Blog your location while you travel with this free, simple, but powerful app
Travel Blog is a FREE, open-sourced, advert-free, Android application. It is a light-weight travel logger perfect for any traveller.
It can:
• Log your location from GPS, Wifi or cell-id (tells you how accurate the fix is).
• Low battery usage, with configurable timeouts.
• Can manually edit location by dragging marker on a map.
• Attach a name and description with current timestamp.
• Log multiple trips.
• Edit or delete old posts.
• Save as KML file to SD card:
• KML file can then be Sent via email, or anything else you have installed like Dropbox.
• KML files can be imported to Google Earth and other similar applications.
• Time-stamp of each post saved so Google Earth animations and timelines can be used.
• View trip on Classic Google Maps.
• Support widgets to open New Post of multiple trips.
• Share a KML file from another app to this one.
It is not a battery hogger as it doesn't continually log your location, perfect for travelling in remote parts of the world, or long periods away from power. It also doesn't need internet (unless you want to view trip in google maps, or send it via email etc), perfect for travel abroad where data roaming costs plenty.
Why you need Travel Blog?
There are many uses of Travel Blog. Whenever you want to record your location manually (only record the interesting bits), this is the app for the job! You can then look at your trips directly on your phone, or share them with others.
If, like me, you like to use all the free technology available to you, here is a more involved use case example:
You are going on a long holiday abroad. You have your Android phone with you, but know the battery doesn't last long, and you can't afford the data roaming charges. You would like to record where you went or keep your family and friends abreast of your travels. So you can set up your own travel blog on Blogger. You can also set up your own Dropbox account which is online place to store files. By now your using the Travel Blog app, and are recording your location (say your hotel, favourite beach, day trip to a city, weekend trip to the mountains etc etc). You come across Wifi access in your hotel, cafe or train - now you can send your Travel Blog trip file to Dropbox. If you have no Wifi access, you decide to plug your phone into a PC at the local cyber cafe, and transfer the file manually to the PC, and from there to Dropbox.
Now before you went away, you set your up your blog website with a link to the Google Maps search of you Dropbox Travel Blog file: In Dropbox, copy the link to your KML file by going to share... Now in Google Maps (Classic or My Maps), enter this copied link into the Search Maps box and hit enter. This is your map, and you can now share this map. Goto Link, and either embed the HTML into your Blog website, or just share the link in emails, or on your blog website.
As long as you also overwrite the same file in Dropbox with your updated Travel Blog trip, your Blog website will always be up-to-date, and won't need changing each time to point to a new file. Genius!
WE HAVE NOW GONE OPEN-SOURCED! TAKE PART IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ADDITIONAL FEATURES! See http://code.google.com/p/travel-blog-android/
Contributions so far from Avinash Chopde - Thanks for your work!
Any problems or suggestions, please see our open-source pages at http://code.google.com/p/travel-blog-android/ and our google groups mailing list at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/travel-blog-android
It can:
• Log your location from GPS, Wifi or cell-id (tells you how accurate the fix is).
• Low battery usage, with configurable timeouts.
• Can manually edit location by dragging marker on a map.
• Attach a name and description with current timestamp.
• Log multiple trips.
• Edit or delete old posts.
• Save as KML file to SD card:
• KML file can then be Sent via email, or anything else you have installed like Dropbox.
• KML files can be imported to Google Earth and other similar applications.
• Time-stamp of each post saved so Google Earth animations and timelines can be used.
• View trip on Classic Google Maps.
• Support widgets to open New Post of multiple trips.
• Share a KML file from another app to this one.
It is not a battery hogger as it doesn't continually log your location, perfect for travelling in remote parts of the world, or long periods away from power. It also doesn't need internet (unless you want to view trip in google maps, or send it via email etc), perfect for travel abroad where data roaming costs plenty.
Why you need Travel Blog?
There are many uses of Travel Blog. Whenever you want to record your location manually (only record the interesting bits), this is the app for the job! You can then look at your trips directly on your phone, or share them with others.
If, like me, you like to use all the free technology available to you, here is a more involved use case example:
You are going on a long holiday abroad. You have your Android phone with you, but know the battery doesn't last long, and you can't afford the data roaming charges. You would like to record where you went or keep your family and friends abreast of your travels. So you can set up your own travel blog on Blogger. You can also set up your own Dropbox account which is online place to store files. By now your using the Travel Blog app, and are recording your location (say your hotel, favourite beach, day trip to a city, weekend trip to the mountains etc etc). You come across Wifi access in your hotel, cafe or train - now you can send your Travel Blog trip file to Dropbox. If you have no Wifi access, you decide to plug your phone into a PC at the local cyber cafe, and transfer the file manually to the PC, and from there to Dropbox.
Now before you went away, you set your up your blog website with a link to the Google Maps search of you Dropbox Travel Blog file: In Dropbox, copy the link to your KML file by going to share... Now in Google Maps (Classic or My Maps), enter this copied link into the Search Maps box and hit enter. This is your map, and you can now share this map. Goto Link, and either embed the HTML into your Blog website, or just share the link in emails, or on your blog website.
As long as you also overwrite the same file in Dropbox with your updated Travel Blog trip, your Blog website will always be up-to-date, and won't need changing each time to point to a new file. Genius!
WE HAVE NOW GONE OPEN-SOURCED! TAKE PART IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ADDITIONAL FEATURES! See http://code.google.com/p/travel-blog-android/
Contributions so far from Avinash Chopde - Thanks for your work!
Any problems or suggestions, please see our open-source pages at http://code.google.com/p/travel-blog-android/ and our google groups mailing list at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/travel-blog-android
