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12-29-2009, 01:58 PM | |
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My virtual run across America, and a business idea.
So I'm getting over my little knee problem and have started running again, and I thought it'd be cool to plot my progress on a map of the U.S., running across the country. I've always thought it would be cool to walk across the U.S., but I can't figure out how to get my work done in that scenario, so this is my fallback.
And then I thought, "Hmm, this is a pretty good idea for a website. If I started a website, could I get enough people to sell some advertising and stuff and maybe make some money?" So I went out looking to see if it's already out there. The concept isn't overly innovative, so I see a fair amount of sites out there that talk about it, but they all seem to be pretty lame. Here's a map, print it, color in your progress with a crayon kind of stuff. What I'd like is a web site where you plot your progress and then see a google maps street view of your location, and then a virtual tour of towns that you walk through, and an atlas so you can pick your route as you go, and an interactive map so you can plot your route. That doesn't exist. Is there money in this? What's the revenue model? Any web designers out there who would want to collaborate on this? In my 15 minutes of looking, I found one web site that's actually kind of close, though it's still basic. http://exercise.lbl.gov/index.html is a federal government site, and they do the street view pictures, which is pretty cool, and the online log. However, they only give you one route, an inexplicable Yorktown, Virginia, to Florence, Oregon, route, and you can't vary from that. Also, you don't get local information along your route as far as I can tell. I signed up for it, though, since it's the best option out there, and am now 11 miles into my journey. I've left Yorktown and am now on this nice road about 2 miles from Williamsburg. Anyone else want to wander along? |
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05-29-2012, 08:49 AM | #196 |
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So is that roughly central Kansas?
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05-29-2012, 09:05 AM | #197 |
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Yep, roughly 150 miles to Colorado.
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05-29-2012, 09:25 AM | #198 |
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I think rageeumr is just about to hit the coast. For some glitchy reason I frequently get updates that he passed me even though he's ahead of me, and his last one was at 3,848 miles.
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06-07-2012, 06:04 PM | #199 |
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Flippin' site has been down for a week now.
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06-07-2012, 06:35 PM | #200 |
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Yeah, I'd been meaning to see if you had the problem too or if it's just me. This morning I resorted to writing my miles down by hand. It seems to go down frequently, but never for this long. I hope it comes back up soon.
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06-07-2012, 06:41 PM | #201 |
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Yeah, I have been keeping my miles on a spreadsheet as well. The first time it went down after I started I made a by month spreadsheet just in case. I have also made note of each state line.
I'm addicted to it and I blame YOU Mr Rain Man (Thank You, I'm in a hell of a lot better shape than I was when I started) |
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06-07-2012, 06:44 PM | #202 |
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Y'know, I'm six months from finishing and I'm not sure what I'm going to do after that. I don't really want to start it again since there's only one route, and I experimented a while back to see if I could put in negative numbers and run it backwards, and it won't let me do that. I wish they had another route.
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06-07-2012, 06:47 PM | #203 |
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Ditto (well, other than that whole 6 months thing....I've probably got another 18 months to 2 years). I E-mailed them about a year ago and asked if there was any possibility of another route and never got a reply.
I'm sure there's another site somewhere similar. I'll have to try to find one. Hell, at this point I would pay for another site. |
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06-07-2012, 07:39 PM | #204 | |
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Quote:
Funny thing is, I just had dinner with a friend who started using it when she saw my updates on Facebook. Her daughter is also starting to use it as a fundraising tool, getting pledges for every mile. That use is something that I was thinking about as a potential moneymaker.
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06-07-2012, 08:28 PM | #205 |
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I missed when this thread was bumped last week. I think I'm fairly close to being done, but obviously I haven't been able to enter any mileage. I have my half Ironman on Sunday, and I think the 70.3 (I guess the swim doesn't count, so 69.1) will probably put me over the top if I'm not already there.
Have you guys noticed that the site has been in various states of "downness"? Like right now I get an immediate error saying the site isn't available. Sometimes it seems to time out after a while. Earlier this week I could get onto the site, but it would time out when I tried to log in. Weird. |
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06-08-2012, 04:31 PM | #206 |
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The site is back up
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06-08-2012, 04:33 PM | #207 |
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06-08-2012, 04:38 PM | #208 |
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It would appear that at 1882.1 I just tripped and fell off of the road or something.
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06-08-2012, 04:41 PM | #209 | |
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Quote:
Don't even know how to begin starting that, so I guess that's why I forgot about it the first time.
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06-08-2012, 06:12 PM | #210 | |
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Dibs on the idea unless you want to partner on it.
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