TrailBehind

My second blog entry is going to start in a similar manner to the first. It's saturday night and I'm out with some friends. Last minute plans are hastily hatched... this time it's for a sunday hike. The hire car has been arranged... but where should we head to? In the UK it's not a problem to figure out.... because our wonderful OS maps make it possible to stitch together a route out of your back garden. But here in the US, you need to find a "trail" !?

Searching on the iPhone was slow and painful, so we ended up exchanging some midnight emails and resorting to the AMC Day Hikes in New England book. The upshot was a trip to World's End, a tame but beautiful reservation in Quincy, reminiscent of an English country park. How ironic. Personally I'd been hoping for something a bit more wild and challenging ;-)

What was missing? An iPhone app to help you find the perfect trail! The search begins.

So far I've downloaded "TrailBehind" launched in July 2009 with 109 ratings (approx 5,000 downloads) for $0.99.

TrailBehind is what you'd call a "Vertical Search" engine, or maybe a trail review "aggregator"? Basically, it's a search engine focused on hiking, biking and climbing trails. The interface can be customised to your preferred activity and results show a list of nearby activites.

Click on the heading and you get linked to a web page with the full review. Content is drawn from about 5 sources: EveryTrail, Local Hikes, Wikipedia, WayMarking.com, TrimbleOutdoors.com, SummitPost.

The app is certainly a convenient way to browse reviews from different sources. However it falls down in several respects.

1) Content pages are not optimized for mobile

After clicking each link you are taken through to websites which aren't designed for viewing on a mobile device. Here it gets difficult to click the links and retrieve information

2) Basic categorization

Even if I had this app on saturday night, I don't think it would have helped us to confidently resolve our quandry. Apart from categorizing trails as "hiking, biking or climbing" and giving an approximate distance, there is no way of sorting. I would have liked a difficulty rating, user feedback, distance from my location, type of terrain etc

3) Limited content

For an app 1 year old I would have expected more quality content. Since I live in Boston I want lots of detailed suggestions about local areas around Boston. When I travel then I'll be looking for more touristy content. At the moment there's barely enough content here to make me revisit the app more than once. Perhaps that says something about the quality of content on all the combined trail review websites out there! And without any user generated content on the app, I wouldn't expect this state to improve much.

Test Badge

The Weather Channel, WindGuru & Wind Alert

It's Friday night, 10pm and I'm invited to sail at the Corinthian Yacht Club in Marblehead MA for my first time! As someone who hasn't ventured out of the Charles River Basin much for the last 2 years this is exciting stuff! Sea breezes, waves and ocean ;-) The following morning, 9am and I'm making my way to the Yacht Club looking for an iPhone App that can give me all the weather information I need.

The Weather Channel - 4 Stars App Store Rating


First stop was the trusty Weather Channel app with a 4 star rating. To be honest, it's pretty good, giving a detailed hour by hour breakdown of wind speed and direction.

+ Hourly wind information with direction and strength
+ Major locations around the world all covered
- No statistics or detailed trends







WindGuru - 2.5 Stars App Store Rating



Next up I downloaded the WindGuru App with 2.5 Start Rating . This is a simplified version of their website, presenting the key information in a format optimized for mobile.

For sailors, surfers and windsurfers the key advantage of wind guru is the ability to get detailed information on specific spots around the word.

But since I was going to Marblehead, which is also featured on the Weather Channel.

And the major disadvantage.... information is only presented for 3 hour periods

+ Simple and easy to use
+ Wind speed & direction, Wave height & direction
+ Information on key windsurfing, sailing and surfing spots
- Wind information only presented for 3 hour periods


Wind Alert - 3 Stars App Store Rating

Wind Alert links with weather stations around the world and
collects real-time information on wind speeds and direction.

The app then extrapolates wind speeds and directions for the following 6 hours. However, the extrapolation doesn't seem to be very sophisticated, and doesn't link with other forecasting information. So, if wind speeds have increased from 5 to 10mph that's the trend that the app will extrapolate.

If you purchase a membership you can set the option to receive alerts for a particular location based on wind speeds and other parameters.

+ Detailed wind information updated every 10/15 mins from weather stations
+ Captures fluctuations and gust detail
+ Useful in conjunction with the latest forecasting information
- Basic forecasting functions only extrapolate simple trends


So, what's ended up happening is that I now have three wind apps on my iPhone (bring on OS 4 with folder options!) I like the hourly information from The Weather Channel, the wave height and presentation of WindGuru and the Real-Time data from windAlert!

Or perhaps I should just resort back to reading clouds.....