WikiLoc: GPS Tracking with WMS

OGC News reader Jordi Lopez Ramot wrote to share a WMS enabled GPS mapping application. He writes:

The website WikiLoc is a completely free service built in my spare time that allows anyone in the world to post and share GPS information mainly about outdoor activities, be walking, hiking, cycling, sailing... It's based in Google Maps/Earth and you can switch the base maps to layers served by whatever freely accesible Open Geospatial Web Map Service you like.

At the moment I've registered WMS that users had requested and I hope to add many more in the future. At the moment there are USGS imagery and topographic maps that cover the US and WMS serving orthoimagery, geological maps and topographic maps from the different SDI (IDE in spanish) initiatives in Spain. I've some samples in my latest weblog posts.

I think Wikiloc demonstrates an interesting use of Web Map Services and could help to approach OGC's work to citizens. I see it as good example of the interoperability benefits of Open Geospatial web services together with the power of distribution of Google, finally offering technology from OpenGeospatial and Google to final users worldwide.

To date people find the service exciting since posting a GPS track and visualizing it over multiple base maps takes just a minute and can be accompanied of pictures, descriptions, links to external web sites and so on. The app was recognized by Google and won the Google Maps Spain Mashup contest a month ago (if you wish you can read some coverage in English here).

To directly view GPS data in Wikiloc from a user from the US (Arizona) called 'hikerdave', please follow this link (while you are visualizing any of his GPS locations you can activate the USGS WMS base maps and imagery by clicking on the "More Maps" button of the upper-right area of the map). I think that the link above is a good candidate to show Wikiloc in English and with WMS from the US.