Trevor May.ca

Finally pulling the wraps off a project I’ve been working on called Trailforks.www.trailforks.com is a community-powered mountain biking trail database currently focused on BC.

The core functionality of Trailforks is a database for mountain biking trails. Trailforks is a crowd-sourced community site and users can help populate and keep the database updated. The data & features for each trail is tailed specifically for mountain biking. There is a high focus on getting GPS data for every trail & maps are a big part of the site. Each trail page has a map and GPS data and each riding area has a Google Earth 3D map with all the trails plotted on it dynamically. Just upload a GPS track of a single trail and all the rest is handled automatically. (Example the Mount Fromme Page)

The site has loads of other features like photos, videos, skill parks, news, business directory, local products, events, forums, bike profiles, riding routes, route challenges, group ride planning & more. But one feature I really want to promote is “Trail Reports”. A Trail Report is a quick entry posted by users indicating the status of a trail and describing any problems or things needing attention on a trail. A trail report can also be a log of work done on a trail and “trail days”. I hope that local riding associations and trail maintainers might start using this tool. Most pages on the site offer RSS feeds and I can create custom widgets for associations so they can display trail status and reports on their own sites. I also have a REST API that accepts and outputs data in XML, JSON or Serialized PHP.

To help encourage people to build the database users earn points for all the content they contribute and credit is given to the user. The site also has points & gaming style achievements that users can unlock by helping contribute content or just by using the site. For example one of the achievements is “Ridden 100 Trails” earned by marking 100 trails as “ridden”.

Trailforks now also integrates with my “Ridelog” Facebook App.

I was trying to remember the other day how many rides I went on last year and I couldn’t remember. So for this year I decided to create a ride log and I’ve made it as a Facebook application that anyone can use.

Its very simple at the moment, which is not a bad thing, I don’t want to clutter it up. But I do have plans for more features if people actualy start using it!?

Basically all the app allows you to do now is enter in a database each ride you go on. With fields like location, trails you rode and friends you rode with. The app is integrated with facebooks friends system and has an option to post a message to your wall when you add a ride.

You can try it out here: http://apps.facebook.com/ridelog/

Screenshot:

Future features:
- Profile tab
- Profile box showing latest rides added
- upload images
- stats page showing most popular locations, trails, top riders and so on
- location & trail names clickable
- global page to view everyones ridelogs (if public)

If you have any suggestions please let me know!

I bought a new mountain bike today since my last one was stolen. I decided to get a more agressive downhill bike this time.

2008 Devinci Frantik
http://www.devinci.ca/11022_an.html

FUCK FUCK FUCK!

I just went down to my parking garage to find someone has stolen my downhill mountain bike! AHHHHH
what a ton of money down the drain, and I really liked the bike, It was only a month or 2 old.