This morning, Central European Time, saw the release of the iOS4 compatible version of
Runkeeper. Now I myself am not updating to iOS4 yet since my iPhone 3Gs is jailbroken and am happy with it so far. I'll skip over my arguments for jailbreaking and dive directly into the great update Jason Jacobs and his team have released.
This wasn't a major update but in my eyes Runkeeper has made great work of matching web functionality with their iPhone version of its app (not sure if Android will have the same features as well). The 3 major items that got me excited were the following:
Routes
On the Runkeeper website you were able to set up routes. Let's say that you constantly (or at least the majority of the time) you do your workouts along the same route, in the website you were able to define these routes and monitor your times on it. The iPhone app now has the possibility to select that route before you start your activity. Upon selecting a route, the route is shown to you and you can see your fastest time on it aswell. There is, as far as I know, no feature yet to set the pace to your fastest time so that you can train against it. Nonetheless, this functionality is great as it takes away the unconcious burden of wondering if your activity will be coupled to the defined route in your account.
Sharing
Many of us use the sharing functionality within Runkeeper to share our activities and progress with our friends. Again, Runkeeper has made it possible to change your settings, which have always been available on the website, from your iPhone. You can easily change the settings for:
- Make activities public
- Make maps public
- Runkeeper LIVE (paid service)
- Post to Twitter
- Post to Facebook
I, for one, like to share… well most of the time. I usually track my 5k bicycle rides to work, but can imagine that this will irritate a few people as it really isn't a siginificant activity. With the emergence of
filtering of social media, I believe that as participants we should always consider what we share and how often. Signal is more important than noise.
Post Activity
The last great part of the Runkeeper update is the post activity screen. When you complete an activity the only option we had was to save or discard it. Now, depending on your share settings, this would cause the activity to automatically be shared as you had defined. Now, Runkeeper will allow you to select how you would like to share the activity (in my case via
Facebook or
Twitter) and you have the added option of attaching a note to the activity.
Keep in mind that these are just new functionalities that have been added to an already great application. Runkeeper also gives you the opportunity to setup audio cues, take photo's during the activity, setup live tracking of your activity, manually add activities, join Street Teams, setup training schedules (interval or paced based trainings) and much much more. The website also offers added services for a mere $20 a year. By paying this small fee you get access to activity trend, progress and analysis reports which will give you full insights into your activities, be it cycling, running, walking or what ever you can imagine. I have even seen swimming, but this was of course entered manually… don't dive in with your iPhone. Runkeeper is great but doesn't make your iPhone water resistent!
Runkeeper is very good at motivating me to go a nd workout. As an online analyst during the day, the statistics about my efforts really make me happy. I am currenty only running 3 times a week, but Runkepper is making me want to workout more. Feel free to check out
my Runkeeper profile and join my Street Team.
Posted via email from Share Joy | Vent Frustrations
20 oktober j.l. vond de 4e en tevens laatste Adversitement seminar plaats, georganiseerd onder auspiciën van 
