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I decided to play around with this program out of pure interest. I like GPS devices and I like maps from GPS devices. What would be better than a cool program that can show you the routes you have taken and various pieces of information associated with it. This is where a program called rubiTrack comes in. It is designed to analyze you outdoor activities, and routes so you can save them and look at them later. Great for work out periods.

Where Am I?

RubiTrack is designed for the outdoor walker, runner, biker, and other outdoor activities in which you travel some distances. It is really designed for someone who has a mobile GPS device that records their location. This program will show you distances traveled, times, etc etc. One of the coolest things by far is to map your route onto a Google map. This way you can visually see where you have been. There is also an altitude viewer so you can see how high you have traveled, and why you felt faint so high up.

You don’t need a GPS device to use this program you can do it all manually. On the manual route (since I don’t have a compatible GPS) of inserting data is very simple. You add a new activity, set a location, the route, date and type of activity, all of which is remembered if you do the same route. You can then add in extra information such as duration, distances, conditions and additional notes. If you import the file from a GPS device it will also add map data. The image below is from the rubiTrack website. This is because my screenshot is very boring.

This program has a lot of potential for people who do a lot of walking, sailing, running etc and have a compatible device (the list is on the site, it must support GPX and TCX files). You could really go to town on the recording and analyzing of your data. For example the sidebar will slowly fill up with different pieces of information as you add more files. It similar to smart folders in Finder, iTunes, except this is all done for you. You can also add different athletes so you can track different peoples progress.

Conclusion

I like this app. Its really fun and sort of ticks a box in my mind. There are a couple of problems with this app. For example there is no may of adding in map points by hand. The website states you can, although I cannot find a way of achieving this, which is really annoying and a missing feature. I also wish it had iPhone integration, since iPhones has GPS. This is not a supported feature yet, but is planned (according to the forum) for a future release.

This is a worthy app for my pennies, although it is very specialist and not for everyone. You definitely need a device which can be used with this program. If you don’t, it feels like you are missing out on a large part of the feature set. This program costs 29-39 Euros depending on where you live (Europeans pay tax). Although you can get it on the cheap for around 16 Euros ($20) today at MacPromo (affiliate link).

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