Some time back I read about GPSED.com on Graham Chastneys blog.

I do quite a bit of hill walking and mountain biking and although I think navigation by GPS is a deeply flawed idea in the mountains ( a philosophical point about the skill set you should have rather than any technical issues) I do like the idea of using a GPS as a datalogger to record how your journey went and to share it with others.

I installed the GPSED.com sofware on my Blackberry 8310 and went for a mountain bike ride. I then uploaded the route to GPSED.COM ( see here ) and then downloaded it into Memory Map – a popular digital mapping system in the UK. The screen shot below shows the output – well impressive for free software.

Image:GPSED.COM Blackberry GPS Datalogger and Memory Map overlay ( 8/10 considering it is beta )

The software is buggy, for example when you switch units the numbers change but the units label stays the same. I am also uncomfortable that you cannot delete your tracks from the web site once you have made them public.

Memory Map itself is very impressive. I use it a lot for planning routes in the hills. Being an optimist it is particularly handy for comparing the ascent profiles of known walks with planned walks

duddonwoods.jpg