Bikely sold

[europa]

Yup, it's true. Bikely has gone commercial and now belongs to a UK magazine company.

Cycling Plus 26/3/07

heck out Bikely.com
DATE ADDED: 26/03/2007 09:00:00


We’re excited! We've just bought a new toy: Bikely.com.

Or rather, the Management has bought it for us. As of this week, Bikely is part of the Future Publishing family of magazines and websites, along with Mountain Biking UK, Cycling Plus, What MTB and Procycling.

Bikely provides a really easy-to-use way for all types of riders to share routes. You can either trace a route directly on a map using your mouse to click and create waypoints, or you can upload a file from your GPS unit.

Bikely was created by a cyclist called Jules Szemere from Melbourne Australia, and although it’s only been in existence for a year, it already has over 12,000 routes all over the world. There are over 1,000 in the UK, including the route of the first stage of the 2007 Tour de France and mountain bike classics like the Skyline trail at Afan Forest.

On Bikely you can see the elevation profile of a ride (under 'Show') and - if the person who created it has added enough detail - get a cue sheet so you can follow the route. You can download a file of the route to enter into your GPS, and set a route as a favourite so you can easily find the routes you use often.

Jules intended Bikely for commuting cyclists to share back-road routes through cities, but it's turned out to be far more useful than that. We're already using it to share routes round the office, and it's great for bragging rights: "My ride to work has more climbing than yours!"

We have big plans for Bikely, not least the obvious one of using it to provide downloadable versions of routes that we publish in the magazines - look out for those in the next few months. In the meantime, please nip over to www.bikely.com and check it out.

So, who owns the routes? Is this another case of a company taking ownership of something they didn't create? I for one don't want my efforts sold off or used commercially without at least some acknowledgement but considering the efforts I put into my routes, I think more is applicable.

And now that Bikely is owned commercially, the emphasis will now shift from providing a service to cyclists to providing profits for that commercial enterprise. Now, that may make no difference to those of us who use it, it may result in an improved service if it is funded properly, or the fairies in my apricot tree might be able to post as well using fairynet.

Richard

[tuco]

That'll slow the web down with all the adverts added to the site.
If there's one thing I hate it's site slowed down to a crawl because it's bust downloading adverts and animated gifs.

If anyone isn't happy then delete your maps.
I hope Jules appreciates the work we did for him.

[sogood]

It's inevitable and getting bought out would have been in the business plan of Bikely in the first place. There's no magic in this process.

2 cents of your, mine and everyone's time and data when added up can make the site owners very rich or go bankrupt.

[AUbicycles]

All the more reason for my mate (Klaus) and his website Gpsies.

Saw this nice little GPS receiver from Garmin. It's not cheap... but not that expensive for a GPS receiver that does the same as a cycling computer plus record all of your data... great for collecting training data!

[sogood]

All the more reason for my mate (Klaus) and his website Gpsies.
Saw this nice little GPS receiver from Garmin. It's not cheap... but not that expensive for a GPS receiver that does the same as a cycling computer plus record all of your data... great for collecting training data!

Yep, 305 is the crown jewel of GPS cycling computers. No other choices really. However, beware of the battery run time.