Some recent updates to GPSLog Labs:

• Speed zones can be displayed on maps.

  The "Enhance!" button on the maps has been converted into a dropdown menu, the old behaviour is now available from the "Unfiltered" option.

  

  The map on the activity detail page has a new option "Speed zones" which will colour the track on the map according to the speed zone.

  

  To enable this option, you'll need to configure speed zones for one or more of your tags.

• Tag hierarchy visualisation.

  

  This new tab on the Tags page will automatically determine the major tags you use (Ride, Run, ...) and minor tags within those (e.g. type of shoes, bike used, type of activity.)

  You can drag the tags around the graph to get a nice layout and double-click a tag to only include activity with that tag.

• The place network visualisation now has options to sort the places according to time of first or last visit, as well as by name and count of visits.

• You can once again edit activity notes directly from the log file activity editing page, rather than having to do it from the activity detail page.

Some recent (and some not so recent) updates to GPSLog Labs:

• New clock, altitude profile and map thumbnails.

  The thumbnail images have a new updated look that is smoother and more detailed. They are also rendered in the browser, rather than being downloaded, which speeds up the display of the pages.

  

  The clocks now "zoom in" when indicating short durations to make the most of the available space and show the duration in hours and minutes too. A duration of greater than 12 hours is indicated by shading the full circle.

  An arrow indicates whether the time is a.m. or p.m. (the arrow points from the start or end time to noon).

  Times for "junk" activity are shown in a small and simplified thumbnail.

  

  Altitude thumbnails simply show the profile, with distance grid lines every 10km and altitude grid lines every 100m.

  

  Map thumbnails have a 1km grid to indicate scale, and show the start location as a green dot and the end location as a red dot.

• You can now generate a Google "static map image url" for an activity via the Activity detail "Share Log" page. I.e. a simple image file that can be downloaded or added to a page and it doesn't require any scripting to make it work.

  

  This feature is only available for shared activity, but once the url has been generated or the image downloaded, the activity can be made private again.

• The thumbnail for activity you share to your Facebook timeline is now a small "terrain" map. This looks nicer and has more detail than the old icon.

  

• Activity tags are now sorted by overall frequency, not just alphabetically. This makes the titles of pages (particularly shared activity and posts to Facebook etc.) more sensible as the primary activity tag is likely to be first (e.g. "Bike" or "Run") followed by any minor tags (e.g. shoe type or bike being used).

• I've added shading on activity heart rate graphs to indicate hear rate zones:

  

  An earlier post has details on setting up heart rate zones for your tags.

  

• Likewise, there is also shading on activity speed graphs to indicate speed zones if you have them configured.

  

  There are links under these graphs to take you to the zone configuration if you haven't yet set up speed zones (or heart rate zones).

  

• A bug that meant times weren't working properly for non-English dates on the manually create segments page has been fixed. Note, this page still won't work properly for very long files/segments. It's probably best that those are edited using gpsbabel before uploading to GPSLog Labs.

  This page has also been updated with the new layout.

Some recent updates to GPSLog Labs:

• The full-screen mode for maps is now controlled by a button in the top right corner of the map, rather than a link below the map. There's a smaller version for small maps, and the same button will close the full-screen view.

  

• The "Activity feed" now has some "action" buttons on your recent and upcoming significant achievements.

  Completed goals have a "Rollover" button to copy the goal and adjust the dates to the next time period.

  

  Fastest times have a "Share" button to allow you to quickly post them to Facebook or another social network.

  

  The feed now also includes predictions of when you'll reach certain activity counts (e.g. your 100th run).

• The tag and goal distance vs time graphs now have cross-hairs to let you easily read off the distance/time of the point under the mouse.

  

• The new layout style is continuing to spread through the site, now it includes the Uploaded Log Files and Your Shared Content pages.

I've just fixed up a localisation bug that was breaking the maps in some languages. If you were having problems, please give it another go and I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

GPSLog Labs has finally be updated to use the latest Google Maps (v3 for those keeping score.)

Please keep an eye out for anything that may have been broken in the change over and let me know if you see anything.

I hope you enjoy some of the shiny new features, including:

• Maps are now much faster!
• You can use streetview to checkout your activities from ground-level.
  
• In some areas, the satellite photography has funky 45 degree images.
• The info popups have some nicer formatting
  
• Maps for routes have a couple of modes to show a heatmap of stops along the route:
  
  And also the location of the milestones:
  
• New icons are available in the tag and place icon libraries (courtesy of Mapbox)
• The map of all the users' places has been changed from using markers to a heatmap (and has some animation.)
• Paths on selection maps can be coloured according to route or with unique colours.

Bundled in with these changes you'll find a bunch of other improvements and new features that I'll cover in the next post.

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.

The maps have been improved throughout GPSLog Labs and now use a drop-down menu to choose the map type. This means there is room for more types of maps including the "Terrain" map:

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:

You can choose what kind of map you want to display on the GPSLog Labs maps as they now support the OpenStreetMap and OpenStreetMap bicycle map tiles.

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.

In addition to sharing GPSLog Labs content via Twitter, Facebook, email and IM, another option is to embed maps and graphs of your activity in your own website.

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.