EveryTrail

Joost recently took the wrappers off his startup, EveryTrail. He presented his company at the San Francisco NewTech Meetup last week to a warm reception from technology enthusiasts. I haven't asked Joost this, but I would guess he got at least 100 signups from that 15 minutes of fame - one person claimed that EveryTrail is the thing that has pushed him to finally buy a GPS receiver. Rafe Needleman from CNET was there and gave Joost some great coverage (below)

I think you can look at EveryTrail on a few dimensions from a tool for recreational hikers to a platform for next generation travel (Travel 3.0 ??). The EveryTrail offering in a nutshell:

RECORD - walk, bike, sail, run with your GPS receiver and camera
VISUALIZE - a super fast and easy Google-map mashup (with topo maps!) plus a super cool feature to geotag photos
SHARE - send your e-trip to family and friends. They can fly though your walk/bike/boat and see the pictures you took from the locations you took them. I have copied a map below as an example (bottom of post)

The above "work-flow" is how the company got started - Joost is a big climber and wanted to record his routes and photos in a way to share with friends. I think EveryTrail will end up at a really interesting place because of its content. Once there are a few hundred thousand routes/trips then anyone can use it to plan their next trip - a personalized lonely planet. If you are a hiker, view all the trails in Tahoe complete with pictures, blogs and accommodation before you take your next trip. And you won’t have to flip through pages of antique stores and other roadside attractions to get to content that is relevant to you.

EveryTrail's timing is certainly better than that of a company I was involved with in 2000. SportBug was an early map+GPS mashup for fitness (running, biking) tracking. EveryTrail has extended this idea to a broader platform and has at least ten times the features.

CNet Coverage on EveryTrail.
Buy your GPS now at TheGPSStore and get started everytrailing...

Now go sign up - and sign up every GPS enthusiast that you know.