running tests on the new version of Social Hiking (it will be live soon I promise!), I have finally put my finger on an issue I have been noticing over the last few weeks on my own Social Hiking maps with extra data appearing. This is being caused by ViewRanger’s recent addition of Twitter support.
T-shirt Competition
About a month or so ago I posted out a limited number of Social Hiking t-shirts to a few lucky Social Hikers. At the time I made some mention of a prize for the best photo of a t-shirt wearer, but I have since been reprimanded for not making the competition official (with an official closing date etc.). With that in mind, here are the details:
ViewRanger / InstaMapper battery usage tested (on Android)
Battery life is a pretty critical issue if you are using Social Hiking with an app on your phone. One of the most frequent questions I get asked is which is better on your battery when used with Social Hiking – ViewRanger or InstaMapper. So I decided to find out (on Android)!
Handful of updates
Today I rolled out a number of fairly minor updates to the site – here is the full list (in the order I did them rather than in order of excitement!):
daylightgambler: Hi Andy,
Unfortunately part 1 is largely down to the Twitter client y...
Andy Bryant: Interesting new development! I tried it today with a photo tweet. Stat...
(Mum) Sheila Sherlock: Thanks Phil for providing the service that has helped my follow my ama...
ann: speechless...
hendry670: Great job with the update - really impressed....