Veloroutes.org In The Washington Post!

Last year I was contacted by a freelance reporter working for the Washington Post, who wanted to do a story about cycling, hills, and online mapping. Lucky for me, she picked veloroutes.org out of the many mapping tools available!

I thought it wasn't going to run after all, since it had been so long. But yesterday the story was finally published! While it's not all about me & veloroutes, we do get a plug towards the bottom!

"It's not just mapping experts who rely on high-tech tools to figure out where to ride. Matt Mikul, a 30-year-old Seattle software engineer with a gears-are-for-sissies approach to cycling, wanted to gauge some of his area's formidable hills before attempting to ride them on his fixed-gear bike. With the help of data from Google Maps, the U.S. Geological Survey and a bit of calculus, he designed a hybrid application -- what Web designers call a mash-up -- that automatically calculates the steepness of a hill and creates a profile of the entire route. The self-styled tool he named Veloroutes and posted to the Web two years ago ( http://www.veloroutes.org) has been averaging about 10,000 users per month."

(I'm actually not quite yet thirty, and I haven't touched my fixed-gear bike for a few months... so the whole "gears are for sissies" part wasn't from me.. but I'll take the link nonetheless!)

Big thanks to the Washington Post for the article!

Terrain Maps!

I've added terrain maps to veloroutes! This new map type allows you to see the elevation changes, e.g. those crazy hills we all climb on our commutes, charity rides, group rides, training, whatever - we all know hills! (Unless you live in Florida I suppose)

Anyway, here's what the Cougar Mountain Climb looks like with the Terrain Feature:

New Veloroutes.org Feature: View Multiple routes at once!

What if you could draw all the bike-maps in the world onto one map? Hell, even Business Week wants to do it.

Well now you can, using veloroutes.org and Google Earth.

Here is the Seattle-area with bike multiple bike routes in Google Earth: (the yellow lines represent bike routes saved by users of veloroutes.org)


The Washington D.C. area with bike-routes overlaid:


The U.S with some bike routes overlaid onto it:


If you don't have Google Earth its worth the free download, and even runs on Linux!

If you do have Google Earth, go ahead and see this for yourself! It's much more interesting when you can zoom in on the routes to see detail. You'll need a broad-band connection to download this, but it's worth the wait.

Tips for viewing in Google Earth:

• Turn off Terrain, it seems to interfere with the route lines and erases them when you zoom in (checkbox in lower-left)
  
• Turn off Borders - this may make it easier to see the route lines (also a checkbox in lower-left)

This is all pretty experimental at this point, but eventually I'd like to include routes from Bikely.com and other mapping sites. Imagine a map of the globe colored with bike routes - it's possible!

Google Code - Featured Projects: Veloroutes

Going thru the veloroutes.org logs this morning, and guess who's site is featured by the Google Code blog?! That's right, Veloroutes!!

Here's the link: Google Code - Featured Projects: Veloroutes

Sweet! Well if they won't hire me then this'll do for now. =]

Top five finish, but not in a bike race

I started getting hits on veloroutes.org (the site I run) from a new URL the other day, and it's bicycling.about.com's Top Five Route Mapping Tools page!! Veloroutes made #4!!

Not bad considering how new my site is (just less than six months), and considering how established Bikely, Routeslip and the others are.

woot!