from the outdoor gearheads at First Tracks!! Online Media
Salt Lake City, UT – With the new ski and snowboard season closer than you think, it’s time to load your smartphone with the latest snowsports apps to prepare for the season ahead.nThere are a number of new apps available for owners of iPhones, iPods, Blackberries, Android phones and others. Some work with the unit’s GPS to track your ski day, while others provide current snow conditions and more.
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Fugawi’s iPhone application. |
Fugawi has released a new topographical map application for the Apple iPhone, Fugawi iMap, that allows iPhone users to seamlessly download and access raster topographical maps of the United States and Canada. The full-featured Fugawi iMap App provides an intuitive user-interface for marking waypoints and extensive mapping data for navigation and positional location information throughout the U.S. and Canada.
The Fugawi iMap App displays a user’s real-time location in latitude and longitude or Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) with an easily visible position marker. An active map seamlessly pans as the user moves, features a zoom in and out function, and includes detail such as scale, elevation, contours, water bodies, major roads, railways and bridges, to name a few. The perfect accompaniment for skiing and riding, in-bounds or in the backcountry, users simply tap the screen to drop a waypoint and drag the marker to move it. Plotted points include name, icon, exact coordinates and text descriptions that can be quickly edited on the iPhone. Fugawi iMap maps are downloaded through the iPhone’s internet connection (Edge, 3G or WiFi) and saved locally on the phone for use even when outside of cell phone or WiFi internet coverage. The iMap App comes with a free Fugawi X-Traverse account that allows users to save, retrieve and transfer waypoints as GPX files from Fugawi navigation software for PC, MacENC for Apple OS X and Google Earth to the iPhone, and vice versa.
“We pride ourselves on providing the most powerful navigation capabilities to outdoor enthusiasts, and we are pleased to expand our offerings with the Fugawi iMap App,” said Robin Martel, president of Northport Systems. “Furthering our commitment to providing customers with the best technology to enhance the outdoor experience, the iMap application delivers easy to use, convenient mapping features that Fugawi will continue to expand via free updates for iMap users.”
Fugawi iMap is available for purchase online from the iTunes Store for US $4.99, and includes a free Fugawi X-Traverse account for use with Fugawi iMap. Purchases of Fugawi Global Navigator and Fugawi Marine ENC PC software now include a free subscription to topographical maps of Canada or the United States allowing iMap users to transfer waypoints between a desktop and iPhone using the same maps.
www.fugawi.com.
For the first time, skiers and snowboarders can use augmented reality (AR), a new mobile phenomenon made possible by the iPhone 3GS, to navigate trails and on-mountain features at select North American ski resorts. Using an application developed by Colorado-based Resort Technology Partners (RTP), REALSKI allows riders to view their surroundings while the app overlays digital graphics showing nearby lifts, runs and resort facilities in real view and real-time. Version 1.1 includes demo maps for five resorts and offers more than 80 mountains in North America from which to choose.
With REALSKI, users move the iPhone up, down, and around to scan their surroundings. Digital overlays will change in real time to match what the camera sees. This allows users to find the location of facilities and points of interest, including named runs including skill designation (green, blue, black) and directional heading, lift names with loading and unloading areas, lodges, restrooms, restaurants and special areas such as terrain parks.
Anytime a snowboarder or skier wants to orient themselves or find a facility at the resort, they can simply scan across the mountain with the iPhone’s camera and REALSKI provides the answer as chairlift names, runs, facilities, and activities pop up on the screen. The app is easy to use and works in real time. REALSKI is a technology solution that works even when there is no cell coverage as it leverages the GPS features of the phone.
www.rtp.com/realski
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A screenshot from the Ski Club of Great Britain’s iPhone app. |
The Ski Club of Great Britain has launched a new snow report app that can be downloaded for free from the iTunes store. It features live snow report data from 250 resorts including snow depths, on and off piste conditions as well as webcams and the latest ski and snowboarding news from the Club.
www.skiclub.co.uk
Luxury sports watch and instrument brand Linde Werdelin (LW) has launched its first Ski Guide iPhone application and a community-based online guide on SQUA.RE. Skiing is an integral part of the brand’s lifestyle. The application is a mobile version of the LW ski guide books personally written by Jorn Werdelin and Morten Linde, founders of Linde Werdelin, offering their hand-picked favorites and “insider knowledge.” Both the application and the online guide provide a host of personal recommendations for ski enthusiasts heading to a variety of European resorts.
LW Ski Guide App is downloadable from Apple‘s App Store and iTunes Store for £5.99, while a “Lite” version for one complete resort is a free app.
www.lindewerdelin.com
Travel guide author Christine Balaz recently published a travel app for the iPod and iPod Touch, Wasatch Skiing Essentials, covering the plethora of skiing and riding in northern Utah. This comprehensive app available at the iTunes store includes a variety of the area’s best complementary activities, eateries, and après options. The 150 sites range from high-end restaurants to heli-skiing guides, burrito shops, indoor climbing walls, dog sledding tours, and historic sites like Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Photographs and maps richly illustrate each item, and all entries can be searched in terms of price, various categories, region, or distance from user.
A one-click website and phone interface allows the user to check snow conditions, current menus, events listings, and more, with Google maps and navigational directions for each entry.
www.sutromedia.com
And once you get to Utah, install Ski Utah’s app for the iPhone. It features 24- and 48-hour snow totals, base depth, number of runs open, and number of lifts open for all 13 Utah ski resorts. It’s also linked to the latest pictures in Ski Utah’s Flickr Photo Stream and deals from Ski Utah Members.
Plus, “We have some really cool new additions coming this fall on a soon-to-be-released update #3,” says Ski Utah president Nathan Rafferty.
www.skiutah.com.
Vail Resorts is releasing EpicMix for visitors and passholders at its Vail Mountain, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone and Heavenly properties. EpicMix is a digital application that guests can access online, at their computer or via a free mobile application that can be downloaded for the iPhone, Android or other smart phone.
EpicMix is available to all Vail Resorts guests who have a PEAKS lift ticket or a season pass. The Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass, Epic 7-Pack, Summit Pass, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin Pass, Heavenly Pass and PEAKS Lift Ticket are all enabled with radio frequency (RF) technology, and EpicMix automatically captures the activity of guests throughout each of its resorts by leveraging Vail Resorts’ scanners that are being installed at each of its 89 lifts across all five mountain resorts. An RF-enabled chip embedded in Vail Resorts’ season passes and PEAKS lift tickets will automatically track guests’ lift rides, calculating vertical feet skied and days on the mountain and will recognize special achievements and accomplishments by granting guests commemorative, collectible digital pins.
EpicMix will allow guests to share their statistics and accomplishments through updates on Twitter and Facebook and guests can create special EpicMix leader boards with their Facebook friends. The EpicMix mobile application will alert guests when any of their Facebook friends are skiing and where they are on the mountain. The application will also allow guests to send messages to their private groups of Facebook friends on the mountain. The mobile application will also provide trail and grooming information, snow and weather reports, as well as resort news and traffic updates.
EpicMix will also have a special website for kids under the age of 14, which will allow them to connect with their parents’ accounts, but will have content designed specifically for them and unique pins only kids can earn. The kids’ site also will have special privacy restrictions. Parents will also be able to use EpicMix to track the lift rides of their kids in real time.
“With the advent of new technology in equipment and new features on the mountain, skiing and riding have become the ultimate form of creative expression in sports and travel. At the same time, the rapid growth of social media has given people a whole new way to express themselves online and connect with friends and family. EpicMix is a groundbreaking experience that brings both together in a seamless and hassle free way for all of our guests,” said Rob Katz, chairman and chief executive officer of Vail Resorts. “EpicMix takes the fun of playing and sharing online and marries it with the very real experience of skiing and riding.”
EpicMix will launch on opening day at Keystone Mountain on Nov. 5.
www.epicmix.com.
The makers of Berryski have recently released Toposports for Blackberry owners. TopoSports USA is the only blackberry app to offer offline topo maps covering entire USA, and is the first wilderness navigation app integrated with the device’s GPS radio for outdoor sports enthusiasts.
Users can create custom waypoints from their current location or by manually selecting a point on the map. All the topo map quads come with a list of POIs, a complete list of geographic names published by GNIS, that can be overlaid on the quad map. The app automatically figures out which POI layer to load. The software supports standard mapping featurs like pan/zoom to get an overall idea of the region. The maps have been reprojected for WGS84 datum so that they are GPS accurate .If your device has a GPS or you use a bluetooth GPS puck, you can locate yourself at any time and record your GPS tracks. The app shows stats for each track including distance covered, average speed, maximum speed, time taken, pace (time taken to cover a mile or km), calories burned and vertical ascent/descent. Tracks may be exported in GPX format to SDCard/device memory to be shared with others or viewed in Google Earth.
www.toposports.com
Users of the Palm Pre/Pre Plus/Pixi/Pixi Plus will find a couple of options for webOS as well. For conditions there’s the Snow Report app from publisher Jeff Hanson that displays snow conditions reported by SnoCountry for resorts across the U.S. and Canada. The app uses the device’s GPS radio to locate reports for nearby resorts or the user can create a list of favorites. The app is available as a $1.99 download from the Palm App Catalog.
Trackspace, on the other hand, is a GPS logger for webOS. It displays your current position on a map with traditional functions such as pan and zoom. Maps can be cached to the device for use outside of cell phone range. Tracks can be exported to GPX format for use in other applications like Google Earth, or can be shared with other Trackspace users. The full version costs $1.85 and may be downloaded from the Palm App Catalog.
www.trackspace.de