I’ve officially launched my newest website: http://www.trektrax.com.  It’s a hiking site with the goal of providing high quality images/video of the trips I take (I call them “treks”) so visitors can see what the trails are really like before they go themselves.  There are currently two treks posted.  I’m working on the images and video for the third.

I had the idea for this site about five years ago, but it took until this year to really nail down the final form it would take.  I had several false starts on it over the years, but this time I managed to take it to completion.  For the geekier among you, it’s written in C# using Microsoft’s MVC framework for ASP.NET.  The map and elevation profile were done in Adobe Flex using the Google Map for Flex component.  The images and video are hosted on my professional SmugMug account.  I use Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop for image processing and Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects to edit and create the video slideshows. 

I’ve also created a custom Windows application that helps me generate the trek data that is displayed on the website.  This is why it took me over three months to complete this project.  I wanted to automate the process of creating a trek as much as possible.  The Windows app allows me to import the GPS data from my treks, add the trek information, attach the thumbnails and picture info, and publish it all to the website.  On publishing, the trek GPX and KML files are automatically generated with no intervention required on my part.  Not counting image processing and video creation, I can publish a trek report in a matter of minutes.  It’s pretty sweet.  Too bad I can’t automate the image and video post-processing. :(

The first two treks only contain slideshows of static images.  The third trek will follow suit.  However, from this point forward I intend to take my video camera on hikes as well as my DSLR, so future reports should contain a mix of video and still footage.  (I’ve been watching Survivorman reruns on Netflix to get ideas on good camera angles and action shots.) :)  I’m sure my initial attempts won’t be very good, but the videos should get better in time.

The website itself still needs some work.  There are numerous features I still want to add and some I’ll need to add as the number of treks increases.  For instance, I’ll need to add some sort of search/filtering functionality sooner or later, but I decided it wasn’t worth delaying the launch to add it now since there would only be a handful of treks to start.  I’d also like to add some sort of commenting or rating system that visitors can use to leave feedback…or maybe a way for users to mark treks as their favorites…I have tons of ideas. :)  But, I think it’s time to take a break from programming and start hiking instead.  The website isn’t going to fill itself.