Touring - Blogging on tour / Witur?

I'll be leaving on my first tour in a few weeks. My family and friends are naturally concerned about my welfare, and they'll want to be reassured fairly frequently that I'm still alive. 30 years ago, I would have needed to find a pay phone every stop; I would have called one contact and asked that person to call the rest of the list.

Now, I'll have a Android smartphone with me. I'd like to make a blog entry every so often, that the folks back home can see. Doing that with Facebook or Livejournal is fairly straightforward. I'd like to include a frequently-updated map, though, and that's the tricky bit.

There's a website called witur that seems well-designed for the kind of thing I want: text, photo, and adding dots to a travel map. The problem on that side is that the page naming convention is hideous: I can't just say "look at witur.com/jeneralist" or similar.

Suggestions?

Lots of people use www.CrazyGuyOnABike.com. I haven't used it, so I can't speak to easy of use, but it's fun to read!

I used crazyguy on my droid on my trip and it was easy enough. Just make sure you do a practice before you leave so you understand where stuff is on the page better. I didn't try to add any maps though, so I can't help with that.

Can you do something with Bikely or MapMyRide?

Facebook now has this new "places" feature where you can "check-in" with your smartphone and it says your location. I haven't tried it myself (no smartphone) and a lot of people are against it due to privacy, but it seems like it would be simple and good for touring.

Another option, if you want to embed a map in your blog of your current location, is Google Latitude.

Not directly what you asked, but...

It is probably smart to set expectations low with friends and family with regards to frequency of your checking in. You didn't say where you were touring unless I missed it but I know that in the american west we often found that we failed to check in nearly as often as we had led folks back home to expect and it caused them anxiety. Cell coverage may be spotty many places (more so with just about any carrier other than Verizon assuming the US). Also even if you have coverage at some point during the day it may not be when you think of calling.

Tell them you will check in when you can but prepare then for the possibility that it might be a week or more between calls at some point during a long trip. Then if you manage to call every few days they will be happy to hear from you rather than ticked off that you didn't call every day.

I'm preparing for a tour as well, and I'll be using an iPhone, not an Android, so I can't give specific recommendations, but I imagine the app landscape is about the same.

I'll be using an app to log my rides with GPS (Cyclemeter) that can send periodic position updates automatically by e-mail, twitter, or facebook. Obviously these won't work if you're outside cellular coverage. In any case, I plan to set it up to send an update every 10 miles or so. Keeping an app like this running can be a battery drain, although based on my past usage, it's not bad with this particular app.

There is a product/service called The Spot (http://www.findmespot.com/) that does the same thing, but is not reliant on cellular coverage. Peter Heal used one of these on his recent 49-day Australia perimeter ride, and all his fans could watch his progress online.

As to witur--I've never used it, but if your URL remains the same at that website, you could use a URL-shortening service (some of which let you choose the identifier after the domain name) and give out a URL like (for example) tinyurl.com/jeneralist

I've used Crazyguyonabike.com for two tours. The first one (Pacific Coast) was done using only my phone, a Motorola Q9C on Sprint. It was easy to do and I updated the journal nearly every day. Only problem I had was uploading photos. For some reason the photo upload page would not work correctly from the phone, so I ended up emailing the photos to a friend who uploaded them to Crazyguy from her computer, then I could manipulate them from there. This was two years ago so that may not be an issue anymore. You can add maps on Crazyguy as well, and there's a guestbook where friends/fans can communicate with you.

I ended up emailing the photos to a friend who uploaded them to Crazyguy from her computer

Were you aware that you can actually email updates to your journal, and can also include pics in those emails? So if you are going to email pics, you could have cut out the middle man (your friend) and sent them directly to the journal. See the Help:

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/website/help/#emailing_updates

I have also recently added the ability to append or prepend email posts to existing pages in the journal (I just updated the Help with the new features). So you could use this to update a "Where am I" page with quick email notes, if you don't have the time or inclination to do full journal updates.

I'll be doing some significant work on the maps and geotagging on crazyguyonabike in the near future, including a "where am I now" feature which will allow people to display their current location (and also let other people browse by that). I'm not sure how easy it would be to do this from an email update, but if there's some way to provide lat/lon info then I can certainly use that (optionally, of course - for some people it will raise privacy concerns, so it should be an option).

For the OP, it sounds like the Spot device that Adam Rice already mentioned might do the trick in a much simpler way - it's all automated, and the service plots your "here I am" points on a map for your designated friends and family to follow. I've never used it myself, but it looks pretty cool. My only issue with it is that you have no way of knowing if your broadcasts actually get through - after all, it's just a radio, and radio is really prone to interference (from terrain etc). So since the communication protocol is one-way only (with no ACK - i.e. the unit doesn't get anything back saying "ok, message received"), it's not perfect. But a lot of people seem to like it, and if you're in a part of the world where you have good view of their satellites, then it might be just the trick.

Neil

Leaving next week down the Pacific Coast. My plan is to use CGOB and Track My Tour. That should cover it for me.

CGOB does take a little learning curve so I would suggest playing with it before you leave on tour if you decide to use it. Nice that you can receive encouragement from friends, family and those who just enjoy your journal. Plus lots of traffic.

"Track my tour" is a simple way to update a location to friends and family and can be linked to twitter if you use it. It's simple to use with almost no learning curve. I think of it as twitter with location tracking(maps).

Were you aware that you can actually email updates to your journal, and can also include pics in those emails? So if you are going to email pics, you could have cut out the middle man (your friend) and sent them directly to the journal.

Thanks Neil. Now that you mention it I do remember seeing something about that somewhere. But at the time I had so much going on getting ready for the tour that I didn't have much time to delve into CGOB. Just learned the basics and went with it. Really like the site, and doing the daily updates was something I looked forward to every day. Used it again last fall on my Central America tour, but that time we had a netbook.

I have also recently added the ability to append or prepend email posts to existing pages in the journal (I just updated the Help with the new features). So you could use this to update a "Where am I" page with quick email notes, if you don't have the time or inclination to do full journal updates.

Neil, how difficult would be to integrate with text messages?

Sometimes in remote areas w/my phone I can send a text message, even when I can't get enough signal for an email or even a phone call.

Neil, how difficult would be to integrate with text messages?

Sometimes in remote areas w/my phone I can send a text message, even when I can't get enough signal for an email or even a phone call.

That's a good question - short answer is, I don't know. I do know how to run an email server and receive emails, but I don't know how to receive text messages from a cellphone. As far as I know, the text message is something that exists entirely within the realm of the cellphone provider, and I don't know what type of interface they provide to external internet services and protocols.

I know you can send text messages *to* cellphones via email, but you're talking about sending a text message *from* a cellphone to a server outside of the cell network... it might well be possible, but I would have to do some research.

I assume text messages are "SMS", which I have never really looked at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_service

Neil

As to witur--I've never used it, but if your URL remains the same at that website, you could use a URL-shortening service (some of which let you choose the identifier after the domain name) and give out a URL like (for example) tinyurl.com/jeneralist

Now that's a sneaky thought...