As many of you will know map runner has been built using the Google Maps api (Application Program Interface) allowing us to offer you, the map runner, high quality maps & satellite images of the UK (and the rest of the world) so that we can all plot, save and share our running routes.

To give a quick description of Google maps, for those who don’t know, it features three view types:

• ‘map’ - showing road and landmark names and places.
• ’satellite’ - a mixture of high-resolution satellite images and aerial photography that can show detail up 6″/pixel in some places
• ‘hybrid’ - combination of the map and satellite views

Google maps features satellite imagery for the entire world to varying degrees of detail, while the map view is offered in the following countries:

Andorra, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia (Moscow only), San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey (Istanbul only), the UK and the United States.

Some map runners have got in contact with us complaining that either they can’t see some of their local off-road tracks on the ‘map’ view or when they try to zoom in to the desired area they don’t see a satellite image, rather they see a grey screen with the text ‘We are sorry, but we don’t have imagery at this zoom level for this region. Try zooming out for a broader look’. Firstly sorry to all those people who have been frustrated with this warning. Secondly, short of launching our very own map runner satellite (hmm one for the to-do list) there is very little that map runner can do to change this as we are relying on a 3rd party (Google). What we can do, though, is monitor when Google updates their satellite imagery and let you map runners know so you can see if your local area imagery has been improved.

The satellite images are particularly useful for runners who wish to plot routes in rural locations (these are some of the nicer routes in our opinion…less traffic and people!) so this is an important area to us. Google states on their website that they acquire

“the best imagery available, most of which is approximately one to three years old.”

They also state that they try to update the imagey as often as possible, but being a US based company a lot of their priorities lay within their own borders.

Having said that at the beginning of June 2007 Google released another large update to their imagery and the UK saw a significant upgrade to certain areas. The UK satellite imagery should now be

“Base 50cm coverage of nearly entire country”

(a full list of the June updates can be found here).

So in conclusion, if you’ve experienced the ‘We are sorry, but we don’t have imagery at this zoom level…’ error in the past when you were plotting a route, why not try again and see if your area has been updated.

Back on May 23rd we did a post about our map runner ’soft-launch’. Runners who use the site may have noticed we never really did a hard launch. This hasn’t been a problem, and it seems we underestimated the number of people who would use this site orginally as it is now filling up nicely and we have a good coverage over the UK of running routes for people to use.

Some of the highlight runs:

• Streety’s Helvellyn run aptly described as the ‘run from hell’. At five star difficulty rating this is one of the hardest on the site.
• The Cardiff Marathon route
• and makinaj2’s more leisurely route past Hampton Court and Kingston (check out those pics of Hampton Court)

So, in conclusion then, we didn’t really need a hard launch as it seems people are warming to the idea of map runner!

We are currently featured on the Web2.0 listing site ‘Neo Binaries’ - click here: Map Runner. It looks like we have been accepted as an official ‘web2.0′ website as no one has contested us being on there which is nice.

Web2.0 is second coming of the web, where users and communities are the main focus of a website. If anyone needs to know what ‘Web 2.0′ is about, take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.

We are now getting maps added from all over the world including the U.S., France, Germany and India, and so we would like to say hi to all our overseas users, and hope that they are enjoying the site!

We are aware however, that you will find it a little more difficult to find your running routes, or to add your own routes, as our postcode search facility only works for the UK at present. This is something we would like to address as soon as possible (we have a long, long list of things to do, but this is high in our priorities).

If in the meantime anyone has any feedback, suggestions etc. please email feedback@map-runner.com .

We’re looking to continually develop this site and the first (of hopefully many) site updates have just been released. We’ve added the following features:

• Calculate how many calories you burn with our new ‘workout calculator’. This is displayed with each map and gives you an estimate of how many calories you’d burn while running a particular route. You can update your profile with your weight to get a count thats tailored for you.
• Comment on your own route - we’ve updated the rating/comment process so that you can now comment on your own route (although you can’t rate it as that would’nt be fair). Now if someone adds a comment you don’t agree with then pull up the comment box and make your voice heard.
• Email notification of new comments/ratings to your runs - you’ll now be emailed when someone comments on your route so that you can have a look and respond to what other map runners think of your route.
• improved site layout - we’ve tweaked the site layout a bit to make things a little clearer.

This is the first of many planned site improvements, check back here for more development news.

If you’ve got any feedback on the changes we’ve made to map runner you can email us at feedback@map-runner.com

So you are looking at a route someone else has added and you wonder, ‘what is it like to run through those streets?’. Well wonder no more, we have just finished integrating Flickr’s API into the site. This means that when you click on some routes (more and more we hope) and you may see photo markers. Clicking on a marker will allow you to see a photo taken in that location by a Flickr user, in the hope that it gives you, the Map Runner, a better idea of where you are running.

At the moment the map runner administrators need to verify the images first as it seems a lot are unsuitable (personal pictures for example, and not pictures of monuments, sights etc.). This doesn’t stop a member of Flikr who also uses Map Runner adding their images and then letting us know so we can add it to the site.

http://www.map-runner.com/runners/maprunner/myruns/London-South-Bank

http://www.map-runner.com/routes/London-Marathon-2007 

Google has just released their latest addition to the Google software kit - the Google maps streetview. What is this? Well, it seems that google has sent a van equipped with multiple cameras on it’s roof around some cities in America (New York, Denver, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Florida) taking pictures of the route as it goes along. The images are then used to generate a seamless tour through that city.

This is a pretty amazing development for Google maps (though it may throw up some privacy issues)

Where map runner is concerned - hopefully in the near future Google will send their Googlevan around the UK so then we’d be able to offer our members the chance to view their route before running it

It seems that many sites that offer the same kind of service that we do, but don’t have Google maps on the homepage. We put it on the homepage as the runs are the most important aspect of what we are trying to do. Some sites try and make you sign up on the front page, which kind of makes sense, but we want to make the runs and routes as accessible as possible.

Maybe another reason as to why people aren’t putting a big map on the frontpage is due to SEO. Our homepage
has very little text on it and so won’t do very well in this area with regards to SEO.

Map Runner would like to think that it is putting accessability over SEO which is why the first page you come to shows you all the routes on the site. I hope we aren’t shooting ourselves in the foot (arf!).

Map Runner has gone live! As the title suggests, it is a soft launch to friends and insiders. Hopefully by sharing it with a wider audience any errors will come to the surface. Google Analytics seems very helpful in this area as you can place goals and then see which people abandon the process on route to the goal. This means that if too many people are dropping out in the registration process, there could possibly be a problem.

If all goes well and the site proves to be useful then we’ll be looking to extend the features available to offer:

• calorie burn count - will allow runners to calculate how many calories they’ve burned during a run. This will be calculated using the runner’s weight, height and route run time
• favourite routes - will allow runners to save other people’s runs to their profile area for easy access
• running clubs and events - we’re hoping that we’ll be able to offer running clubs the chance to host a mini site on map runner. This will be an extension of the runner profile but will also allow clubs to post events and offer membership
• your runner friends - will allow runners to build a community of friends and like minded runners

We’ll also be looking to refine and perfect the process of adding routes and navigating around the site with your feedback from the soft launch. Stay tuned!

Version 2 of the Google Maps API provides a function to calculate the distance between two points.

To use it to calculate the distance in metres between two GLatLng objects, we write Point1.distanceFrom(Point2). This will return the distance calculated in metres which can then be rounded to a number of decimals using the function .toFixed(N) where N is the number of decimal places.