EveryTrail records every step you take

Several very interesting location-recording Web sites are online right now, such as Platial, 43 Places, Wayfaring, and Flagr. They all record locations and let you tell a story about them. EveryTrail, a new site in early development, adds a wrinkle: It will record your path between waypoints, not just the stops you make.

Why would you want this? To record a favorite hike or bike ride, perhaps. This site lets you share your route with others, for those trips where the point is the journey itself.

EveryTrail requires that you have a way to record your movements, of course. You'll need a recording GPS device--a hiker's gizmo like this Garmin, a GPS watch, an airplane navigation system, or perhaps a GPS-equipped phone. And you'll need to download an app from the EveryTrail site, which can then take your GPS data and transfer it. I don't have a suitable device, so I was not able to test this.

Once you have uploaded your trail, you can add placemarks, notes, and photos. The photos feature, in particular, is very cool: The service correlates the time stamps on your photos with your GPS trail and automatically places photos along your route (if your camera's time is set incorrectly, you only have to tell EveryTrail where one particular photo was taken, and it will calculate the positions for all the rest).

You can see your trails on the site's Google Maps mashup page (EveryTrail also includes a topographical map option, a nice bonus), or on Google Earth. You can also upload the trail to another portable GPS device. There's still no good way to print the trail, though, which is kind of a bummer, because being able to output your path overlaid on a topo map could be extremely useful.

While I was watching the EveryTrail presentation at the New Tech Meetup last night, the fellow sitting next to me said to me, "This looks like MapMyRun." That site does pretty much the same thing as EveryTrail, although it's designed with a laser focus on recording runs and jogs. So if you find yourself in a new city and want to go for a jog, check it out. MapMyRun doesn't have the photo feature of EveryTrail, but it does offer more runner-friendly features, such as a workout calculator. The MapMyRun team has also launched a new site, MapMyRace, a simplified site where runners can scope out race routes (including elevation maps).