Just wanted to let everyone know the HuckNRoll.com coupon promotion is officially over but there are literally 3 coupons left to give out today – though no guarantees and you’ll have to hurry! We ran out of coupons about a week early so clearly people were stoked for such a great deal with their singletracks membership purchase…

If you were one of the lucky subscribers to receive a HuckNRoll.com coupon code remember you only have until August 1, 2009 to get $10 off your order at HuckNRoll.com. There’s no minimum purchase and they have some really nice stuff online including complete bikes from Santa Cruz, Titus, and Rocky Mountain. Thanks to HuckNRoll for hooking it up for this promo – show them so love this week!

We’ve been pretty swamped here with new members and content this month but we’ve also found time to make a few updates:

1. Members can now edit trail information. If you added a trail to singletracks you can now update trail details yourself anytime – including mileage, configuration, directions, description, and more! Of course all registered members can continue to add trail reviews, closure information, photos, videos, and GPS data using the trail dashboard on the right side of the trail pages.

2. Trail tags version 1.0 is now live (again). Some members recently pointed out that our trail tagging system was broken and this week we finally got around to getting things straightened out. It’s simple to add descriptive tags to any trail using – you guessed it! – the trail dashboard. We’ve even posted a short blurb about how trail tags work and include some suggestions to get you started.

We plan on integrating trail tags even more in the future but for now you can view the most popular tags, find individual trail tags at the bottom of each trail page, and view your personal tags to help you organize your favorite places to ride. Here are a few cool tags to check out to see how this works: NC Triangle, fast, and technical.

3. Forum issues resolved? A few of you have reported having trouble posting to the forums with random cursor movements but now we’re hearing that things seem to be back to normal. This fall we’ll be making some big changes to the forums so look for continued improvements…

More singletracks news to come, including a post explaining how we organize and map trail information, new contest details, and much more. Summer rocks!

If you’re on the fence about upgrading your singletracks account or purchasing a subscription for the first time, today is your lucky day! The guys at HuckNRoll.com have hooked it up and they’re giving new singletracks subscribers $10 off coupons to their huge online MTB shop. This offer is extremely limited and once the coupons are gone, they’re gone…

Some restrictions apply, so here’s the fine print. You’ll receive your unique coupon code via email within 24 hours of your singletracks membership purchase (free basic accounts are not eligible) and you can also view your code on your “My Account” page at that time. Coupon codes can only be used once and there is no minimum purchase at HuckNRoll.com. Your coupon code will expire August 1, 2009. Purchases of complete bikes, frames and wheels, Fox Racing, Oakley, Nixon, The North Face, and Sidi Footwear are not eligible for the $10 off coupon. Singletracks membership purchases made prior to June 25, 2009 are also not eligible. Terms, conditions, and restrictions may be updated at any time.

Of course if you have any questions, feel free to email us – info@singletracks.com – and we’ll do our best to take care of you.

About HuckNRoll

Started by the peeps who brought us Backcountry.com, HuckNRoll.com stocks more than 6,000 MTB products from 130 brands. The site opened its virtual doors just last month but it’s already taking the industry by storm. Just read this excerpt from the launch press release:

HuckNroll.com is an online mountain bike shop. You heard right. Online. And we wouldn’t be putting it lightly to say that the bike industry didn’t want us. The consensus when we first approached suppliers about launching a high-end online mountain bike shop was, “It will never work, the bike industry is different.” Our response? “Damn right, it’s different. It’s the last industry in existence to accept the Internet as a viable sales channel.”

Read the rest of the press release here – you’ll be ROFL.

About Singletracks Memberships

With a singletracks Trail membership you’ll get access to nearly 700 MTB trail maps (695 to be exact) complete with GPS data, topo maps, and elevation profiles. More maps are being added every day and your annual membership gives you access to EVERY MAP as it’s added.

The singletracks Pro membership adds an online training app and full access to the GPS data manager. With the training app you can keep track of all your workouts, on the trail or off while the GPS data manager lets you map and plot all your rides.

One more secret: you can get a big discount off our annual rate by purchasing a 2-year membership. With the HuckNRoll coupon it’s almost like getting the second year for free – just don’t tell anyone

It’s June and things are heating up on the trail AND on singletracks.com. Here’s the new stuff to keep you in the loop:

Video Contest Winners: It was a battle royale and in the end we had 3 clear winners. Devin_P killed it with 1535 points making him the proud owner of a brand new set of Kenda Nevegall 2.35 tires! Maddslacker earned himself a PRO membership and a singletracks t-shirt while Goo is taking home the third place package with stuff from Camelbak, Nite Rider, and Mr. Smith. Thanks again to all our sponsors and everyone who contributed.

Trail Video Comments: Speaking of trail videos, the contest helped us iron out some kinks that were preventing members from rating trail videos. With hundreds of new videos added this month, it’s a great time to post your comments and ratings to move the best trail videos to the top of the list!

New Trail Pages: We’ve been getting overwhelmingly positive feedback on the new trail page design and if you haven’t taken a look yet, check out this page for an example. The new tabs organize stuff like trail maps, photos, and videos and we’ve placed all the “action links” in a convenient dashboard in the right column. With this new framework in place look for more trail page enhancements this summer and fall.

New Forums: Mongoose has been hard at work moderating the forums and he’s adding two new discussions this summer for MTB beginners and folks interested in mountain biking with families (coming soon). We’re also adding more moderators to help out with the avalanche of new posts – stop in and holla!

Gear Reviews: We’re currently testing hot new gear from Easton, Sun Ringle, Manitou, Yakima, and others and will be posting articles and reviews here on the blog in the next few weeks. Want us to review a particular MTB product? Hit us up on the contact form and we’ll see what we can do.

Top Secret Stuff: Yep, there are a few things coming down the pipe that are on a strictly need to know basis right now. One thing I can tell you: we’ve located 1,100 trails for our Google Maps project. It’s still not nearly 50% of the trail catalog but get ready for a new way to search for MTB trails coming soon…

Yep, it’s pretty simple: earn points for submitting trail videos and video comments this month and the top 3 point grabbers will earn free junk! Point values are awarded like this:

• 3 points for new trail videos (must be at least 30 seconds long)
• 1 point for each video comment you post on singletracks

All videos and comments are subject to approval and you can keep track of the standings on the contest page. Videos from nearly any website are eligible as long as we can find a valid embed code – that includes YouTube, Vimeo, BroadBandSports, VHoldR, and others. Videos must be submitted via the proper trail page and videos submitted via singletracks.f5sports.com are not eligible for the contest.

Prize winners will be announced Monday, June 1:

1. First Prize: Set of Kenda Nevegal Tubeless MTB Tires (retail value: $44.99 each)
2. Second Prize: Singletracks t-shirt PLUS a 1-year PRO membership*
3. Third Prize: Jimi Wallet, Nite Rider Cherry Bomb safety light, and Camelbak Chill Jacket water bottle

Special thanks to Kenda, Mr. Smith, Nite Rider, and Camelbak for donating schwag!

* If you already have a singletracks t-shirt and/or PRO membership you may exchange for any item in our schwag bag

We’re cleaning out our blog queue this month to get ready for summer and we realized we never announced two new features that have been lurking on the site for several months now.

Photo from Sacred Rides’ Awesome Andes Tour.

MTB Tour Reviews: Most of us have never been on a commercial mountain biking tour but if you’re thinking about doing one you’ll want to do your homework. That’s why we added a section where you can find out about the various tours and tour operators, view pics, and even review tours you’ve taken.There are currently 40 MTB tours listed from Asia to North & South America to Europe.

We haven’t had much action on the review side yet (probably since we haven’t promoted the section and only a few dozen riders complete each tour annually) but we hope to get some good tour feedback this summer. Anyone can add tours, pics, and reviews plus you can even create a MTB tour wishlist.

MTB Club Links: Finding local mountain biking clubs can be hit or miss depending on where you live so we recently created a list of MTB clubs around the world. Clubs are organized by state and you’ll find links to the club website and information on which areas the club serves. Anyone can submit a club website for inclusion but all submissions will be moderated to keep the riff-raff out. Dot-org websites are preferred

We’re also still collecting trailhead locations for our Google Map project (we’re at 36% for those keeping track) and we hope to have something up before summer. And don’t forget: singletracks t-shirts are back in stock and are still available for the rock bottom price of $10 each.

Last Friday we mentioned the sale on singletracks t-shirts and the response was clear: mountain bikers love $10 t-shirts. Unfortunately we ran out of size large shirts before the end of the weekend so we had to stop taking orders early this week. The good news is more shirts are being printed as we speak (should be ready late next week) and we’re now accepting orders for all sizes. $10 pricing is still in effect so get your order in now before we run out again!

I also wanted to give an update on the Google Maps trailhead project: after a couple weeks of contributions trickling in you’ve helped us pinpoint roughly 33% of the singletracks trail catalog. Honestly that’s not a great percentage – we need about 80% before the maps become useful – but we’re hoping things will ramp up this spring as people get back on the trails. If you hit a trail page with a map request, take 30 seconds to let us know where the trailhead is – it’ll definitely be rad once we get the Google Maps happening.

One nice side effect of the trailhead project is that it’s helping us identify duplicate trail listings in many areas. We’re serious about keeping the trail database clean and up to date so if you see any duplicate listings, holla at us and we’ll get it taken care of.

Ride hard this weekend and stay off wet trails!

We’re getting ready to do another printing of the singletracks t-shirts so to clear out our current inventory we’re offering the shirts for just 10 bones each. Still on the fence?

• 100% of the proceeds from your purchase will go to IMBA. We print the shirts for about $6-7 each so IMBA gets a few bucks for every shirt you buy.
• Get 2 free singletracks stickers with each t-shirt in your order this month.
• Shipping is still just $3 no matter how many shirts you order.
• No small t-shirts available at this time and mediums and 2XLs are getting low. Order now to reserve yours before we print more (and raise the price).

Mountain biking has been fun but recently the singletracks crew has decided to get more serious about road cycling. Mongoose traded his DH rig for a svelte carbon-fiber Madone from Trek and element22 was recently spotted sipping an espresso at a local cafe with his Litespeed Ghisallo titanium bike leaned against the table. Bombardier has decided to change his name to LeBombardier and 2leftfeet is taking classes at the local bike shop to learn how to tweak Dura Ace components.

As for me, I’m shaving my legs once a week and working on moving all the member accounts to our new website, iluv2roadbike.com. Fortunately Wal-Mart has agreed to purchase the singletracks.com name for a new online music store they’re launching that allows you to purchase single music tracks. They offered 100 bucks which was too good a deal to pass up.

We should have all the new changes ready just in time for the Tour de France this summer so stay tuned! Oh, and happy April Fool’s Day

On Wednesday we announced our project to pinpoint singletracks trails on a Google Map and we’re stoked to report that we’ve received nearly 100 trails locations in just 36 hours – keep ‘em coming! Other cool features that were added this week:

• New trail map interface. Trail maps still look *mostly* the same but we’ve added a tab that allows you to view tracks and waypoints on an interactive Google Map in addition to the topo view (screen shot above). We’ve also cleaned up the look a bit and added a quick link to take you back to the trail listing page (don’t know why we didn’t do that sooner). Up next: improving the trail listing pages and adding more trail map download options…
• Video comments and ratings: Yep, now you can rate and comment on YouTube, Vimeo, and Broadband Sports videos without leaving singletracks. We’ve also added support for more video services like Viddler and VHoldR.
• Good news for lurkers: now you can share your two cents on our MTB gear reviews without signing up for a (free) singletracks account. The tradeoff: guest reviews will be moderated before they’re posted and you won’t receive any contribution points for your efforts.

That’s it for now, thanks to everyone for their feedback and help with all the new stuff. Ride hard this weekend!

It’s the feature request we hear most often: offer a searchable (Google) map of mountain bike trailhead locations on singletracks. We love the idea ourselves but it turns out it’s a little complicated since most mountain bike trails don’t have street addresses (no mailboxes either – strange).

Anyway… We need your help! We just added a function that lets you pinpoint MTB trail locations on a Google Map – it’s simple and should only take a second. The good news is that we already have a head start from the 600+ trails with GPS data plus another 100 trails we’ve located ourselves. The bad news is that’s still just 25% of the entire singletracks trail catalog and we figure it really doesn’t make sense to put up state maps until at least 50% of the trails have been located.

There are no contribution points this time around and it’s not a contest – it’s a goodwill, help out the community kind of thing (though we reserve the right to randomly reward folks with gear from the schwag bag ).  Once we locate 50% of the trail catalog we’ll post new and improved maps for finding and viewing MTB trails. In the meantime you’ll be able to get driving directions and view trailhead maps of those trails that have already been pinpointed.

We’ll keep everyone posted on the progress here on the blog and in the forums – maybe we should get one of those cartoon thermometers and fill it in as we go… Sweet.

On Friday we mentioned that singletracks now supports Vimeo videos but as Steve Jobs likes to say, there is “one more thing…”

In cooperation with Broadband Sports singletracks has just launched a video channel where you can watch and share all your mountain bike videos right here on the site. There are already thousands of mountain bike videos and Broadband Sports updates the most popular video list all the time so you can get to the good stuff quickly. There’s no need to sign up for a separate account to watch videos but if you want to upload your own vids you’ll need to get a free Broadband Sports account first.

You can also embed videos from the new singletracks video channel on your favorite sites like MySpace and we’ve even integrated Broadband Sports video support into our trail video catalog. Just submit videos like always using the “Post trail video” link on any trail page.

It’s hard to believe but there’s even more cool stuff coming this summer – stay tuned!