Some of these have been live on the GPSLog Labs for a while now, I just haven't had a chance to blog about them.

• A preview map and details are now available on the week calendar activity page, to make it work the same way as the home page.
• The activity table now shows weekly totals by tag and place.
  
• Activity paths are grayed out rather than removed from the preview map, meaning you can compare multiple paths on the map simultaneously.
  
• The calendar summary tables now have an option to toggle between displaying distance or duration totals for each tag.
  
  
• The device detail page now has a button that will send you an email containing the upload email address making it easy to add it to your address book.
  
• The tag popup form has a new option to apply the selected tags to all the non-junk segments of file. This only applies if the log file has been split into two or more segments.
  
• The goal detail summary tab now has indicators of the daily activity for the week and month.
  
  There's one bar per day, green are the latest on the right, orange the oldest on the left. Hover over them for some details.
• You can now search for activity by keywords entered into the notes. This is a little obscure still, type your query into the search box on the top right of any page and a button will appear to "Search activity notes for 'keyword'". Click it an you'll see a list of all matching activity.
  
  
• The "Activity log as CSV" download now contains heart rate data if it was uploaded in a separate file, making it possible to do your own spreadsheet for analysis if you want.
• The splits detail table now has a tags column and activity that has been excluded from the stats are indicated in the table, map, graphs.
• The split detail pages now also have filtering of splits by forward/reverse direction and by included/excluded status.
• The maximum supported upload size has been increased to 20mb.

Thanks for all the great feedback and suggestions on the GPSLog Labs Feedback page, please keep it coming.

Minor update to the update: I've added the activity search form to the bottom of the organise tab too. Makes sense to try and have it somewhere less hidden as well!

The old tutorial is getting a bit out of date with all the new features and changes to the look of the site, so here's an up to date version:

Signing up and using GPSLog Labs is really easy.

First, go to GPSLogLabs.com and sign in using any OpenID account:

Depending on your OpenID provider, you may be asked to put in your name and email address to finish creating your account. Or you may just need to choose whether you want your logs shown in kilometers or miles.

Next, click the Upload Log button and choose your log file. Put in a name to identify your GPS logging device too.

The file will take a little while to upload, then a page will appear that will automatically detect the log file format.

If there are multiple formats, you can click "Show detailed results..." to see an indication of the data extracted from the file to see which is most useful:

Once you select the format which imports the data best, the file will appear in the Uploads tab.

After a few seconds, the file should be processed, click the log file name to begin editing the extracted activity.

The log file detail page has two tabs, "Log File Summary" shows the unedited contents of the log file, and "Edit Processed Activity" shows the extracted activity which you can edit if necessary.

GPSLog Labs automatically breaks activity into segments, such as time at the start place of the log (locking the door, waiting for the logger to lock on, stretching etc.), the time between places (the interesting bit, and the time at the end place. Click on the first unnamed place to give it a name.

The street address and timezone will be looked up automatically. You should change the place name to something meaningful and shorter.

You can move the place marker if you need to, and change the "capture radius" for the place, but the default is usually fine. Moving the place will cause the file to be reprocessed and you'll have to click through from the Uploaded Log Files page again once it's done.

After naming the place, the activity will be updated accordingly. You may need to name other places that appear in your log as well.

The next step is to name the route. Routes are used to classify and group activity that follow the same general path.

Save and the edited activity will now display your new route:

You can also tag the activity according to it's type/purpose.

By default, activity tagged with the Run tag will be displayed in "pace" format:

Back on the Uploaded Log Files page, the log file will now show up as blue (instead of yellow) to indicate it has been edited.

Your activity is also visible in the rest of the system classified by places, routes and tags. For example, the home page will show you a summary of your activity for the past week:

And from any of these places, you can follow the links through to an "activity detail" page that will let you see detailed maps, graphs and statistics:

This is only a very small sample of what GPSLog Labs can do, you can also filter noisy GPS signals from your data, plan and track your training towards goals, and share your activity with your friends.

So, give it a try yourself and let me know what you think.

• The "This week's activity" table on the home page of GPSLog Labs now allows you to scroll back and forward through your uploaded activity using "« Previous|This week|Next »" links. The old "Earlier activity" link has been removed as it's no longer needed.
• The Trends report has been optimized and now runs much faster.
• When editing an automatically created place, a list of suggested "Nearby places" is displayed to make it easier to correct logs where your logger didn't lock on at a place:
  
• When editing an unmatched place, nearby places are now shown as markers on the map too. Clicking them will select the place from the drop-down list.
• The activity detail page heading has been reformatted to make it easier to read:
  
• The libraries of icons you can select from for your tags and places have been expanded and refined. They should be better looking and more useful now. Edit your tags or places to change them to one of the new icons:

  Tag icons:

  

  Place icons:

  

  You can still upload your own icons if you want to, for best results they should be 16x16 pixels, in GIF or PNG format with transparent backgrounds.

• You can now add goals based on the built in training programs. Click the Add Goal from Training Program link on the Goals page, select the program, put in your goal finish date (race/event day), select the tag you'll use to track your training logs and you're ready to go.
• Two new training programs have been added too:
• Beginner Half Marathon Program
  A training schedule for beginning runners who want to start racing the half marathon race distance.
• Intermediate Marathon Program
  A training schedule for intermediate runners who want to improve performance in the marathon race distance.
• Adding tasks to goals has been made faster and easier too, and a bug was fixed that was preventing adding fractions of kilometers as the target distances (i.e. you could only enter whole numbers, not 6.5km for example.)

As always, feedback and suggestions are welcome and I hope everyone has a happy and safe Christmas and New Year.

A problem you'll encounter very quickly when using a GPS logger is "splats" in your log files caused by a bad signal while you're inside a building or other area with lots of signal reflections.

This can be very annoying as it will often create spikes in your speed that completely mess up any maximum speed or distance statistics for that log file.

For a while, GPSLog Labs has had "position" and "time" filters that let you manually remove these "splats" but it was tedious to get right, so now a simpler "splat filter" has been added that makes the process much less painful.

First, go to the activity you want to filter and click on the Filters link in the side panel:

Then click "Add a filter" and choose "Splat filter":

On the Splat filter page, you need to drag the marker so that it covers the "door" of the building. It doesn't have to cover all of the spikes of the splat, you just need to capture the last good point before you enter the building and the first good point when you get out and start getting a good signal again.

As you can see, the marker is only covering the actual building under the splat, not the whole splat.

The Splat filter will then discard all the points while you were inside the building and interpolate over the gap (which will give you a long period of very slow or 0 speed, restoring the stats of your log back to something sane):

The results are dramatically better, the distance and maximum speed are both now much more accurate and representative. This log also included the Static Navigation filter as the AMOD AGL 3080 logger was quite bad for logging at walking speeds.

Enjoy!

• There's another new button on the edit Log File tab exposing a feature that was previously a little too well hidden, this time to select which segments should be marked as "junk":
  

  That brings up a popup where you can quickly choose which segments are junk (and therefore shouldn't be displayed in the rest of the site) and which have the activity you're interested in:

  
• The colour of the junk segments on that page has been changed subtly from red/orange to a more neutral gray too.
• The GPS Data Filters page has been completely overhauled too so it should hopefully be a bit easier to use and faster to add certain type of filters too.

  Click on the Filters side panel of an activity you want to filter:

  
  The GPS Data Filters page now has clearer menu options and a bigger preview maps and graphs to show the results of the filters you have applied:
  
  And the individual filter pages now have more space to show their options and view the maps and graphs:
  
• The Time filter now has a preview map to show you the segment that is being discarded.
• Most filters now have a "Copy to tag" menu option that will let you copy the filter and it's parameters to a tag. This means that once you find a good combination of filters to clean up your activity, you can have them automatically applied to all data you upload from now on tagged with that tag.

GPSLog Labs now has a new Feedback forum, hosted on Idea.Informer.com.

You'll see a new button on the right hand side of the page where you can quickly leave feedback.

On the forum, you can see feature requests and bug reports other people have made and vote for them or add your comments.

Recent changes in GPSLog Labs have focused on improving the log file editing process:

• The Add a Place, Remove stops and Manually create segments commands on the Log File edit page have been changed from menu options to more prominent buttons:
  
• Remove stops is a new command that allows you to quickly and easily remove unwanted stops from a Log File. Multiple stops can be removed in one step which is easier than removing each stop or cut in turn.
  
• When specifying an unmatched place, previous activity is now used to provide a suggestion of likely places it could be from those in the neighbourhood of the start location:
  
• The Reprocess confirmation page has also been redesigned and the page sequence after queuing a file for reprocessing has been improved.
• The Speed/Pace vs Distance graphs on the activity detail page (Graphs vs Distance tab) now have a new "scaling" algorithm that isn't as extreme and should make pace graphs easier to read.
• There's also a new link at the bottom of the route Altitude Profile tab to show all altitude profile thumbnails for all logs. This is useful for circuits so you can easily check they are all correctly marked as forward or reversed direction.

If you're a Mac user, you may want to have a look at LoadMyTracks. It lets you quickly and easily download data from Garmin and other GPS logging devices over USB or serial connections and you can then quickly upload the data to GPSLog Labs.

Updates on the updates to GPSLog Labs are lagging a bit, but here's some of what's been happening lately:

• The log file chopping logic has been tweaked a little to hopefully avoid creating as many unwanted "unnamed places":
  - Auto created places must now be further away from known places before they'll be created.
  - Auto created places won't be used to chop logs between known places. If you do want the auto created place, after you name it, if you reprocess the log then it will be cut properly.
  - There were also a few bug fixes that should make detection of places more accurate.
• There's better support for editing and filtering of large log files.
• The little milestone markers now have a small arrow attached to indicate the approximate direction of travel at that point:
  
• There's now a filter on the logs tab for a place that lets you narrow down the activity by tag:
  
• The log file editing page has been tweaked to make finding some of the commands easier, the menu now includes the "Add a Place" and "Manually create segments" commands that were previously a little hard for some users to find:
  

  It's now possible to change the Route or Tags directly from the edit page for an activity after they have been set:

  
• The "Select tags" popup now allows quick selection of sets of tags from those used previously on other activity on the same route:
  
• Speed vs time graphs when you're editing and filtering log files now have a "scale" selection, that will allow you to see detail in log files which was previously hidden by large speed spikes caused by GPS errors:
  
  In this example, the actual activity is completely obscured by the 5,000 km/h errors... Selecting a maximum of 50 km/h on the scale means you can see the activity properly and edit it as required:
  
• There's a new "Inverse position filter" available, that is the opposite of the Position filter. i.e. it will discard points outside the given circle.

• 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.