Hi,
due to heavy business travel, customer escalations, and personal duties, I can not plan my trainings days/weeks ahead, and I can not attend group rides.
So after few years, cycling alone got pretty boring. Well, I do the intervals alone anyway, but once/twice a week really miss some company.
Finding bike colleagues on local bike forum is not easy:
- periodically read all posts in the forum, just to find matching date/time/location: easy to overlook - no structured search in forum posts, + takes too much time
- replies to private inquiries on forum (details about the ride, tempo, duration, exact gathering point..) received too late
- changes to rides announced in the forum lead to confusion - e.g. one would read first post, but not the whole thread announcing new date, different route, etc.
Hence the idea for a dynamic website, where users could announce their rides, and join already published activities.
For instance, if I realize I could go for a ride tomorrow between 7-9am, I publish my planned route and anyone subscribed to routes around my area is notified.
Website Goals
Very simple GUI (minimize # of clicks for searching/creating the activity) – single screen, two sections:
- map window: zoomable gmap showing matching sports activities (bike, run, hike, offering drive to ski resort)
- edit window: display activity details upon mouse-over, join button, create new activity, update user profile
Account required to create new activities and see activity details – main search window is public.
Ideally, the main search window should be coded so that it can be easy embeddable in various sports forums/websites.
I’m not a programmer, but managed to glue together various pieces of scripts from online examples: beta-joinmyride.rhcloud.combeta-joinmyride.rhcloud.comOpen ↗
So far really basic functionality: create/modify/search/filter rides (if you give it a try, please do no delete entries created by other users).
User management, notifications, subscription to closed groups/clubs, login with FB/Google accounts, embedded links to strava/bikemap routes, etc. … will follow.
Also, the ride/activity attributes would be further redefined, even customized to specific group needs (sql backend database)
Again, this is just a “mockup†to demo the idea - for production version I shall hire skilled programmer and paid web hosting.
However, before investing more time/$:
- does the overall idea sound useful?
- would you actually use it?
Any constructive feedback appreciated.
Thanks