Have you ever taken a walk, found some beautiful scenery or a really obscure store, tucked away in some corner, only to later realize you can't remember how to find your way back there again? If you've got a G1, Google's just released an Android application that could be just what you need, effectively turning your phone into a personal tracking device.

The My Tracks application was put together by Google coders in their "20% time". This is one day a week when Google employees can work on pet projects, totally removed from whatever their primary job is. After a free download you can start using the program to keep track of your travels. Once you activate it, it will use the G1's GPS receiver to continually log your position, including elevation and all.

If you feel safe carrying your phone on you when going out for a run or a bike ride, you could use My Tracks to provide some instant feedback on your route. Using the gathered data points, the software can compute your average speed, total distance traveled, and how long you spent actually moving vs. any breaks you took. Of course, because this is Google, you can export your routes directly into Google Maps or send the stats data over to Google Docs.

Although you could pull off the same sort of thing using a GPS receiver and the right PDA software, having it all together in one device, especially one with a mobile data connection, gives you some extra options for working with your route data. You can share your routes easily right from the phone, no longer having to extract the data from your mobile device and then upload it to a web server.

Head on on over to Appspot to download a copy if this sounds up your alley. We're curious to know how this constant GPS logging will affect the G1's battery life, so be sure and let us know if you run any tests.

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