

Ask HN: review my startup, a planning/analysis app for cyclists - cullenking
http://ridewithgps.com

======
buro9
Nice.

Questions I have: 1) Is your home location or post code displayed to anyone
else? If so could you by default "approximate" the location to others unless a
user specifies that they want their precise home location shown. Reason: Bike
theft. Don't tell someone precisely where your bikes are, especially when
combined with data showing when you're likely not going to be there.

2) Upload photos of equipment/accessories. Add a Flickr picker... I
immediately balked at having to go to Flickr, download a photo just to re-
upload... actually a URL in addition to a browse would sort this out pretty
simply.

3) I'm pretty sure I said to hide my email address, yet options implies it's
visible.

4) Time-zone... set it according to home location.

5) Health page... weight inc' bicycle and gear? Nope, you should put the
weight of equipment on the equipment page... this data varies depending on
what bicycle I take out.

6) Health page... age instead of date of birth?

7) Route drawing... remember prior preferences. Avid cyclists will start to
begrudge always telling the tool that they aren't "Driving".

8) Full screen mode is nice, as is the elevation cross-section. A few of the
route segments seemed to be wrong but I suspect this is Google's doing and not
yours (it would send me needlessly down side-streets and correcting it is a
pain in the ass).

9) Route planning should allow for the addition of markers. Think of things
like: Lunch stop, viewpoint, toilet break, etc.

10) Consider a way of displaying several routes on the same page... think of
scenarios like the Dragon Ride and the short and long rides sharing a
considerable chunk of the route (show specific routes on the same page). Also
consider scenarios like "I'm going to ride Ventoux, allow me to visually
compare the routes in that area" (show routes that meet a search criteria on
the same page).

11) Haven't yet used the GPS functionality, but you appear to have the basics
covered.

12) I liked the embedding widget... but it's ugly. Does it have to be in
black? Could you not have a prettier logo?

13) Before I enter in too much data I'd like to see when it's no longer free.
Even if everything is free now, you should let people know at what point it
ceases to be free. The issue is... "Why should I invest my time and data with
you when I don't know how long the functionality offered will be offered to me
at the price you're giving it to me (currently free)?". Even if you just say,
we're not sure, but in this ballpark when we feel that we have a finished
product... you'd increase the amount of trust and faith I have in supplying
you with so much data.

14) Route sharing, route widgets... go beyond the simple. Look at this
scenario: <http://www.londonfgss.com/thread31699.html> A single ride, with
over 100 participants, that recurs and changes direction... yet it's obvious
it should only be stored as one route, but you should allow multiple people to
say that they're riding a route in the future (scheduled event rides as well
as individual rides in addition to route planning). There's a big space for
being the people who can route plan sponsored rides let alone community rides
and things like that.

15) I'd consider adding ride photos or something to pull in photos from Google
and show those. If someone is remotely route-planning (prior to a foreign
vacation) they will want to know whether the place looks good... i.e. This:
<http://ridewithgps.com/routes/23644> does not communicate the beauty of this:
<http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=nesque%20gorges>

Overall it works really well with even the poorly mapped areas:
<http://ridewithgps.com/routes/23644>

I run a large bike forum and will pimp it there and ask for more feedback for
you: <http://www.londonfgss.com/thread35392.html>

~~~
cullenking
First off, wow! Thanks for taking the time to provide us with so many good
points; it's hard to see many of the things you mention from a fresh
perspective, as I have been staring at this project for a long while.

There is no option to hide your location, however it doesn't get more specific
than the zip/city even if you used an actual home address to set the
zip/city/etc. However, I agree it should be hidden and consider it done. Easy
to add, I'll do so today. I have talked to a few people about adding a 'fuzz'
factor to routes, so that the start/end doesn't touch your house. I am not
sure how I want to implement this yet, so it hasn't been done. but, it is
being thought about!

Soon we will have photo geotagging on routes. Should be an easy enough task,
it's just been on the todo while we make what we have more solid. I like the
Flickr integration and will investigate it.

I will clarify the email address hiding stuff, thanks for pointing out the
confusion.

I haven't investigated how to assign timezone based on zip/city, but I would
be surprised if Google doesn't provide that with geolocation information.

Thanks for reminding me about the weight problem. I will flag it as needing
change, so your base weight is on your profile and gear weight on the bike.
Additionally, I know people that want to track individual weight per ride, so
I'll have to probably default to a riders last ride weight, profile weight or
inputted weight when they log an activity.

Route planning currently does allow markers, they are called 'course points'
(according to garmin), but that name is not too friendly. I'll massage that,
but, you can currently add markers around the route it's just a kludgy UI. I
am reworking that really soon, after I finish my week long list of bug
fixes/improvements.

We have been working on multiple route display/comparison, including segment
matching (same leg of even different trips), but it's very rough and not
forward to the public. It will be cleaned up, released and expanded soon.

I agree the embed is ugly, it's just been so easy to forget it exists! It's on
the list, highlighted, including adding more options for the person doing the
embedding.

The product will always be free, but to a limited ability. I agree however, we
have not expressed that very well. I'll sit down with Zack and Cam and come up
with some explicit language that will help people with this.

We plan on adding events, most likely as a premium feature. I would love to
have cyclists register and appear on the list of an event, with some way of
showing it in their profile. We have been talking about this for a while, but
haven't nailed anything down. It needs to (and will) be done before spring,
when the riding season starts really taking off.

Thanks again for sharing our site around and generating the exposure. Traffic
is already way up from both this post and your forum, so it is MUCH
appreciated. I'll jump on that forum as well and get involved with the
discussion. Additionally, I'll bug you later today when I have implemented
some of your suggestions.

------
patio11
You list an awful lot of features on the home page. ("Plan, share, upload,
analyze." are all features. Or take a look at all of your bullet points.)

Benefits sell software, not features.

Think of it this way -- you're a cyclist, right? Supposing you were trying to
convert a family member into cycling, would you say "Involves moving a pair of
pedals in circles quite a bit! Spins wheels! Forward motion while cycling!"
No, you say "Do this and you will _be healthier_ , _have more energy_ , _save
money on gas_ , and _not kill the planet_." (Feel free to strike the last one
if you are not an environmentalist. Gaia knows I'm not. But you get the
general idea.)

Figure out what your software does _for your user_ rather than what your
software _does_ , and then sell them on buying that tangible benefit to their
lives.

~~~
zackham
Excellent point, thanks for the feedback!

------
Dmunro
As a developer and cyclist, I really like your idea and implementation. It's
modern and intuitive, something a lot of cycling sites lack, unfortunately.

One feature you can think about that I've often thought would be useful, would
be to track road quality via a device that detects vibrations. Poorly
maintained roads = big vibrations. I don't know the technical feasibility of
this off hand, but hopefully it gives you a new avenue to explore.

~~~
zackham
This is a great idea for an app for a phone with an accelerometer. Thanks for
the input!

------
Maciek416
Nice idea!

You should let people drop in their RunKeeper user URL and scan their
activities GPX data from there (it's all there).

Quite a few people I know use RunKeeper for cycling now because it's one less
device to buy/maintain/ride with (running on the iPhone and all). In addition,
the RK guys are likely to help you promote your service -- they're quite
active with respect to their community.

~~~
cullenking
We had an import feature that allowed users to pull in their tracks from other
services, but a migration to new code combined with a cease and desist letter
from the big competitor led us to disable importation for the time being.

We are investigating our options and will proceed when we understand the
implications of those options. With that being said, this feature was VERY
popular, and I loved watching someone bring in 100 routes from their other
accounts. People love the concept of data independence and are pretty shocked
when they hear one of their favourite sites doesn't allow them to backup their
information. So, we are hoping to bring this back in some way that doesn't
tick off the other services, or at least does so in a way that doesn't have
negative implications on us or our users :P

------
MicahWedemeyer
No specific criticisms of the app, but I did notice this on the about us page:

 _We have put together some money and quit our jobs, with the intention of
making Ride with GPS the best site of its kind on the internet._

Having 3 full-timers working on a bootstrapped project (especially one with no
current revenue model, as far as I can tell) will be very tough. Ramen
profitability is that much further away, and you burn through your seed money
very quickly.

Since I don't want to start the whole "quit-your-dayjob vs dont-quit" debate,
all I will say is this: Consider not waiting until your seed money is
completely exhausted before exploring avenues of funding, and by this I mean
getting some kind of job. Any sort of income that still allows you to work on
your project can help you stay alive until you start making a decent income
from your startup.

~~~
zackham
That text is outdated =)

------
wensing
I just started biking again for the first time since childhood, and I bought
the $4.99 Cyclometer app for the iPhone.

So I came to your site as an excited novice and I'm sort of clueless. Hard to
know where to go on the home screen. I assume I want to sign up, but I don't
know your feature-benefits well enough to make a decision.

To that end, why are the "Start drawing" and "Sign up" buttons given equal
weight in the UI? Do you expect 50% of your visitors to do each? Seems
unlikely--and is that even what you want?

The right-left arrows (<|>) to bring up that other blurb is totally unexpected
behaviour given a right-arrow click. The content should be coming in from the
side, and be progressing me along some kind of 1, 2, 3 step process.
Otherwise, why hide the first blurb in order to show me the second?

~~~
cullenking
Good points. I just spend a couple hours implementing some a/b testing for an
emphasized version of the signup button. Been meaning to do some a/b testing,
but got sidelined.

I agree on the left/right slide action comment, will flag it for fixing :)

------
whalesalad
This is just the kind of site that I am looking for. I've had lots of GPX/KML
data from my Android phone (with the My Tracks app) and no where to put it.
I'm incredibly excited to start using this daily after every ride, to both
share what I've done with my buddies and keep track of how far I go.

I really wish I was doing this all day every day whenever I ride... I think I
rode 10 miles a day for the past 2 years rain or shine to and from my job and
it would have been super rad to see the hundreds of miles ridden all added up!

So, sorry I don't have any immediate feedback yet but I am using your app and
hope to have some good feedback soon:)

Here I am - <http://ridewithgps.com/users/4151>

------
prabodh
It is good if the default map loads based on my location..currently i have no
idea where is it pointing to it..and there is no easy way to change that

~~~
cullenking
A while ago we pulled support for IP geolocation, due to the service being
slow. I have beenlooking into reliable alternatives and have failed, but am
totally open to suggestions! Latest idea is to try one of the ip address
databases, which claim to be relatively accurate. However, since a user can
create an account and save a location to auto-center on, I haven't tried to
hard. I'll have to update the wording around the site to steer people towards
account creation so that location is saved to a profile.

------
flog
Can you explain how you're getting elevation data? Last time I asked around
this wasn't possible (at least according to Yahoo! maps team at FOWA)

~~~
zackham
The USGS will give you their entire data set (mostly 1/3 arcsecond) if you
send them a 500 gb external drive. We expose a web service to get at this data
set quickly for our planning flash app and some of our background tasks.

~~~
flog
But nothing on an international level?

~~~
zackham
We are getting international data through their web service currently, but
will be integrating an international data set soon.

------
abraham
Look into importing My Tracks data: <http://mytracks.appspot.com/>

~~~
whalesalad
All the data I've imported thus far has been My Tracks data exported as GMX -
<http://ridewithgps.com/users/4151>

------
kbob
It would be great if you had more info about compatible GPS units. Are there
specific brands/models that work? Are there keywords to look for (any XYZ
protocol-compatible GPS)? I saw mention of the Garmin 605 and 705 in the FAQ,
but are those the only models?

------
acj
Using Chromium nightly (build 35301) I can't update my profile settings.
Clicking on "Save changes" gives no feedback and does not appear to save the
changes. Other buttons in the app appear to work.

Nice work!

~~~
cullenking
Interesting, does this problem happen for you when using other browsers or
just chrome? I'd love to help you out (or fix the issue for others!), however
can't promise anything if the issue is only on chrome nightly. Send us an
email to ridewithgps@gmail.com or use the 'Feedback' button at the top of the
site.

------
etherealG
one thing I'd recommend, try using google maps local search api for your
search box. It has much more accurate results, and seems to use a completely
different database for search results, especially in the UK. Here's a link to
it, try using this instead of the search call in the google maps api.
<http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/mapsearch/index.html>

It's a bit more work, but the results are much better, UK postcodes will
actually work instead of being random.

~~~
cullenking
Cool, I'll give it a looksy. Thanks for the tip!

------
davidw
Looks pretty cool and well done. I think that it's definitely something where,
if you get enough people, it will also start to be really interesting seeing
routes other people put in.

------
justliving
nice app!

Reminds me somewhat of <http://www.mapmyrun.com/>

~~~
waleedka
and <http://runthere.com/>

~~~
cullenking
and many of the other alternatives. We just aim to do several things
differently: respect our users (not our advertisers, which don't exist),
continually innovate and foster community involvement.

~~~
justliving
hope it will work out for you!

------
andrewbadera
It seems like you have a great UI and lots of features already covered, but in
case you haven't looked at these guys, they're worth knowing about:
<http://www.walkjogrun.net/>

