Nibletz Staff
Geotagging is nothing new, we’ve been able to do it on our iPhones and Android devices for the past few years. You can geotag a tweet, a Facebook status message, Instagram photo and photos that you post to just about any social network. Geotagging allows the creator to mark where their photo was taken or their checkin was made.
Videos can be geotagged as well, however it’s typically one geotag at the beginning of the video or associated with the link for the video.
UK Startup RouteShoot has developed away to use your smartphones gps in conjunction with it’s video camera to continuously geotag a video. Say for instance you are hanging out in South Beach and start a video at your hotel, if you keep the video going down the A1A and then onto the beach, RouteShoot would allow the geotags to change to correspond with the different locations you were at while the video camera was rolling.
What’s more is once the video is uploaded the route is tracked in a line. A viewer can click the line on the geo mapped route and pick up the video based on the location if they wish, or watch as the locations change throughout the recording of the video. The video also shows a “you are here” symbol on the map as the video is playing.
RouteShoot was created by co-founders; Gary Wilson, Adam May and Andy Pym. Wilson and May have years of experience in the highway maintenance field while Pym has experience in highway engineering. We got a chance to talk with Wilson about RouteShoot. Check out the interview below.
What is RouteShoot?
RouteShoot combines video movies and GPS tracks using smartphones. It then allows you to watch a video via our website whilst tracking the frame locations on a map. Uploading the track and video files to the RouteShoot website allows you to share your sporting achievement or holiday journey via popular social media sites.
In layman’s terms, how does it work? (In other words how would you explain it to your grandmother)
Drawing together the existing mapping, video and location referencing of the iPhone, RouteShoot goes much further than the simple, single-point geo-tagging of an individual photo or video and instead captures a log of the whole of the route you have travelled.
We make use of the location services and video recording abilities of smartphones. By controlling these two components we can record a video whilst simultaneously recording the GPS track. This then provides two things
1) The ability to see the route taken whilst recording a video. This is shown as a line on a map.
2) The line serves as an index to the video by clicking any point on the line to start the video from that location.
3) As the video plays a “you are here” symbol tracks each frame on the map.
The social aspects of RouteShoot mean that you can choose to share your routes with friends, family or with like-minded people on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Gary Wilson – 26 Years experience in highway maintenance. Gary has a highly successful background in Civil Engineering with nearly 26 years experience in providing technology solutions to customers in the highway maintenance sector. During this time Gary has worked for local authorities, engineering contractors and software houses.
Adam May – 24 Years experience in highway maintenance and asset management. During this time Adam has worked for local authorities, engineering contractors and software houses.
Andy Pym – 26 Years experience in highway engineering. During this time Andy has worked for local authorities, engineering contractors and survey companies.
Where are you based?
University of Exeter Innovation Centre
What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?
It is excellent. The innovation centre is run primarily to grow new technology start ups. The University actively supports and encourages working relationships between educational staff, students and other businesses in the centre.
How did you come up with the idea for RouteShoot?
We started off providing video surveying services for UK customers. RouteShoot was developed in response to customer demand for the ability to carry out video surveys “in house”.
How did you come up with the name?
This was a difficult one considering what domains were available, what company names were available etc, but we decided on RouteShoot as a phrase that describes exactly what we do!
What problem does RouteShoot solve?
The ability to continuously geo tag video simply and to share that data on the web.
What’s your secret sauce?
Our experience and bloody minded determination – we are also our own worst critics!!
Are you bootstrapped or funded?
We have invested a lot of our own money and time to get this far but realise that we need further funding to achieve our aims and ambitions within a realistic timescale. Interestingly we are looking at crowd funding as a way forward and share offices with crowdcube.com – hopefully we will be exploring this up and coming funding solution further with them.
What are some milestones you’ve achieved?
Other than getting our app approved and on the Apple app store it has been to keep our self funding going.
What’s your next milestone?
That has to be getting the app on Android.
What’s one challenge you’ve overcome in the startup process?
Keeping our dream alive whilst developing our web site and iPhone application!
Who are some of your mentors and business role models?
The mission of the Innovation Centre is to drive science and technology through innovation. We are very lucky to be at the Innovation Centre as they have actively supported and mentored us in this venture.
What’s next for RouteShoot?
Apps for Android, Windows Mobile and RIM.
Where can people find out more and what is your Twitter username?
Visit us at www.routeshoot.com and on Twitter @RouteShoot
