The Mobile Geoblogger

Every time when having fun somewhere far from home, I got the feeling that I should somehow tell the world what, where and how makes us feel so good. Just a few words like "Just reached the top, the panorama is incredible", or "Greetings from the Tour Eiffel, the sun is just setting over Paris", and maybe a photo for illustration.
Is it only my abberation?? Sure not...
Until now, I used to use my PDA to publish short articles on my blog - the one You are just reading. That was pretty good, apart from describing the location, which was not too smart. Could I embed my posts in a Google Map? From today, YES!
No special equipment or software is needed, just something that You can send an email with - either your cell phone or a PDA like I do. Some cool free webservices do the rest. Have a look at the posts of this blog, embedded in Google Maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://ws.geonames.org/rssToGeoRSS?feedUrl=http://adszhu.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

A brief summary how it operates:
You are at a fantastic place, and decide to let the visitors of your blog or homepage know where it is and how it looks. You take photo with your cellphone, and send it as an email to your blog account, describing the place where You took it. Your mail immediately appears in your blogspace as a new post. At the same time, the RSS feed of your blog gets automatically updated by the blog server.
A visitor happens to surf to your site, and finds a link like the one above. This link opens the well known Google Maps site, and tries to display the RSS of your blog, including the new post, too. But how does it get the coordinates to display on the map? There is a great, free webservice at geonames.org that reads RSS feeds, parse the location names in it and converts the RSS to GEORSS. Since the link refers to Your RSS not directly, but via this geonames service, it now has the necessary geospatial info to put it on a map. Naturally, mobile Google Maps clients are able to display Your blog post, too...

Piz Bernina webcam and weather

The Alpine Weather and Webcam page has just been completed with Piz Bernina, the highest peak of the East Alps.

Don't miss to check it before leaving :)

A:L:P - the summit log update

The A:L:P summit log (the diary of our climbing and infobase of the mountains we have been to) has just gone through a general upgrade. From now, each place has a topographical map overlay, a GPS-tracklog, some POIs (mostly the peaks and the bivouac places), a photo gallery (except for the oldest ones) and hints in a few words.
Currently far the following peaks and routes are included:

• Kreuzspitze, Saykogel, Similaun, Wildes Mannle, Wildspitze (Tirol, Austria)
• Dufourspitze (Monte Rosa, Switzerland)
• Mont Blanc, the 3-Mont-Blanc route
• Piz Popena (Cristallo-group, Italy)
• Dent du Géant (Mont Blanc)
• Grossglockner, South normal route (Austria)
• Schneeberg, Gamsgartlgrat route (Rax, Austria)

Check out the new layout and contents at My Places.

Pls. note that the cycling section has been temporarily removed; it is under construction, and going to get a separate room soon

Cycling routes near Budapest, Hungary

Looking for a cycling route near Budapest? Have a look at my favourites! Follow the link "Cycling" at My Places. All these itineraries refer to roads with fine surface, suitable for road race cyclists. The Isaszeg round is an easy one with moderate traffic. Dobogokő is the village that has the highest location in Hungary. The route there follows a public road with a long but not that steep elevation. The Pilis transverse is something extraordinary; it leads mostly on forest roads of very good quality but with low to zero traffic. It is easy to loose direction, don't forget your GPS...

Czech sights at My Places

Back from Czech Republic, I have posted our pics taken in Cesky Krumlov, Ceske Budejovice and Trebon. Each of these small towns are worth a couple of hours, and once You are there, do not skip a walk our cycle journey in the Sumava National Park.

On My Places, the "Czech Republic" link has been completed with the now visited cities, while the "Trekking paths" link contains a GPS-tracklog and a georeferred map tile of our walk in the Sumava forest

Jordan pics and map on My Places

Yes, we have been there, back in 2003. For Central European people like us (my wife and me), Middle East is a mysterious area, basically deviating from the places we are used to. Check out the map of Jordan, see our pictures taken there

Corsica link alive!

Exactly one month since the last post, I am glad to announce that the My Places portal is updated again! Having scanned some dozens of old slides, now the Corsica link is alive, showing map-based infobase and a photo gallery of our trip on this marvellous island. Give it a try now!

What's next? The A:L:P summit log is being reconstructed to give the reader even more useful info. Parallely, the file size is to be reduced so that browsing becomes faster. To be announced soon...