One of the best Flex applications ever is back online this week. The Tour of California Tour Tracker is back this week as the Tour of California bike race is going on. The tracker application is most useful when the racers are out - today they start at 9:30 PM PT.

The Tour Tracker application integrates GPS information from the riders into a Flex application - overlaying their position onto a Yahoo powered map in real time. The application shows their current location, speed, distance remaining, and integrates live video right into the application.

If you haven't checked out the Tour Tracker, make sure to check it out today while the race is on.

The Amgen Tour of California, one of the top 4 bike races in the world (so I'm told), got underway Sunday with the coolest, sexiest Flex application ever built. The application was built by Adobe in just over 4 weeks (yes, you read that right), and showcases the power of the Flex framework, Flash Media Server and Flex Data Services.

Tour Tracker 2.0 uses GPS on the bike riders to track their position in real time, streaming the data down to the Flex application using Flex Data Services. The bikers positions are displayed over top of a map, with a number of different views into the current bike stage. Information directly from the bikers, into space, then back down to a cluster of servers, sent to clients in real time and displayed over top of a map showing the actual position of the riders at any time. How do I explain that to my grandma who still can't understand a CD?

You need to experience this application to believe it.

Photographers along the course are equiped with camera integrated with GPS technology. The photos they take are geoencoded with GPS information, uploaded and then streamed down to the application, overlayed onto the map. Imagine watching the race in Tour Tracker, seeing the riders go by, and a few minutes later seeing photos pop up on the same map behind where the racers were.

This application is made possible because of Flex and the JIT compiler in Flash Player 9. JavaScript would have a very hard time handling all the calculations and information streaming into this application.

Full screen video is provided via Flash Media Server. The video is integrated directly into the application, providing a seamless user experience unlike anything else available. I haven't seen live video, but the race today at 1 PM PT should include it.

Microsoft had it right. The wow does indeed start now, they just had the wrong platform.

Tour Tracker 2.0 is the best example I've seen of what's possible in a rich Internet applications. The fact that the entire application was built in 4 weeks is a testament to the tools used.

Best of all, those tools are available for free. The Flex SDK is available free of charge for anyone to use, Flex Data Services is available in a free Express version, and Flash Media Server is available for free for use in production servers with less than 10 concurrent connections.

The official press release from the Tour provides more information about what the application includes.