Feb 19 2007

Flex + Cycling: My dream application!

Posted by Joe Rinehart at 2:45 PM
2 comments
- Categories: Flex

I wish I had been a part of this - it's possibly the coolest Web app I've ever seen. Anyone who knows me finds out pretty quickly that I spend a good amount of time riding bicycles. Right now, the big deal in the US is the Tour of California.

Usually, "realtime" cycling websites refresh GIFs and text-divs. Tour de California went one extra: they mashed Flex, FDS, Yahoo! maps, GPS, and probably a few other things in one amazing race tracker. Even if you don't care at all about cycling, you've got to check this out.

Comments

Rick Root

Rick Root wrote on 02/22/07 8:43 AM

Joe,

My friend Mike was showing me a similarly cool app that Nike has developed for runners. It involves a little thing that attaches to your ipod, and a sensor that you put in your show, and it records your run, your pace, and all that jazz. It doesn't have GPS built in, but the nike WEB app allows you to upload the data from your ipod into their database, and you can view a history of your runs, and based on the distance, it can even figure out where you ran and show it on a map based on other runs. For example, he had one run of 2.84 miles, and when he uploaded it, the app asked for a zip code near where he was running, and it showed him all the possible "trails" that he might've run on. Sure enough, someone had already published a 2.84 mile run around Lake Wheeler, which was exactly where he'd run.

the web app part was mostly flex - at the very least it was Flash of some kind, but I didn't play with it enough to determine if it was flex or not.

But it was really cool.

BTW, I emailed you the other day, about a week ago.. haven't seen a response yet =)
Allan Padgett

Allan Padgett wrote on 03/01/07 12:33 PM

Hi Joe,
I wrote the Tracker you describe and wanted to say thanks for your props and also wanted to solicit any detailed feedback you have on the application?
As a cyclist, having the chance to build this was awesome.
And while I think it is pretty sweet - when all the servers are up and running - I know there is so much more to do for next year. Or for the Grand Tours....
For more info on the application, see http://www.allanpadgett.com/blog which I will be filling out over the next week or two.
Allan

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