I had mentioned some time ago that I wanted to learn how to use MyMotion and TrackMe in order to have a tracklog of the bike trips that I’ve been taking. Well there really isn’t a better time to learn how these programs work than when you are taking a drive some place.

I’ll start with the most frustrating, which is TrackMe. It’s the better looking of the two programs, but that isn’t really an issue if it’s so much work. The first thing is that it seems that you have to check a lot of options inside the preferences/tools otherwise all you are really doing is reporting back to a server where you are. His server. Where you can log in and see where you are. That’s neat, I’ll give him that, but that’s not really at all what I wanted, so after a lot of trial and error I finally managed to check the correct boxes and have a tracklog.

Then the problem was saving it. That seems like it would be really easy, I mean you load up the program and hit the “play” button, and then you press “stop” and everything in between is the program recording your position at predetermined intervals, but no it is actually pretty daunting a task to save the file.

First you have to navigate through menu’s, but you have to play “pick the right icon”, since there are several icons that aren’t really intuitive at all. The design choice was really “less words more icons” and I don’t think that works very well when you are trying to learn to navigate the interface for a new program. Then you have to go through more menu’s to find where you can load “existing” and then save it. This is the file that I was eventually able to make, and honestly if you put me on the spot I can’t say that I know how to go through all the steps again to make that.

Next on to MyMotion. MyMotion is ugly, but it works. I was tracking by altitude in this tracklog, so when you look at it the line is solid red, because apparently I never changed altitude. I could be wrong about the red line, but looking at the tools and preferences it’s the impression that I get. I’ve removed that and have it logging by speed, so hopefully the next time I have a tracklog to share you will see the multicolored lines that represent how fast I was going.

The only real problem I had with MyMotion is that the track line actually stopped two points short of where I stopped. I don’t know what that means, but I fixed it. I was driving, so I’m not sure if it’s a bit more accurate on a bike or something. We will have to see.