The Chainlink

Bedno.com/bike : "Social Cycling System". Mobile tools for bicyclist masses.

Bedno.com/bike facilitates large bicycling events by broadcasting route, map, chatter, weather and more, for smartphones and text messaging.  It also serves personal features such as ride recording, directions and points of interest.

Bedno.com/bike (formerly Chi.Bike and MassUp.us) began years ago (now in its sixth major version) to address shortage of Critical Mass printed maps by making them available online for iPhone and similar users, and as a communications supplement to the World Naked Bike ride. The system provides quick flyer views, turn-by-turn cues, and monitors text chatter broadcasting location en-route.  It also gives weather, archives, etc all optimized from many years experience developing for mobile devices.


Since this thread was started (June 2009) it's now served well in literally hundreds of rides including years of Critical Masses and Chicago Naked Rides. Hope you like it, feedback encouraged.
Bookmark Bedno.com/bike now on your phone.
Sample screenshots below, but best to simply visit the site.

 

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Hey, Andrew, would your site be useful for hiking or such ?

 

Respectfully,

 

Manny

Joggers/runners/hikers/walkers is potentially a bigger audience, but I forget that as it's roots were in biking, and I'm trying to be focused.    The only bike specific things are the "you are here" icon on maps, and directions are calculated for bike.  The calorie estimate in Plot has an activity selector including walking/skating/etc.  I use it regularly on foot, especially for things like find the nearest train.  Give it a try.  The very very top left button'll get you intro help.

MassUp.us now features TheChainLink.org events!

Events from TheChainLink.org calendar are now automatically cross-listed on MassUp.us

Go see at http://massup.us/tcl
or navigate Menu > Masses > More Bike Events > TheChainLink.org
It's big and clean for easy mobile use, and integrated with other MassUp.us features.

Addresses are linked into MassUp.us so you can plot and get directions.
Rides carried on MassUp.us (such as Critical Mass) provide follow and catchup.
Phone numbers automatically link for tap to call on smartphones.
Offsite links back to TheChainLink.org or elsewhere open in new windows.

Tech notes: This has actually been on MassUp.us since late 2009 as a demonstration originally done for BikeWinter, but I've tidied it up and made it easier to find.

Sadly Ning's feed has poor granularity, so I couldn't load them as an overlay dataset.  I don't believe Ning's feed will ever get better, but maybe someday I'll tackle the parsing.  As a contrast to explain that, the ChicagoFunNews.com events feed (see http://massup.us/fun) has a full field set, so massup can do things like find the events nearest you.

Find train stops nearest you and see arrival times all automatically!
http://massup.us/train

MassUp.us now integrates the CTA's train tracker feed to give the next several arrival times at any station.  It finds you, then plots the stations nearest you, then shows the arrival times at the closest station, requiring no taps other than launch.  Works on any SmartPhone.

Bookmark the shortcut above or open massup.us then tap Menu > Nearby > Trains

From there you can click through for details such as the full route maps and schedules, even bike directions to the stop in just one tap.  The only exception is if a Metra stop happens to be closest, in which case you can tap other stops for their arrival times.  Pretty slick.
This is very new, and the CTA's system is regularly down, so forgive or notify if it gives you any trouble.

There's been a slew of other major improvements lately including re-styling of the whole user interface and completion of TheChainLink.org events integration.  GO SEE!

I've added the new Divvy bike rental stations to MassUp.us (v4.87)

Smartphone users can now find the nearest Divvy station automatically, get directions to them, etc. Use the MassUp.us Nearby feature or bookmark the Divvy finder (below) as a webapp. Works on any smartphone or PC, free, and requires no installation.


Give it a try: http://massup.us/divvy


=== MASSUP.US NEWS ===
New Chi.Bike URL!  New SSL use.  Hosting moved.  Version 5.00 announced.  Email down.

  • Chi.Bike has been added as a shorter, easier to remember URL. Pass it along. Going forward I plan to use "Chi.Bike" primarily and let "massup.us" become a deprecated legacy name. All the same URL's work, just shorter and funner. For example Chi.Bike/divvy finds the Divvy stops nearest you.

  • Secure connections became required last fall by most browsers and APIs when GPS info is in use, and for a time Chi.Bike navigation features could no longer determine a user's location. I've recently finished updates to meet this new requirement, and moved hosting to my personal domain for SSL. As a nice side effect, it seems to be much faster now!

  • This project is now nearing EIGHT years old. It's been so stable and needed only such minor changes that the version number has been slowly stepping through 4.9x for several years. Given this round of updates I've decided to finally up the version to 5.00, even though no new features were added.

  • Finally, email is currently offline due to the hosting changes, so features like "Text WHERE to u@massup.us to catchup." will get no reply.  But I expect to have ALL features back up before spring.

Thanks Tom A.K. for telling me about the feed from Twitter being down.  I fixed it.  For example here's Critical Mass's.

Check out the integration with TheChainLink.org events: Chi.Bike/tcl

You're welcome Andrew, it looks awesome! I'm honored to do anything to help this community.
See you down the road soon . . .

BIG NEWS!!! Chi.Bike and MassUp.us have moved to Bedno.com/bike

Update your bookmarks and thoughts effective immediately. They've been forwarding there a while, and now for simplicity I'm retiring aliases. Users had trouble remembering the unconventional URLs anyway, and domain names don't matter like they once did. So henceforth just remember and use Bedno.com/bike

Everything works fine, news feeds, ridecordings, ten years of maps, games, etc just at longer URLs.
For example archives are now Bedno.com/bike/archives and Divvy finder is Bedno.com/bike/divvy
Or simply remember Bedno.com and hit the big new BIKE button there.

The email address u@... has been replaced with bike@bedno.com BUT the infobot is currently offline pending testing.
And finally the Hotline Phone number (773-33MASS8) which formerly handled SMS and voice has been discontinued.
Anyone interested in owning the registrations ask right away or they'll expire soon.
Do tell me if anything seems very broken. With luck, ridecasting returns comes spring.

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