We're glad to announce the release of a much requested feature for the Android App: the Search Pack, the search service for Android to explore trails in wikiloc.com right from your Android. Discover trails near your location sorted by proximity or near your next destination. The Search Pack includes filters by activity, distance, elevation, difficulty and choices like “only loop trails”. You can also search by keyword, trail ID or your favorite trails.

If you already have Wikiloc App on your Android, you must upgrade to the latest version (2.0) or get it from Google Play. Then you can get a Search Pack from wikiloc.com or directly from the App.


We initially thought to offer the Search Pack for a limited time, say 1 month, 6 months or one year renewable. After consulting with several of you, we realized that if you buy the pack for a month and then for whatever reason (period of bad weather, personal problems, etc. ..) you can’t use it during that time you would have to pay again for renewing it, even without having used it. We agreed it'd be best to offer the service without a time limit and just pay for use. You'll have free access to search trails until you've reached the limit of downloads, each pack includes 100 trail downloads.

Also, since attaching the Search Pack to a single smartphone was not convenient the Search Pack is associated with your user account at Wikiloc.com, so you can search and download trails from your smartphone or a friend phone by just signing in to your account.

You can download trails from the web and transfer them to your Android, but we hope you'll find the Search Pack convenient and decide it's worth paying a few euros for it to discover and download trails in a simpler way and helping us out a bit so we can continue to improve Wikiloc.

We know it's taken quite some time, so thanks for your patience and support.


Hope you like it!

--
Jordi

Private messaging

Private messaging, a much requested feature, is finally online. You can now contact directly another wikiloc user using the new button under his/her photo.

And we've added several outdoor activities including nordic walking, via ferrata, swimming and more!

We keep working on improvements you've been asking for, stay tuned!

Jordi

A new way to download Wikiloc's trails!!

Throughout tomorrow and Saturday the Wikiloc's trail download system will experience some changes which will gradually get to all users. We have created a new functionnality to directly connect Wikiloc with your Garmin GPS. Read a little further down for details of this new feature.

On the other hand, this new plugin has forced us to redesign the trail download interface. It's a redesign which does not affect the way we download trails and it's just a visual and interface update. From now on, when you download a trail a window will pop up with these three tabs:

- GPX: with the current existing list of options for downloading in GPX format
- Google Earth: download in KML format for viewing on Google Earth
- Garmin: to create the connection with the Garmin Communicator plugin for direct download to your GPS



But with the new plugin is where there's really a significant change. Let's go through the details.

Wikiloc-Garmin Connection

From now on it'll be even easier to download trails directly to your Garmin GPS. The new connection enables you to download and store trails straight to your gps, making the process much faster and easier to carry on.



How it works:
To download trails straight to your Garmin GPS follow these steps:

• Find a trail on Wikiloc and click on the Download link


• On the download window, select the Garmin tab


• Install the Garmin Communicator plugin on your computer (if it's not already installed or if you have an older version)


• Make sure that the install process worked fine by going to the Garmin test page (reboot if needed)


• Plug in your GPS to your computer


• Allow Wikiloc to communicate with your GPS


• Once the GPS is detected, click on Download (optionally, you can change the number of points the track can be downloaded as)

Supported Platforms:
The Wikiloc-Garmin connection will work on all platforms on which you can install the Garmin Communicator plugin. Currently those are:

PC: PCs with Windows 7, XP or Vista and Internet Explorer 6 +, Firefox 1.5 + or Chrome
Mac: Intel or PowerPC G4 or later Mac OS 10.4 or later with Safari 2.0 +, Firefox 2.0 + or Chrome

We would like you to tell us how well this new connection works, if it's easy to use, if it brings up errors, etc... So we'll greatly appreciate your feedback!

Wikiloc Downtime November 5th 2011

On Saturday November 5, 2011 Wikiloc not available on Saturday from 22:00 GMT until 05:00 GMT the next day. You may not access or search for trails, upload them or use any of the Wikiloc's usual functionality. We will use this downtime in the service to improve the infrastructure and give more power to the system, which will result in faster loading pages and more room to store tracks and photos.


Wikiloc downtime:
from 22:00 GMT on Saturday November 5
to 05:00 GMT on Sunday November 6

Thank you,
Wikiloc Team

Wikiloc er nú fáanleg á íslensku!!!

(Wikiloc is now available in Icelandic)

Thanks to the effort and great colaboration of Robert Beck, Wikiloc is now fully available in Icelandic! Robert is a heavy user of Wikiloc and has shared many tracks of his own. Thank you Robert, we appreciate your hard work!!

And just to show you one of the ton of Iceland's trails you can find on Wikiloc, here's a great route from humall in one of the corners of this beatiful country

On this weekend's downtime

First of all thank you for the patience you all have had with this unexpected downtime of Wikiloc (Sept. 18 to 20)

During maintenance tasks we detected an unusual behavior of the database that was affecting its contents. Given the possibility of this being a huge problem we decided to stop the server and analyze the situation looking for the source of the issue.

It seems that some records in the database were corrupted due to disk failure. Once this has been detected we have proceeded to the recovery of the data, also including the content added after the last backup. This process has been painfully slow, but that was the only way users were not affected and that you didn't loose any of the information uploaded.

Once the problem has been fixed, we have also taken advantage of this situation to update the structure of servers and put some updates in place, like our brand new homepage. We hope you like it!

Please, excuse us if we have caused any inconvenience during these three days.

Thank you so much for all the suport we have received from you during this hiccup. Happy trails!

Wikiloc Team

New filters on searches

One of the most common requests to improve Wikiloc which many users ask for is definitely improving the search for trails existing on the system. It is difficult (or, rather, long) to find trails based on criteria such as the type of activity, distance or trail difficulty. We knew it was a necessary improvement but we have not been able to put it on the system for quite some time. But search filters are finally here!



In the last few days on all search pages and listings of trails you have on the left side of the screen different filters that can be applied to fine-tune searches and quickly reach the trails you're interested in. The filters which can be applied are:

- Loop trails or just one way
- Trail distance
- Type of activity
- Difficulty
- Origin of the track (GPS, mobile, hand-drawn)

In addition to those new filters there's another feature added in the search results. Now these results can be sorted according to three different criteria :

- Popularity : the 'best' trail first (a 'best trail' means having a higher quality track, a good description and title, many visits, pictures and videos added, etc)
- Relevance : first the trails with the search criteria in the title, description, etc.
- Upload date : the latest added trails on top of the list

Also note that you can activate an activity as the search criteria by the default in all searches. That is, if you have set it up that you like climbing, on the searches you do (provided that you are logged in the system) will focus only on climbing trails, and the results will show up only this type of trails (you can then modify the criteria to broaden it up to more activity types). To set the default activity in searches you must select the activity on your user profile.

We hope this is going to help you find the best trails in the world!