Showing MotionBased Activities in ArcWeb Explorer

Using RSS and GPX feeds from MotionBased (MB) and displaying them on maps from ArcWeb Explorer is easy. At least if you understand GeoRSS and GPX xml formats, know JavaScript, and one of the JavaScript map API's, like ArcWeb Explorer JavaScript API. The latter being free - at least for "personal, non-commercial, and non-governmental use".

What is Motionbased? ... it's a really cool "web application that translates GPS data into functional analysis and online mapping for endurance and outdoor athletes". For me that means that each time I run or bike, I bring along my GPS toy and then upload the GPS data to Motionbased when I get home.

Motionbased provides user's most recent activities in GeoRSS feeds, so it's easy to display them on the map. They also provide the activities as GPX - "the de-facto XML standard for lightweight interchange of GPS data". This makes it easy to show the exact tracks of every individual activity on a map. Whether you use the API's from Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Ask.com or ArcWeb Explorer (AWX).

http://www.bjornman.com/mb-in-awx.html?mb=bjorn is the application I created using AWX. It reads the RSS feed with the most recent activities for a user and displays them as markers on the map. You can then click on the activities to read more about it and see the heart rate profile (if available), and to show the exact GPS route of that activity. After clicking the links above the map or the "Show Route" in the marker the GPX data will be downloaded, parsed by the browser and displayed on the map. In addition to being shown above the map, the activities are also listed inside the "Find" box. From there you can drag and drop one or more activities onto the map for it to zoom in to those. Note too that after displaying the route, the marker is updated to show elevation and heart rate profiles.

You can specify any user on the URL line, for example:

• bjorn
  
• bianco
  
• kyillee
  
• russelleast
  
• tchazzard
  
• trailblazer
  

Go play!