I arrived to the iPhone party only yesterday, so when I say Trails is the first iPhone app that’s really grabbed me, it’s not a reflection of app-cynicism on my part. It’s one of the many GPS tracking apps available, but one of the easiest to use, and one that stands up robustly to ducking in and out of other apps.
The feature that did it for me, though, was the ability to add waypoint markers as you go, to which you can attach a written note. I went for a walk this morning to try it all out, and was having so much fun I walked much further than I intended, stopping to add markers whenever there was something I wanted to hihghlight, or whenever I was struck by an impression. The beauty of the notes is you can use them however you wish. Mine ranged from the moderately informative:
…to the slightly whimsical…
…to the just plain silly:
I don’t know if any of this relates to that term psychogeograpgy or not — but I love the idea of location-senstive rambling (in the verbal sense, that is). You can upload all this lovely rich data to a handful of social networks. I chose Everytrail, since it seemed from from cycling or running associations. The above screengrabs are actually from the Everytrail data. You can view the Everytrail page for this particular walk to interact with the map and read the other notes.
You can also download trails to Google Earth or your GPS device if you want to follow someone else’s route.
The idea of location-sensitive fiction isn’t new, but I’m quite struck by the possibility of being able to knock-up a first draft literally as you go.
UPDATE: Oh. Everytrails widget even sort of works with Tumblr:
Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Trail Maps
