We are ecstatic to bring you a new RunningMap. A ton of work has gone into designing, building and testing this new version. It has been a labour of love.

The first thing you will notice is the new look. The design comes from the genius and talent of Sarah Ramsden. We couldn’t be happier with the result! And seeing our site on her portfolio page among clients the likes of Mercedes, Hyatt, Dell and Lexus does not hurt either. In addition to being a star graphic designer, she is one mean runner.

The tool bar along the top has been replaced with a tabbed nav bar down the left side. This was done to accommodate the more complex new and future feature set.

The biggest new feature is User Accounts. When you log in and save a route you will see it appear in the “My Routes” view. New routes can be labeled as Private or Public. In “My Routes”, you can delete existing routes. If you have a previously saved permalink, send us the ID number and your username and we will add it to your account.

The Search Results view has been improved to show more information about the routes. You can now change the way they are sorted by clicking a column header.

With this launch we are introducing advertisements to help support hosting and development costs. We have partnered with Lat49 who have developed an innovative method for supplying ads that are applicable to the map being viewed.

Thanks to the many people who signed up for the test version! All your data will be available in this release version. And a big thanks to all who have sent in suggestions and bug reports. Its you who make this the best darn sports mapping tool on the web!

(We have a limited supply of tech long-sleeve “keep your distance” t-shirts for $30 plus shipping)

Very soon the version 3 Beta version will be released to the public site. Many people have signed up for user accounts and we look forward to many more joining on. Thanks to everyone for their feedback!

The one feature that I am putting the final touches on is a choice for making a saved route as either public or private. Initially this will only be applicable to new routes. The ability to change existing routes will come soon.

With the new version we will be testing a new advertising engine. Please send us your feedback about this.

- Randy T.

“The ultimate tool for determining running route distances.” is what the original Digg poster said. If you are a Digg member, check it out and give us your vote.

Episode 84
Sept. 28, 2007

In an effort to fix one problem we created another. Saved routes between 1:45pm MST Sept. 22, 2007 and 12pm MST Sept 23, 2007 had incorrect Permalink IDs reported back to the user. If you saved your route during this time and received a permalink ID in the range of 9518 to 9574, please send us an email (with your permalink ID) and we will send you the correct Permalink ID. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Chris and I had a blast meeting Leo Laporte and his staff when we went to Vancouver for the Aug 10 taping of our guest appearance on his show. A big thanks to the staff and especially Ryan Yewell. The segment will air on September 28 and will be available on Google video shortly thereafter.

There is a recent post on the Yahoo! Developer Network site about us: Developer Spotlight: RunningMap.com. Yahoo! has some really cool developer API’s and Runningmap only scratches the surface of two of them. Runningmap has also been hosting with Yahoo! for almost a year and it has been painless. I visited San Jose at a Flex conference in March and met some Y! developers who were all really nice. One was even from Alberta (Scott)! So thanks Y!

We will be in the spotlight a little bit more in the near future. Chris and I are flying to Vancouver on the 9th so we can be interviewed by Leo Laporte for his TV show “The Lab With Leo” about Runningmap. I will post when the segment is scheduled for broadcast.

Today Runningmap surpassed 20,000 user saved routes. I have had emails lately about searching routes. We are working to improve the search capabilities to serve this data better. Thanks runningmappers!

Randy

Welcome to a newly designed and organized section of Runningmap.com. This replaces the forum-style web pages that were here before. This is the beginning of big changes to the site as we transition to a new look with big new features!

The News section will be used in a blog-like manner and will give users an opportunity to comment on things happening here, or to search past news.

We are very fortunate to have Sarah Ramsden consulting with us on this redesign. Thanks Sarah!

We hope you like it. Send us your comments.

Randy Troppmann
Runningmap founder

ver 2.9.14

Elevation above the 49th parallel (Canada) in North America is now working again.

I have made a few more tweeks to point functionality and distance text color.