I searched and didn't find a mention of this app here so I thought i'd toss it out there.

Endomondo is a great fitness/time/distance tracker app free for Apple and Android. I use it for biking and hiking to keep track of my workouts, and I thought I’d give it a shot while driving a favorite road last night and it seems to work pretty well. It gives a breakdown of your speed, time, distance, and elevation of your route, and also overlays it on a variety of Google maps, available on the website and on a phone. You have to let it keep GPS open so it’s not too nice for battery life, but I’ve run it for 2hrs and didn’t drain the entire battery in my Optimus, which has a notoriously shitty battery.

The image below is a screenshot of the quick test drive. I’m out playing on this loop all the time and while curious I’d never make the effort to figure all these data points out myself. While I have not found a way to adjust the distance between splits (whole miles and kms only), I thought it still might be a decent free app for lap timing if you don’t have anything else, and definitely useful for actually excercising lol.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm gonna have to give this one a shot on my bike tonight.

 

Any advantage to using this over Google My Tracks?

 

Am I the only one who finds it odd that we are now voluntarily subjecting ourselves to the same basic form of constant-surveillance which all of the tinfoil-hatters were prophesying doom about in the 80s and 90s?

And bragging about it?

 

Never used that, will give it a try and see how it compares.

I'm already on so many lists I could care less who's watching what I'm doing when I'm outside hiking/biking/driving. If ****'s going to happen it'll happen...until then imma keep having fun. And who knows, maybe they'll figure out I was driving, feed the info to an advertiser, and they'll toss me a sweet deal on the new tires I need

Once you give up your SSN as an ID for a couple bank accounts, etc, I figure you're well screwed and need to just stop worrying about it lol.

 

I think my generation is generally too fond of being in front of the camera (any camera).

 

And this is why OP uses Endomondo fitness tracker?

It looks like a useful tool, theres a trail I run that I'd really like to know the distance of.

 

The one I find even worse is whatever facebook app people have where your smartphone automatically posts "Joe is at Barnes & Noble" or "Mark is at the gay **** store" and then informs you if anybody else in your friends list is also shopping for gay **** at the same place so that you can hook up and do... whatever it is two men who know each other do when they meet unexpectedly at a place which sells gay **** and rents private cubicles by the half-hour.

Yeah, that's exactly what I want. An app that lets people know when I am not home, so that random ******** can break in and steal ****.

 

LOL no. I use it because I like to challenge myself against my own times while trail riding, and at a base level it's fun to have all this info at your fingertips. I could care less who is watching.

And yeah that "feature" is ridiculous, Joe. Never understood why that would appeal to anyone over the age of 20.

 

No, of course not. I was responding to Joe's more general question about society's lack of concern over surveillance and the voluntary loss of privacy. I think there's a lot of new technology that has desensitized people to being in front of a "camera" (whether it's a literal camera, like a webcam, or a figurative camera, like a GPS tracker), and has encouraged the idea that every little thing you do is noteworthy and should be communicated to friends and family as if it's headline news.

I use My Tracks to record bike rides sometimes, particularly when I'm riding a new route and I want a total distance.

But I also like having the power to turn the "camera" off when I want.

 

downloading app now... will be really nice if i can get it to work on a road i frequent on my trip to the cottage.... but there is no cell reception there... and i never try to see if gps works without it.

iPhone 4 user here. (not an apple *****... i just like the way it functions compared to my old BB)

 

I find that **** so pitiful. Who ******* cares where you are. People are so petty to feel the need to let everyone know where they are. LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I need attention! I barely use Facebook, but when I do it's usually useful posts, such as planning hang out time or meeting up for food with friends, or discussing certain things.

PS, I'm highly irritated when someone I was with just has to post "I was with ______ at _______." I don't need you letting people know you were with me somewhere, none of their business.

 

I use that sometimes, but uits for me personally.... kind of like geotagging my pictures.

i would love to have a map with where i have been and what i have done there, but i dont need to share it with anyone.

 

I use an app like that to track my progress on my bicycle rides. Using these phone apps for faster things like cars and motorcycles isn't as fitting, since most phone GPS's only update once per second. You can get faster GPS receivers that will pair to your phone via bluetooth though.