Tripit: Why should I sign up with my Google Account?

I normally travel a lot and I am from the group of people that left printers behind some years ago, so I do NOT print my boarding pass NOR the email that air companies sent me after booking my flight. For this reason I always used to go around with a piece of paper or a post-it in my wallet with my flight information: Not good!

After a while I decided to create a spreadsheet in Google Docs with all my flight info. It was a bit tedious as I hate copy-paste. It was kind of better than the post-it but I still needed online connection so this did not replaced the post-it technique, despite it gave me a bit of control over my flights.

My last trial is TripIt. Last week Carlos Gomez told me that TripIt has an Android App and he showed me how it looked like. This was amazingly cool as it displays off-line info (avoiding roaming costs) of your trips directly in the App and the way to input the info is by sending the email you receive from the airline to plans@tripit.com with the email address you are registered. Laziness of me, I registered with my GMail account but not with my Google Account (It was 1 click less) so after that my Android App off line looked like:

I changed immediately the configuration to my Google Account, and surprise: as my Android phone is also connected to my Google Account, all the info that I sync'ed in my TripIt App gets displayed when I start the App (no need to Sign in all the time), regardless of my connection status. This way I have all the info I need wherever I am on the planet. 

Conclusion: This is a mandatory App for your Android so give it a try, it is free!

Skiing in Zermatt with a tech twist

Our ski day starts at this point (Carlos, Asier and me very fresh and ready to go to the gondola), it continues with some sun bathing here and ends up in the Après-Ski here where we got to know Heather and Justine. Whatever happens later I can not explain as my battery died and we agreed not to explain anything that could not be geo-tagged.

Some data extracted from the answer to all my problems until now: My Tracks for Android

Asier: 87.3 Km/h
Carlos: 86.40 Km/h
Gerard: 90.90Km/h
Min. elevation: 1756m
Max. elevation: 3416m

The three of us installed this app in our Nexus One (it works in any Android powered device) so we could enjoy the slopes with data :) Obviously Carlos was trying to win speed-wise all the time (almost risking his life) but obviously he had no chance.

After recording your full track you can upload it directly to Google Maps creating a spreadsheet in Google Docs with stats and it also allows you to download a kml file and a gpx file. The kml file allows you to share your track in Google Earth with your friends and the gpx file contains all the geo data point by point of your day.

What do you want a gpx file?
To know where you took your pictures (In case your camera does not have GPS). You can sync your camera time with your phone in the morning and then check the latlong info in the file. time is stored in gpx files in UTC so be sure you look up the correct timing.

Now you have your timing, latlong info and a Map in Google Maps... so go ahead and edit it nicely to create your story. Photos with your friends can be uploaded to Picasa Web Albums (here the one of that day) and the pictures where you show the world can be uploaded to Panoramio. The photos that you upload to Panoramio and follow Google Earth upload policy will directly be displayed in the Map. The photos were you are with your friends will not so how to add them in your map?

1. Go to the map and click on Edit
2. Add a placemark where you took the picture (check the place with the gpx file)
3. Click on the placemark and click on "Edit HTML"
4. Add the info of the image and add an anchor if you want the picture to be a link using the following format:

<a href="URL you want the picture to link"><img src="URL of the picture stored at Picasa Web Albums" style="width:160px"></a>

5. change the placemark shape to indicate whether you where skiing, drinking a beer, etc.

And that is it. You just miss to share your map with your friends and bet money with Carlos the following weekend, as there is no way he wins the speed competition.

Sidenote: If you ever want to come to ski with me and you do not have My Tracks... just forget about it.
Sidenote 2: I wanted to give a special mention to our best friends Alvar and Michael as they could not make it to Zermatt. Maybe next time!