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How it started

In April 2008 I returned from a train trip to Xinjiang, in Western China. During that trip I had used my new Leadtek LR 9553D GPS data logger to record most of my route, hoping it will serve as a nice memory years later, but also hoping I will be able to easily share it with my friends.

Well, guess what. I found no easy way share my GPS data, except from maybe mailing it to all my friends. However, I realised that sharing one week worth of GPS logs (yes, that's how long it took me to cover the ~11.000 km from Beijing to Kashgar and back by train) is not only impractical, but unnecessary! Most of my friends wouldn't have cared about my exact position in every second of my trip anyway, but they would have been really curious to see an overview of my trip.

That's how the idea was born. The hard part - the implementation - involves Python, Django and a few more things that make no sense for most people. I was using traveli.st for my own trips since around the end of 2008 and opened it to the public in early 2009.

Who's behind it

Ionut Bizau. A Romanian guy who lives in Beijing since July 2007. I love writing software and traveling. Here is my Twitter profile. And here is my traveli.st profile.

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