June 6, 2007

My Garmin: Zumo Connect

My Garmin: Zumo Connect - Find and share rides for your Zumo

You may have missed a little mention last week of the My Garmin announcement buried in the press release that mentioned the fact that Garmin is releasing developer tools to better integrate their GPS units with websites and software tools. My Garmin is a mini site that allows you to get a customized experience from Garmin based on your needs. You’ll need to sign up to get access to the features. Some of the features that they have are great, including registering your GPS to get access to features like icon downloads, access to Geocaching tools, and something called Zumo Connect.

Zumo Connect is a sharing site that Garmin must have had on the drawing board either before or about a minute after they acquired Motionbased.com. The site allows you to search for rides that others have uploaded, which are essentially tracks uploaded from your Zumo and published, just like you may have already done with your 10-mile run from your Forerunner (or maybe not!).

Zumo Connect allows you to search for rides, view them on integrated Google Maps, click for more information, which includes access to a *.KML file that you can pull into Google Earth and “play the track”. When you do this, you can do a fly over and see the route (like this KML file) cruise through the Colorado Rockies. Very cool capability and gives you a great preview of your cruise. There aren’t a ton of rides up there yet, but I would imagine after this summer there will be plenty to choose from. Like Motionbased.com, I would like to see some better search tools that allow you to search based on criteria other than just a location. Those criteria might include distance, average speed, road type, etc. For now, it doesn’t seem to be an issue wading through the rides that are there by searching on location alone.

Ultimately, you get to download your route to your Zumo, jump on your bike and ride. This is essentially what Motionbased.com has been doing for thousands of runs, bike rides, etc. for a few years now, and it’s a great re-application of the capability over to the Zumo.