The old tutorial is getting a bit out of date with all the new features and changes to the look of the site, so here's an up to date version: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

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.

Plenty of things on GPSLog Labs have been slowly improving and it's about time that I mentioned a few of them:

• The device format detection process has been made much more robust and accurate and now has a new layout:
  
  Once the file(s) has been analysed, a summary of the results is displayed:
  

  Maps and graphs can be displayed if this isn't enough:

  

  Once a working format has been found, you can continue using the site:

  
• Once a log is processed, there are now some illustrations on the forms to indicate the purpose of the actions:

  Merge two adjacent log segments by removing the "cut" between them

  

  Remove a stop at a place and merge the adjacent segments into a single segment

  
• The /uploads/ pages have had their urls redesigned to make the "next log file", "previous log file" and "mark as done" links work much more reliably on the different tabs. This means you can stay on the "unedited uploads only" view as you edit and tag your uploads.
• You can now see a list of your shared activity using the mobile version of the site, also, map thumbnails have been added to the mobile view pages and there is a more obvious "view activity on map" button.
• Goals now support planning of your future activity. You can create tasks to plan out your training program and export these in iCalendar format so you can keep track of what your plans are from MS Exchange, Google Calendar, iCal or your phone.
• In addition to tasks, I've also added in a couple of training program templates that you can use to get started training for a marathon, half-marathon or a long distance cycling event such as the Around the Bay in a Day.

As always, I'd love to know what you think and hope you enjoy the site.

You can upload logs directly to GPSLog Labs from your iPhone or similar mobile device using your unique email upload address.

Click on your device icon on the home page to find your device's unique address. It will look something like upload+abcdef123456zyxwvu987654@gpsloglabs.com.

Simply send the log file or files as attachments (zipped if you like, it'll be faster that way) and then you will receive an email containing links to the activity in GPSLog Labs once it is processed.

You can add tags to your activity by entering them in the subject line like: ((tags: Bike)) The tags will be matched as smartly as possible, you only need to put enough of the tag in to make it unambiguously match one of your existing tags and the text case doesn't matter.

The rest of your email title will be added as a note on the activity.

This post outlines a few of the recent updates to GPSLog Labs:

• The automatic device format detection process has been cleaned up and improved so it works with multiple files:
  
• The uploads page has a new layout:
  
• And it's now easy to navigate through multiple files when editing uploads using the Next and Previous links:
  

There have been lots of little updates to GPSLog Labs since my last post and a couple of big new features that I'll preview here but will explain in full detail in future posts.

• Translations: GPSLog Labs is now available in different languages.

  By default only day and month names will be translated, but there is a more comprehensive Polish translation thanks to Lukasz. If you want to help out translating GPSLog Labs into your language, contact me at tom@gpsloglabs.com.

  
• Upload via email: On the detail page for your device you will be provided with an email address that you can email logs to (as attachments) and they will be processed. When they're ready you'll receive a reply with the links to your activity.
  
  This is particularly useful if you want to upload a track recorded on your iPhone using MotionX GPS app, for example.
• Sharing: By default all your activity on GPSLog Labs is private and visible only to you, but Logs now have a Share button that lets you generate a publicly accessible detail page, such as this one.

  You can then share the URL on Twitter, Facebook, email, IM or wherever you like.

  

  You can also get a snippet of HTML to embed the map or graphs into your own website like this:

This post outlines a few of the recent updates to GPSLog Labs:

• Sorting/filtering the Uploaded Log Files page:
  

  The Uploaded Log Files page can be sorted either by the date the files were uploaded or the date of the activity in the file.

  It can also be restricted to show only "new" uploads, that is log files which haven't had any edits yet. This can be handy to find the logs you've uploaded but not yet edited.

  These logs will have their file names coloured yellow in the list, and when you make a change they will go blue.

  
• Mark as done
  

  A checkbox will now appear next to logs on the Uploaded Log Files page if they don't need to be edited. This will mark them as edited and turn the filename from yellow to blue and stop them from showing up on the "new uploads only" view.

• Go back to Uploads button
  

  The Go back to Uploads button on the log editing page will now go back to the uploaded log files page at the same place you left it from, which should make it a bit easier to keep track of the logs you're editing. It will also have a "mark as done" checkbox if you haven't made any changes to the activity segments but want the log to no longer show on the "new uploads only" view.

• Device format detection
  

  The device format detection page has had an overhaul to make it clearer that you have to do this step before you can see all the log file details.

  This page shows the details of the newly uploaded file, and tests it against all the file formats that GPSLog Labs supports.

  Any formats that have valid data will be displayed and you can choose the best one before continuing on with the main processing and editing of your log file.

I've changed the GPSLog Labs upload form a little, partly to make it nicer looking and less cluttered, but mostly to make the purpose of Devices a little clearer.

Previously, the choice of device to upload to wasn't shown on the form if you had only one device, and now it will always be given.

To process the log files you upload, the system needs to know what the format of the file is. When you first upload a file, there is a page that automatically detects this format, but that isn't practical to do for every file that is uploaded, so the setting is stored in a "device". This means that each device can handle one format only, and therefore, if you want to upload files with a different format you'll need to create another device to do so.

The other purpose of devices is to track battery life. If you upload all logs you record, then GPSLog Labs knows how long your logger has been switched on so can predict how much time you have before you need to recharge/replace your batteries and therefore prevent you getting a flat battery in the middle of an activity, which can be rather frustrating!

When the logged usage goes over 75% you'll get a warning:

Marking the point where you recharged or replaced your batteries is easy too:

Note: An updated version of this tutorial is now available.

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.

Click the button for the format which imports the data best and the file will now appear in the Uploaded Log Files tab.

After a few seconds, the file should be processed. During this step, GPSLog Labs will identify the start and stop locations of your activity and break the file up into segments.

This will highlight any issues GPSLog Labs has had processing the file, and in particular, since this is the first log uploaded, the start and end places need to be named. Click the log file name to begin editing the extracted activity.

The log file detail page shows the contents of the log file at the top, and the extracted activity at the bottom. Activity is broken into 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.

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

You can click on the activity thumbnail to popup a more detailed map of any segment to help identify the activity. From that popup you can also click through to the activity detail page.

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, and the Places, Routes and Tags indicator icons on the right hand side will go green.

Your activity is also visible in the rest of the system classified by places, routes and tags.

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

Well, the inbox redesign mentioned a few weeks back turned out to take longer than planned, but the end result is a huge improvement in the way you manage your log files with GPSLog Labs and the "inbox" doesn't really exist anymore.

I'll post a quick tutorial soon to show the basic steps involved in uploading a log and processing it, but for now, a summary of some of the major changes are as follows:

• Activity is automatically extracted from uploaded log files and no longer needs to be "confirmed" before it shows up in the rest of the site.
• You get much more direct control over the editing of the extracted activity.
• Places will automatically be created based on your uploaded logs.

This last one is a biggy and results in a big change to the way you use GPSLog Labs. GPSLog Labs now "asks for forgiveness, not permission" and will create a new place whenever a log starts or stops in a location that can't be matched to an existing place. This means that you can get up and running with the site much more quickly.

When GPSLog Labs creates a place, you can either give it a name and keep it or if you don't want a place at that location, you can swap it for the correct place that should have matched.