While we contemplate riding the 15 Top Motorcycling Roads according to the AMA membership, there’s an easier way to find great routes near where you live. For about a year now we’ve been following the progress on “The Greatest Road” iPhone application, the brainchild of Daniel Pifko, which recently got funding from SocialNav and will be taking on that name in the future.
The idea behind that app is a directory of the greatest motorcycle roads around the world, submitted by the riders themselves, complete with a social sharing element that lets motorcyclists comment on routes, post rides to social sites like Facebook, etc. Taking advantage of the iPhone’s built-in GPS locator, you can search for roads based on your location, or browse other locales to plan a trip. Basically it’s your Sunday Morning Ride in palm of your hand, and our happy merger of computer geekdom and motorcycling (woot!).
In its short lifetime, The Greatest Road application has evolved into a polished tool for motorcyclist (there’s a car app too if that’s your cup of tea), but always suffered from the chicken and the egg problem of having people buy an application that was dependent on user generated content. As everyone knows Asphalt & Rubber is run out of my mom’s basement (3pm everyday she comes in with cookies and milk, bless her heart), so our staff could easily afford the dollar or two that the Apple iTunes App Store took from us…motorcycle blogging after all pays the big bucks.
But how would our brothers in digital arms over in the automotive field fare? Would they be able to afford food and water? Would they be able to do laundry this month? The answer was sadly no…that is of course until we heard that The Greatest Road app is now free for a limited time on iTunes, which should help increase the number of people using it, and thus the number/quality of routes, comments, etc.
Now into version 2.0, the company has added push notifications to its application, which will help facilitate the social aspect of the platform. Creator Daniel Pifko hints to us that they’ve got some cool ideas banding about on how to use that feature of the iOS in coming versions (we can’t wait to see what they come up with). We have visions of road condition updates, alerts for speed traps, and the special of the day at Wolf’s Tavern on Hwy 33 (if it ever opens again). Slick stuff indeed, check it out on iTunes.
Source: The Greatest Roads/SocialNav
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