During SXSW, Jason will have this nifty gadget that turns him into a WiFi cloud. That’s right, he’s a cycling hotspot with Wimax bandwidth to share with you. He’s roaming around, attending the Mobile Social, various panels, and is quite happy to connect with you.

So when ATT’s 3G network crashes, find Jason.

The Jason Cloud is brought to you by our friends at Intel.

We’ll have these Official Mobile Social Party Hats for the ride attendees @sxsw and in Seattle during the Bike Expo.

Note: limited edition and quantities.

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Hugger Industries posted a photo:

We'll have these for the ride attendees @sxsw and in Seattle during the Bike Expo.

Google built their new Bike Maps right here in Seattle and Product Manager Shannon Guymon posted on the Official Google Blog this morning with instructions:

Let’s say you want to bike to work, or maybe you want to drive less and spend more time outdoors. Biking directions can help you find a convenient and efficient route that makes use of dedicated bike trails or lanes and avoids hills whenever possible. To find biking directions, select “Bicycling” from the drop-down menu when you do a directions search:

I’m riding over to the Bike Expo this weekend and tried a route …

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Very Much a Beta

As Google told us, the Bike Maps are very much a beta and they’re asking users to report a problem with the directions. Problems will be found because the maps are generated based on a variety of data sources, not all of them are accurate when it comes to bikes. We’ve all mapped out a route and then found out that it’s not ideal when we got there, but this tool will benefit from user feedback. The route mapped to the radio station puts me on the West Seattle Bridge — not a good place to ride a bike! However, another reader just wrote to say

just mapped my ride to work and the suggested route was pretty dang good. Happy to see that my avg time is about 20min faster than the bot.

Faster than the bot! That’s a new personal best measure: faster than the Google bike bot.

Meet the Bike Map Makers

Google is riding with us and partying at the Mobile Social this weekend in Austin. They’re creating a community with the Bike Maps and want to talk with you much more about it.

Hugger Industries posted a photo:

Google Bike Maps just launched and the developers will ride and hang out with us at the Mobile Social SXSW.

Before heading to Florida on a work trip several years ago I lay sprawled across my den with a giant road map of the area, a set of highlighters, a guide book and my laptop. A frequent traveler, I like to bring my folding bike with me, and I like to head out on bike rides between meetings or trade show stops.

As I looked up cycling routes in my guide book I’d compare them to a Google Map search of the area and then stencil in the most suitable rides with my various highlighters. Guidebook, Google, map, guidebook, Google map. It took me about two hours to sketch out the various trips from my hotel room to the surrounding environs, none of which would be necessary if Google Maps included the feature the company is rolling out today, a new bike layer with directions in major metropolitan areas.

Google, who is joining Bike Hugger at the Mobile Social in Austin at SXSW to talk about this exciting new feature (more on that in other posts) has taken a lot of time to develop the much-requested cycling layer for their popular Google Maps tool. No mere add-on, the new functionality provides cyclists with some impressive features thanks to an overhaul in how Google Maps works.

In many ways, Google’s technology will be more accurate and more detailed than anything that regional planning groups or municipal governments tend to provide as it will indicate not only state-designated or city-designated bike lanes and routes, but trails and other bike paths as well.

The Google Map bicycle layer not only displays these key bits of cycling’s connective tissue but routes cyclists on the most efficient (read “least hilly” and “least congested”) This is combined with a newly designed bike-route display on the site that decreases the emphasis on vehicular routes and displays three levels of bike route. A dark-green route indicates a trail that’s bike only (and therefor the safest and most preferred route on Google Maps), light-green to indicate a bike lane that follows a road, and a dotted-green lane that shows roads without designated bike lanes but that are suitable for cyclists.

It’s that last part that’s the standout for me, as it’s the part that’s hardest to discern from most regional maps. By indicating safe non-designated routes (and we all know there are more of these than designated routes) the occasional or visiting cyclist can navigate between points without fears that their chosen bike path with come to an end right at a major and uncrossable highway.

While these features have been requested for what feels like eons now, Google was only recently able to begin development on the features. In October the company rolled out a new data set for Google Maps domestically that allows the company to include vastly more information as part of their mapping technology. This change made it possible for the team to work with groups like the Rails to Trails Conservancy to include not only locally-designated bike routes.

It will also make it possible for areas to submit feedback to Google about alternative routing, which will help make the new bicycling features the most comprehensive anywhere.

At launch there will be several dozen cities available (see the list below) including not only the expected favorites (New York City, Mountain View, Portland, Seattle, etc.) but some unexpected cycling regions (Plano, Texas; Aurora, Illinois; Overland Park, Kansas, etc) and more are in development currently.

It looks like this coverage will be constrained to the US until all of Google Maps share the same underlying technology, but it only took the division six months to go from technology rollout to product here in the States, and the demand for cycling routing in Europe and other regions is obviously high.

Here’s the list of cities covered, from Google, and you can try this out for yourself at maps.google.com, just look under the More… drop-down on the top of the map.

Mesa Arizona Huntsville Alabama Mobile Alabama Anchorage Alaska Chandler Arizona Gilbert Arizona Glendale Arizona Phoenix Arizona Scottsdale Arizona Tempe Arizona Tucson Arizona Peoria Arizona Anaheim California Bakersfield California Chula Vista California Fremont California Fresno California Glendale California Huntington Beach California Irvine California Long Beach California Los Angeles California Modesto California Moreno Valley California Oakland California Oceanside California Ontario California Oxnard California Pasadena California Rancho Cucamonga California Riverside California Sacramento California San Bernardino California San Diego California San Francisco California San Jose California Santa Ana California Santa Clarita California SANTA CRUZ California Santa Rosa California Stockton California Corona California Escondido California Hayward California Lancaster California Palmdale California Salinas California Sunnyvale California Thousand Oaks California Torrance California Aurora Colorado Boulder Colorado Colorado Springs Colorado Denver Colorado Fort Collins Colorado Lakewood Colorado Hartford Connecticut New Haven Connecticut Washington District of Columbia Cape Coral Florida Miami Florida Orlando Florida St. Petersburg Florida Tallahassee Florida Tampa Florida Port St. Lucie Florida Atlanta Georgia Honolulu Hawaii Boise Idaho Aurora Illinois Chicago Illinois Rockford Illinois Naperville Illinois Indiana Polis Indiana Des Moines Iowa Overland Park Kansas Wichita Kansas Kansas City Kansas Lexington Kentucky Louisville Kentucky Baton Rouge Louisiana Baltimore Maryland Boston Massachusetts Detroit Michigan Grand Rapids Michigan Minneapolis Minnesota St. Paul Minnesota Kansas City Missouri Springfield Missouri St. Louis Missouri Omaha Nebraska Henderson Nevada Las Vegas Nevada North Las Vegas Nevada Jersey City New Jersey Albuquerque New Mexico Buffalo New York New York New York Charlotte North Carolina Durham North Carolina Greensboro North Carolina Raleigh North Carolina Winston-Salem North Carolina Cary North Carolina Akron Ohio Cincinnati Ohio Cleveland Ohio columbus Ohio Toledo Ohio Oklahoma City Oklahoma Eugene Oregon Portland Oregon Salem Oregon Philadelphia Pennsylvania Providence Rhode Island Sioux Falls South Dakota Knoxville Tennessee Nashville Tennessee Amarillo Texas Arlington Texas Austin Texas Corpus Christi Texas Dallas Texas Fort Worth Texas Houston Texas Lubbock Texas Plano Texas San Antonio Texas Carrollton Texas Salt Lake City Utah West Valley City Utah Arlington Virginia Newport News Virginia Richmond Virginia Virginia Beach Virginia Alexandria Virginia Bellingham Washington Seattle Washington Spokane Washington Vancouver Washington Bellevue Washington Madison Wisconsin (North) Wisconsin (South) Wisconsin Santa Clara County California South San Francisco California San Mateo California South Burlington Vermont Mountain View California Farifax Virginia

Google is joining the Mobile Social SXSW for the ride and party at Mellow Johnnys. Meet the developers who built the new bicycling layer for Google Maps.

Meet the Bike Map Makers

Google’s Bike Maps were built right here in Seattle by cyclists like us and for those of you in Austin for SXSW, you can ride with and meet the developers. Look for these shirts on the ride

and for Google at Mellow Johnnys.

More on Google Bike Maps:

• NY Times article with a quote from me
• Techflash article with another quote.

Hugger Industries posted a photo:

we're there.

Howdy, from Austin, TX! I’m Jonathan Carroll, Community Manager, Biz Dev guy and all-around Killer Robot at Gowalla. I have the pleasure of guest-blogging today.

Gowalla is a location-based social service, and we think it’s the easiest way to share places you go with friends. It uses the GPS and location services on your mobile device to help you discover new places and events in your area, and is integrated with social platforms like Facebook and Twitter to make it easy to share with your friends. We’re partnering with Bike Hugger for the Mobile Social SXSW in Austin this year to create a sponsored trip using our service. A ‘trip’ on Gowalla is just a collection of spots you can visit that are all linked together and which, if all visited, reward the user with a special achievement pin. The trip we’ve implemented for the Mobile Social SXSW features just 3 spots, all of which will be easy to obtain on the group ride:

1. The starting point at Brush Square Park
2. Half-way stop at the Texas State Capital
3. Ride’s end: Mellow Johnny’s

Everyone who uses Gowalla to check-in at those spots will have completed the Mobile Social SXSW trip and will receive the super-groovy Bike Hugger pin.

So how can you participate? Well first, grab Gowalla if you don’t have it just yet:

• Gowalla for iPhone
• Gowalla for Android (handset link only)
• Gowalla for Palm (handset link only)
• Gowalla for BlackBerry

Next, create an account and then link up your Facebook and/or Twitter account! Doing this allows you to easily share the places you go with your friends, in your status updates, live feed news items, and also in your Twitter stream. Each time you use Gowalla to ‘check-in’ at a spot, you’ll be given an option to keep that info to yourself or alternately to push it out to those social network services.

On the day of Mobile Social, make sure you’ve got your device on hand, charged and ready to go. Then, at each of those locations mentioned above (and shown on the Gowalla website here), you can open up Gowalla, check-in at the spot, and get the groovy stamps! Then, upon completion of the ride, share your Bike Hugger pin with your friends on Twitter and Facebook. (Hey, they should’ve come out right? Time to brag a little!)

Gowalla will be out and about during the ride, and our branded Mini Cooper will be parked at the festivities at Mellow Johnny’s where we’ll be giving away t-shirts and goodies to people who complete the trip. We hope to see you there!

Back from the Twitter Conference and next up it’s SXSW, Bike Expo, and then onto Mix 10 in Vegas. We ride wherever we go and you’re welcome to join us.

Austin

Our ride in Austin is part of the Mobile Social and we’re expecting 500+ cyclists. Look for this badge that identifies the Social Cycling ATX ride leaders, all 50 of them, and they’ll take you around Austin arriving at Mellow Johnnys for a party.

I arrive on Monday to speak Tuesday with @livestrongceo. We’re riding Tuesday morning. Not 500 of us, just a few and will announce more on Twitter.

Seattle

While SXSW is going down, we’re at the Bike Expo hosting the blogger lounge in booths 579 and 580. We’ll ride each morning to the show and on Saturday night to the Pedal Party presented by Go Means Go and Baron Bicycles.

Vegas

In Vegas, we’re talking about bikes with Microsoft developers and riding Globe fixies on the Vegas strip.

A moment to mention our partners with thanks for bringing the Mobile Social to SXSW in 2010.

Mobile Social SXSW Partners 2010
People Really Win at the Mobile Socials

Not only do our partners bring it, but they give us the goods to giveaway and raffle

• Crumpler Bags
• custom Ibex gear
• A set of Hed Wheels
• An Atom-powered Mobile Internet Device
• Eyebeam Wifi

and this year, we've got an "afterglow" prize that we'll give away post MoSo. Details Mellow Johnnys.

No indication other than “looks like spycraft” in this photo, but do think spies could move through a city plying their trade all stealthy like on bikes.

Update

The Associated Press reported over the weekend on MI5 papers that show Britain feared Nazi spyclists.

Newly declassified British intelligence files reveal the ripples of alarm that spread through the country as Hitler Youth cyclists toured Britain in 1937. Reports of sightings poured in from local police amid fears the teenagers might be two-wheeled “spyclists” scouting the country for a future invasion.

That reads like a movie script.

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In Japan, they’ve got the Skycycle and in Rotorua New Zealand, the Schweeb — that’s a ‘bent monorail.

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That rollercoaster looks scary and this monorail looks fun!

We’ve been posting on this SRAMANO drivetrain on Flickr and Twitter and time to bubble it up here. That’s the best of both, according to the owner, and it’s Di2 pared with SRAM Red/Rival.

Details:

• Di2 shifters, derailers
• Rival brakes
• SRAM chainring, chain, cranks, cassette

I suggested he add a Campy something on it somewhere. Would like to see how our friends at Mavic would react to a request for Technical support on this bike.

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Hugger Industries posted a photo:

You'll see this emblazoned on various gear at the MoSo SXSW.
Designed by Kevin Tamura.

Hugger Industries posted a photo:

When it has our brand in it, we're ok with Junk Mail!

Hugger Industries posted a photo:

that's on Plancast

If Bike Hugger were a dog blog, we’d probably post a lot like this from Hipster Puppies

Trigger says the words “bike culture” out loud at least once a day

ari stayed up all night drinking beer and playing old 7”s, so he’s gonna have to sit out this month’s critical mass

Maybe that’s a new thing: dog bike culture blogging. Hat tip to @naomimimi

Now for something completely different, a fixie underwater

and a Bicycle Hearse.

Hat tip Wend blog.

Also see the Wheelburro for another take on cargo.

Never a dull moment in bike blogging. Hat tip to the Daily Undertaker.

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Hugger Industries posted a photo:

partying and talking