Updates to GPSLog Labs have been trickling in slowly over the last few months, so it's about time I mentioned a few of them on the blog:

• Maps now have a "View full-screen" link at the bottom left:
  
  
  This will expand the map so it fills the browser window:
  

• Buddy icons (displayed on your shared log detail pages) will now use the Gravatar for the email address you've set in your Account Settings. You can still upload an icon if you'd prefer not to use Gravatars.
  

  
  

• Fancy, searchable dropdown lists (courtesy of the Chosen library):

  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  

• "Remove automatic edits" command: Auto-chopping logs is one of GPSLog Labs' most powerful features, but sometimes you just want the entire log file. This command lets you remove all the cuts & places quickly and easily, so now you can have the best of both worlds.
  

• Deleting tasks from a goal can now be done in bulk. This makes it much easier to customise a training program or edit tasks you've cloned from another goal.
  

• The Distance Finish Time Predictions graph now shows the values at the mouse position.

• The Cumulative Stop Time vs Distance graph shows the total stopped time when zooming to a selection.

• Added sorting to the Goal task possible route selection table and fixed a few bugs with highlighting routes with appropriate distances.

• Activity maps now have milestone markers:
  

  These are displayed every 1 km or 1 mile depending on your units setting and will automatically be hidden as you zoom out.

  Note that the milestone markers are displayed by default on shared maps you have embedded into your own site, if you don't want them displayed regenerate the embed code or edit the <iframe> src attribute and add &show_milestones=false to the end of the URL.

• Split times are computed for the first 5km, 10km, etc. of your activity so you can compare performances regardless of the tags, routes or final distance. These are displayed on the activity "comparisons" tab and on the new splits tab for tags. This will let you find for example, the log with the fastest 10km time you have run by going to the Run tag, and sorting the splits by 10km.

  These distances are probably only useful for runners, if you have any suggestions on how this should behave for other sports please let me know.

• Activity split tables now show the cumulative distance/elapsed time:
  

• Graphs throughout the site now have a filter that lets you display only one year at a time once you have been logging your activity for more than a year:
  

• I've also done a general tidy up of forms on the site, giving them a layout and improving the way they display for smaller browser windows.

I've also added support for the Yandex maps which will help those of you in Russia (thanks Vitaly) and the map type will also be remembered now, so you won't need to select it every time if you want to use something other than the Google maps.

"Hint" maps have been added to the place selection pop-ups when you're editing a log file to help identify where the log finishes:

There is now a preview map when you are manually creating a segment:

-- Tom

This should help those of you in parts of the world not covered very well by the Google Maps, and with OpenStreetMap, if there's something not quite right, you can upload your GPS file and make the map better.

The bicycle maps include lots of features to help you out if your a cyclist, including parking, bike lanes and contour lines and colouring to indicate hills.

Tom

To do this, you'll need to enable sharing for the content and then you'll be provided with a snippet of HTML you can cut and paste into your own website.

For example, to embed a map, you'll see the following on the Share Log page:

You can customize the size of your map and the whether you want stop icons to be drawn or not.  You'll see a preview on the right and when you're happy with it you can cut the generated HTML code and paste it into your website. To embed a graph of your activity, follow the same steps.

Tip: It is possible to customize the size of the embedded map if the standard sizes are not appropriate by editing the HTML and adding &amp;width=1234&amp;height=1234 to the iframe src url, and also updating it's width and height attributes to match.

Note that if you Disable sharing for your activity, it will no longer be visible on your site, even if you re-enable sharing again as the secret URL will be different.

-- Tom

If you want to share maps and graphs of your activity with your friends click the Share button to enable sharing:

Then click the Enable sharing button:

This will generate a publicly accessible detail page:

Which will look like this (actual link):

You can share the URL to this page on Twitter, Facebook, email, IM or wherever you like, for example, clicking the Share on Facebook link will open a window which will let you customize a message and publish a link to your activity on your Wall:

At any time, you can click the Disable sharing button to hide the activity if you change your mind.

Any shared content will be indicated by a "sharing" icon 

I'll be adding the ability to share more kinds of content soon but if you have anything you'd like to see in particular, please let me know.

-- Tom

In this view, all activity (and sessions) are displayed one under another with their own maps and altitude profile graphs.  

Having their own maps means that short activity isn't invisible at the scale required to show longer activity.

-- Tom

For speed reasons, the maps that are drawn have been "simplified", i.e. the number of points in the track has been reduced to speed up drawing and data transfer. 

For most purposes, this will be fine, but if you want to zoom in and see the full detail of your track, there is a button on the map to "Enhance" the detail. 

This will reload the page with the full log data mapped for the region displayed in the map.  This means it's still pretty fast, but you can't pan too far or you'll need to click the enhance button again to reload more data.

Additionally, on the built in pan tool is a "return to the last result" button.  Clicking this will undo any zooming and panning you may have done and return the map to the original view when the page was loaded.

-- Tom

Tom