We spend so much time trying to organize our digital lives these days. Multiple social networking profiles, hundreds of blog subscriptions packed into a feed reader, email and other tools of importance (?) all consume vast chunks of time everyday; yet they’re a necessity.
And now that more and more of us are carrying GPS-equipped mobile phones, playing around with location-based applications, and relying on the latest Garmin navigator to get us from point A to point B, we have another layer of data to manage. Our personal geodata.
MyGeoDiary, created by Abaqus, is a service built specifically to organize and share this aspect of our lives.
Based in Palo Alto, CA., MyGeoDiary allows users to upload location data from a variety of GPS devices, organize, annotate, share and view it. The company acts as a central location for GPS data but makes it incredibly simple to share tracks and routes with your Twitter and Facebook friends. You can also share data on your blog with an embeddable widget, create a Google Maps mashup and turn it into an RSS feed your friends can subscribe too.
One of the interesting features is that of annotation. Users can add text tags, music, pictures and video to their data to either add context to GPS tracks or just spice up the profile. This is a great feature to have for family vacations or road trips.
I was also happy to see that MyGeoDiary is Facebook Connect-ready. As long as you have a Facebook profile you can quickly sign in without registering and the resulting ever-familiar back and forth between your email and the site to verify your account.
As long as you have a compatible GPS device you’re ready to get started in seconds. Moreover, MyGeoDiary has dedicated applications for Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Android phones as well as a WHERE widget.
Overall, the service is extremely simple to use which is a big plus in my opinion. The real challenge for MyGeoDiary will be to gain a substantial enough user base to monetize when there are plenty of similar services on the web. The difference though is that MyGeoDiary is geared at a general audience while some of its competitors are niche-focused whether it be towards sports enthusiasts or backpackers. Whether that’s a good thing for MyGeoDiary remains to be seen.
