help

RouteYou tutorial with video examples

Click here for a step-by-step intoduction of RouteYou functionality..

Alphabetical index

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Avatar

Put yourself in the spotlight with your avatar

You can upload your own avatar, which is used next to the routes you make and your comments. You also get your own public page to tell something about yourself, a link to your routes and your groups.

The best result for your avatar is a picture which is square.

How to make/add an avatar?
First, log in (or register if that wasn't yet the case).
Select MY SPACE -> My profile.
Next to the option Avatar you can select and upload a picture.
Go to index

Comments

You can add a comment by selecting the comment-button at the bottom of the page. You have to log on first, because we don't want anonymous comments.
Your avatar and display-name will appear next to your comment.

Download a route

The Route-Viewer indicates (at the bottom) which products are attached to the route.

Free download

Free downloads can be done if the price of the product is zero. This is the case for professional routes which are sponsored (and as such already paid for you, as promotion material) and for the Community routes. You can click on the obtain-link next to the product and clik direclty on the file you like to download from the product.

Payment

Products with a price have to be paid first before they can be downloaded. You can continuously add products to you basket and pay at the end. You can always verify via the basket-link on the main menu at the top what's in your basket. By selecting the Purchase-link next to the product and the Order link afterwards, you can pay via the payment system. You don't need a Paypal-account to Currently, you can pay with Visa, Mastercard, or via your Paypal-account if you would have one. YOU DON'T NEED TO HAVE A PAYPAL ACCOUNT TO PAY WITH CREDITCARD VIA PAYPAL, although the Paypal interface is sometimes a bit misleading

Download after payment

After payment, the products you paid for are visible and downloadable from your space, which you can reach via the Main Menu-button My Space They will stay there, so also in the future, you can download the product you paid for again (just in case you lost it).

Problems with download or payment

Send an e-mail to problems@routeyou.com with

your e-mail you use to log-in at RouteYou.com
the product-reference
the payment-reference of Paypal
description of the problem Check also the item Troubleshooting

Go to index

Report a problem/ask a question via e-mail

Send an e-mail to problems@routeyou.com. Go to index

Events

Events are displayed in the News-page. The event closest to the current date is shown on top. The purpose of Events is to inform your friends, family and co-explorers of RouteYou about your event you are organising, related to the activities going on on RouteYou.com. You can see it as a free advertising medium for your event.

Creating an event

To create an event, you have to create your own group, if you don't have one yet. Go to your group, and you will see the administration option in the menu. Selecting the administration, select the sub-menu item Events. Make sure to set the date right (check the format YYYY-MM-DD!) because that defines when and where it shows up in the main event list. You will also see the events you created in the event-menu of your group (select your group, administration, events). You can always remove and change the events there. Go to index

Format conversions

For our standard products we translated the routes to several formats which are most common for routes on navigation devices: .gpx, .gdb, .itn, .rte, .kmz,... See Supported formats. Since new navigation systems are being born almost every day, we will extend the number of formats in the future (see Supported navigation systems). If the format is no provided by us, we recommend you to use one of the many conversion tools which are available for free on the internet We recommend the following website to check out conversion tools for a variety of formats: www.poly-electronic.ch/gps-tools.htm Go to index

Frequently asked questions

Can I upload the routes on my navigation system?

Verify if your system support uploads and verify if it supports the provided formats. Check out item on Supported formats, Supported navigation systems and other applications

How can I find my route or that of a friend. Can it be done via the route-search option?

For the moment, only routes which are of professional sources are showing up in the search queries. It is very easy to find your routes via the My Space item in the main menu, because they are listed there. Another option is to make a publishing group. Go to your group and select the administration option in the menu of your group. There you will get an option to add routes to your group. You can find the routes of your friend if your friend made a publishing group and linked the routes to the group as described above. You can search for a group via selecting Groups and selecting Search in the submenu.

What can I do after I digitized a route?

Check the item on What to do with a digitized route?
You can share your routes with friends and publish it via groups
. Check also the information in the How to digitize your route?
section More information about downloading routes. Go to index

Google Earth

Google Earth is a virtual globe developed by Google as a PC application. We provide the routes in KMZ-format, so you can view the routes and linked route-information in Google Earth. You can get the software for your PC (free to download) via this link. Go to index

Groups

Via groups, you can share and publish your routes.
You can register members and allow them to download your routes.
Users can ask to become a member of your group.
You can create events and link those to a/your route and inform your members
You can indicate who is allowed to publish for your group.
You define which routes are published in your group.
You receive feed-back/info on your routes/events

Link routes to groups

Why you would like to link routes to groups
The advantage is that routes of similar themes can be found back easily. If a person is interested in the specific route-theme, they can easily find back your route.
A large set of collector-groups have been made to link your routes to. Examples are Rollerblade routes, City routes, Architecture routes, Art routes, History routes, Geo routes, Forest routes, Worldwar routes,... But you can always make your own group too, with a new theme. And you can link (public routes) to your new collector group. You can find groups via the QuickSearch (top right) or via GROUPS->List.

How to link a route to a group?

While creating a route
When you create or upload a route, you arrive at a page where you are asked to link your route to your group or a public group. Once you linked your route to a group, the route is made public. If you don't want to make your route public, don't link it to a group! The group-owner can always decide to remove your route from the group, if not relevant. You can always disconnect your route from any group.

After you created a route
You can always link you route to a group at any time. You will see in your route-list a small chain-icon (eg. 'MY SPACE'). If you click on the icon, you can select a group to link the route to.

Using the administration option of a group
As owner of the group or group-admin, you can link your routes and public routes to your group. You need to make a group first: This can be done via GROUPS -> New. Go via 'MY SPACE' to see the groups you own. Click on the group, and you will see the administration option as a tab. Click on the tab administration and click on the sub-tab 'Routes'. The rest should be obvious.

An example

Here is an example of a route-group linked to places with the theme Worldwar I or II.

Groups in the RouteHeader

At the top of each route, the avatar of the author, the name of the author and the groups the route belongs to, is presented. This allows you to navigate very easily from route to group to route to author,... Go to index

How to digitize your route?

Step 1: Start by selecting Routes in the main menu and select Create in the sub-menu to activate the route-digitizer.
Step 2: Zoom to the required area via the zoom-button or the +-button. You can drag a rectangle to zoom in. You have to repeat the action until you get to the area of interest.
Step 3: Digitize, by clicking once on the map area. You will see a red dot on your screen. This is your first point of your route.Click a 2nd, 3rd,... time, and you will see your route coming along.
Step 4: Correcting a point: If you donâ€™t like the position of a points, you can select them by clicking on the point (it will become red). Reposition the point and you're done.
Step 5: Submit a route: When your route is digitized, you can select the submit-button and enter a Name and a description for your route. Select the submit-button again. The route will become available in your space(button "My Space" in main menu) as a GPX file

Options

Other background: The Back-ground selection-button (right up) allows you to select between a map as background, a satellite image (could also be an aerial picture) or a combination of the two REMARK: Not all the areas have a detailed image such as the Netherlands (example below). We depend on what Google provides and makes available.

Routing and guidance: Mark the option Routing in the menu (left) of the route-digitizer. When you click once, the the route-digitizer will correct your position to the avialable road and path network. When you click a second time, the system will calculate a path over the available network according to the chosen settings. REMARK: This is only available for the Benelux for the moment, but we are working hard on the other countries too

Nicest route: Besides fastest and shortest, we provide an advanced routing algorithm based on over 38 parameters to approach the nicest path between two points, and this depending on your selection of walk, bike> or motor. Althoug one can discuss a lot about beauty (join us any time!), we do realize this is more art than science. Nevertheless, we figured out that professionally designed routes tend to follow or avoid specific characteristics which are related to our 38 parameters for more than 85% (e.g. width of the route, business of the route, forests, rivers or lakes in the neighbourhood, national parks, built-up areas, industrial areas . We hope that you find this useful to help you digitize faster and get a better result. You can still reposition the suggested path, if you don't agree with our definition of "nicest". After all: "Des goÃ»ts et des couleurs on ne discute pas".
Go to index

Introduction to RouteYou.com

RouteYou.com is a community web-site related to outdoor routes for motorbikers, hikers, cyclists and tourists.
The purpose of this platform is threefold

Show you and provide you routes via our Route-Viewer so you can explore and be taken to small and great places in your neighbourhood or to far away places (with a simple printed version of a route or with a downloaded digital route for you navigation system).
Allow you to create your own routes by digitizing a route or by uploading a track you drove.
Share your route and knowledge related to these routes with your fellow world- or neighbourhood-explorers

On purpose, we provide a mix of professionally created routes by organisations, authors and publishers, and routes created by anybody who enjoys making routes for free, because we believe these are complementary for your activity.

Professional routes

Most of the professional routes have a price token linked to them, unless they are provided as promotion material and be paid for you already (e.g. by cities, touristic regions,... as promotion). These routes are made and checked in the field, digitized with high quality map material and the content of the information is checked on regular basis. The quality has to be guaranteed, and those organisations, publishers and authors have to survive too! Those products will have a clear organisation/company label linked to them, so you can easily recognize these routes and reward the organisations/authors by purchasing a lot of their routes. They are also responsible and get all the credits for the content which is provided of the downloaded products!.

Community routes

The community routes are routes digitized by anybody who enjoys making routes for themselves or to share with others. These routes are fo free. Because it is impossible for us to check the content of the provided routes made by the second group, we can not take responsibility for the quality of them, but we will further work on the RouteYou environment so you can give feed-back to the RouteYou-community and the authors themselves if there are mistakes. Our goal is to offer digital route data for navigation systems for bicycles, motorbikes, cars, hiking tours and touristy strips in the city or countryside. To realize this, we collaborate with publishers and navigation manufacturers to bridge the gap and to offer the information to a fast growing navigation-user market. Navigation manufacturers are interested, because they are looking for new functionality to offer. Publishers are interested because this is an extra channel to offer/sell their information to their customers.

Partnerships with publishers, service providers and application developers

Ontrack Navigation (the company behind RouteYou.com) is continuously expanding its partneships on three levels

With content providers such as book-, route-, map-, POI- (Point of Interst)publishers.
This will allow you to ge a rich choice of professional routes and information along those routes.
But is also will enrich the routes you make with extra information and allow you to get/select themes/items/places of your interest.
With application builders of navigation systems, digital-guides and software applications so we can convert the available information on this site to those applications in teh required formats
With service providers which are specialised in providing and representing information of and along the routes in new ways (e.g. 3D landmarks, virtual fly-throughs, aerial photography and videography,...) so you can experience the route before you carry them out. Go to index

Go to index

Languages

Three languages are structurally supported for the moment (EN, FR, NL) although not all items are translated yet. You can change the language by selecting the language flags at the top. We opted to show all the routes in all languages, also the routes created in other languages. therwise, you have to switch continuously to tohter languages to see the available routes. If you don't want to check the routes in other languages, we added a language-flag in the route-title lists, so you can easily skip them. Go to index

Registration, loggin on and My profile

Why to register and to log on

When you register (and log on), you are able to

download/purchase products
give comments (not anonymous!)
create you own routes
create your publishing group

When you register, you will receive an e-mail with password

Logging on

When you logged on, you get the item My space in the main menu. That provides you with a quick overview of your routes, groups and products.

Changing your password, and other information with My profile

When logged on, you get your profile overview and can change it via My space in the sub-menu.

Recovering your password

When you forgot your password, you can select the log-on option in the main menu, and select Recover your password in the sub-menu. You will receive an e-mail with the required informaiton to log on again. Go to index

My space on RouteYou.com

My space is an option in the main menu. You have to register and log on to get the option. My space provides you a quick overview of the main items related to you: routes you created, groups you are owner or member from and the products you created. It's also a very easy way to find you stuff back on the web-site. Go to index

News

The latest News-items are displayed on the main page. To get an overview of previous news-items, you can select the News-option in the sub-menu. The news-items is created by Ontrack Navigation. It is not possible for you to create a news-item yourself, but it is possible to provide information via Events you can create yourself. See Events
The News-option in the main menu provides you with three overview lists of news-items: news, events and new routes. Go to index

You can register to receive our future newsletters by just adding your e-mail in the Newsletter-registration-box on the Home Page. Unsubscribing from the newsletter can be done by clicking the unsubscribe option in the provided newsletter. Go to index

POI

Create POIs alongs a route

The RoutePlanner allows to create a route and add POIs along the route. You will see the POIs as icons alon gthe profile in the RouteViewer

Profile

They can also be printed with the special print-option detail-print.

When you start the RoutePlanner, you will see a menu on the left, having a POI-tab.

POI

Select the POI-TAB: You are now in POI-mode. When you click on the map, a POI will be created. If you want to add specific information about the POI, select Edit-POI .
You get a window with where you can add specific information about the POI, such as TYPE (see further).

POI

POI-types

Check the list of the predefined POI types

Add a picture to a POI

Important remark: Make sure you have the rights of the picture to link to your POI!
Mention the source of the picture!

When you select Edit POI, you will see the option to add a picture URL in the POI-form.
Here is a step by step example how to do this

-Copy the URL of a picture

A picture-URL is a link towards a picture on the web. Your picture has to be available on the web already! If that is not the case, you can read further down how to do this!

Steps

1: Go with the mouse to a picture on a website
2: Click right mouse button
3: Go to properties
4: You get the propoerties-window. Indicate with your mouse the entire URL next to address(URL) (starts with http:// and ends with .jpg)
5: Click on right mouse button and select Copy

-Copy the URL in POI form

6: Go with the mouse to the URL-window of the POI form and click on it to locate the cursor in that window
7: Top left of your browser had a menu item Edit. Select Paste
8. Now save and you're done

Put your pictures on the web

There are plenty of sites to put your own pictures on the web and share them! When you limit the amount, this is even for free.
A few examples of such sites are
Flickr and Picasa .

Go to index

Picture

Your picture as an avatar.
Add a picture to your group.

Printing

An overview-print and a detail-print is provided for every route! You can find the print-button in the right-top corner of the map in the RouteViewer.
Check out also the detail-option which gives you a set of maps of your route. You can print both options!
Go to index

Privacy and copyright issues

Privacy

Your personal information will only be used for internal purposes and not shared with third parties. Your user-name will be used as reference to your work (see further), and your e-mail will not be shared publicly.

Copyright issues

Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Routes and related information you create, add and publish on this site (routes, descripions, locations, pictures,...) will be considered to fall under the licence of Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 of Belgium as defined but the Creative Commons organisation on http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/be. Information provided on this site which is not specifically defined as falling under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 of Belgium, is not to be used as such. For any use or replication of content or product provided on this site, other than personal use, and not defined as Creative Commons Attribution 2.0, a written agreement should be obtained from Ontrack Navigation (contact info@routeyou.com).
Copyright violations
For the content we put on this site, we are controlling the sources and the copyright conditions and we also refer to these sources and the copyright conditions. If you see any copyright violation on this site, by us or any other user, please inform us so we can take the necessary actions to solve the issue. As a community-user of this site, you are yourself responsible to provide the correct and required reference of sources as required by their copyright licence, but also verify and avoid producing any illegal copyrighted information. We have the right to remove temporarily or permanently any information of which the copyright is doubted. Go to index

Route knugget

A route knugget is a little piece of information linked to one ore more routes. We provide them to you as little news-items on a weekly basis. If you think you have a great route knugget yourself, send us an e-mail with the route knugget to knugget@routeyou.com. Also indicate how we should refer to you as the author of the knugget, and the source. Our route knugget-editor is the almighty, final judge if it gets published and when!. Go to index

The Route-Viewer

Look at a demo-video of the RouteViewer
The Route-Viewer presents the route and the POIs (Points of Interest) you see along the route in an interactive way. It gives an indication of the length, a height profile and the POIs with an icon of the type. The map allows you to pan and zoom and see the POIs along the route. The POI is linked with a picture (when available) and a description. It also shows video's and 3D views. Go to index

RSS Feeds

RouteYou-users can leave a comment on your routes, your groups, your events,... You can check every day if there is any new comment, but a more handy method is the use of RSS.

What is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a webfeedformat. Instead of going to a site to check the news, the site-news comes to you (hence the term webfeed).
The news is neatly organized by your webbrowser or by an RSS reader. Using an RSS reader, you can easily check the latest comments on your route, event,.... If you want to read further, you can click through to the RouteYou-item, on the site. RSS-readers are free to download. An example of such an RSS feed is Sage: http://sage.mozdev.org/

How to stay informed using RSS on RouteYou
At the bottom of each page and route, you will see an RSS-button. When you click on that button, you can add the RSS-feed to your browser or your RSS-reader.

You can ask RSS-feeds for the routes you want to follow, but also general RSS-feeds of all new routes, news, new groups, and new event. You find these RSS-feeds at the bottom of the Home-page.
Go to index

Search a group

QuickSearch

You can do this by typing a relavnt keyword of the group in the top QuickSearch window. You will get a list of all the routes, groups, newsitems, events and pages of this website where this word occurs.

Detailed search

You can look for a group by selecting Groups in the main top menu, and select Search in the submenu. Go to index

Search a route

QuickSearch

You can follow the "feel lucky-approach" and type a locatiton or keyword which is relvant for the route in the QuickSearch window. You will get a list of all the routes, groups, newsitems, events and pages of this website where this word occurs.

Detailed search

You can look for a specific route by selecting Routes in the main top menu, and select Search in the submenu.

Your routes

If not done yet, please first log on! You can find your routes by simply looking into your space by selecting My Space in the Main Menu. You get a list there of your routes, your groups (you own, or you are member of) and your products you purchased. Go to index

Supported formats

Currently we support and provide the following file formats

.GDB for Garmin
.GPX for a variety of applications such as Garmin (MapSource), Google Earth, Trackmaker, Ozixplorer, GPSMApEdit,DVD ap of IGN/NGI Belgium-Lannoo...
.ITN for TomTom
.KML for Google Earth (KML is an unzipped KMZ)
.KMZ for Google Earth
.PDF for printing information via Adobe
.RTE for Navigon
.RTE for Mio (the systems using Navigon software)

REMARK:
Not all presented routes have all the files/formats available (this depends on the contract we have with the route providers). Our products clearly indicate which files they contain and as such indicate the systems they support. If in doubt, check the manual of your navigation system or your application. Go to index

Currently supported navigation systems and other applications

Following (navigation) systems and software products are supported

Garmin
Google Earth
GPSMApEdit
IGN/NGI Belgium-Lannoo-Star DVD application
MapSource (Garmin)
Ozixplorer
TomTom
Trackmaker

Following (navigation) systems and software products are NOT directly supported

Alturion
Magellan
Mio
Navigon
Navman

REMARK:
It does not mean when the system is not mentioned here it is supported! Not all presented routes have all the formats/files available (this depends on the contract we have with the route providers). Our products clearly indicate which files they contain and as such indicate the systems they support. If in doubt, check the manual of your navigation system or your application. You can also check out our list with supported formats which gives the link with the applications. Go to index

Troubleshooting

Download after payment

I paid but don't know how to obtain the product The products are stored in you space of RouteYou.com, which you can reach via the main menu-option My Space. Log on first if that is not the case.

Not all information is displayed properly on the web-page

We recommend you to view our site with the Firefox web-browser(*). Although we check the web-site behaviour on all other standard browsers such as Internet Explorer and Safari, and we try to make sure it performs in the same way in all thos browsers, we noticed Firefox behaves in the most predictable way. Besides that, Firefox is free to install (this is the link), it runs on the most common operating systems and has a huge set of extra tools you can add (also for free). It is an open-source software project. If you don't know which web-browser you have, it's a big chance that it is Internet Explorer. A web-browsers is a software which allows you to browse on the Internet and view this site.

Paying and Paypal account

How can I pay, if I don't have a Paypal account. t You don't need a Paypal account to pay via the Paypal system with Visa or Mastercard. Just a valid Visa and Mastercard It might be a bit confusing via the Paypal pages, but it is not required. Other payment methods Currenly no other payment systems are supported except via Visa, Mastercard and Paypal-accounts.

Upload a track to RouteYou.com

You can upload a track via selecting Routes on the main menu and Upload of the submenu. You can upload a track in .GPX (Neutral), .GDB (Garmin), .TAB (MapInfo), .SHP (Shape of ESRI) and .DXF format already, but there is no direct link yet to your account. We do receive it on our server and will link it with a time-lap to your account, but not immedidiately. We are working on making it direct. Go to index

Upload a route to your navigation system

Unfortunately, we can't give you a simple answer on this one. Because every system has his own way of storing the route-data on the device, we recommend you to check the manual of your device how to upload the routes on your device. There are currently two main methods to get the route data on your navigation device (but check first if your system supports routes!):

Via a (USB-)cable connecting your device with your PC

This is the case for most of the TomToms, Garmins, Mios, ...). In many cases you PC will recognize your navigation system as an extra drive and you can put the route data in the appropriate directory of your navigation system (check the manual of our device or their web-site). Sometimes, specific programs are provided by the navigation provider (e.g. Garmin's Mapsource) to allow you to upload routes on the system. Another possibility is to go via the MicrosoftActiveSync program.

Via a memory card (e.g. SD)

A lot of the navigation devices have the option to put a memory card in. If your PC/Mac/Laptop can take also those memory card, you can put the route-info on there and exchange it. Go to index

What to do with a digitized route?

After you digitized a route, the route is (currently) made available in GPX format. GPX is a neutral exchange format for routes. Unfortunately, not all navigation systems support that format yet as a standard route-format (check the manual of your navigation system). If your navigation device does not handle that format, check out Format conversions The next step is to upload your route on your device (see item Upload a route to your navigation system)
.

Index

help

RouteYou tutorial with video examples

Free download

Payment

Download after payment

Problems with download or payment

Creating an event

Can I upload the routes on my navigation system?

How can I find my route or that of a friend. Can it be done via the route-search option?

What can I do after I digitized a route?

Options

Professional routes

Community routes

Partnerships with publishers, service providers and application developers

Why to register and to log on

Logging on

Changing your password, and other information with My profile

Recovering your password

POI

Create POIs alongs a route

POI-types

Add a picture to a POI

-Copy the URL of a picture

-Copy the URL in POI form

Put your pictures on the web

Picture

Privacy

Copyright issues

QuickSearch

Detailed search

QuickSearch

Detailed search

Your routes

Download after payment

Not all information is displayed properly on the web-page

Paying and Paypal account

Other problems

Via a (USB-)cable connecting your device with your PC

Via a memory card (e.g. SD)