webdevmatt

On my run today I was reminded that every day, for me is Thanksgiving. Sure we don’t have the turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce, most of us can be thankful for something.

For me, whether I’m having a good day or a “bad” day I am extremely thankful for everything I have and today I want to make sure everyone knows this.

Today, Erin, I want to know that I’m thankful for you every day. You are a great human being. I am a better person for knowing, loving and spending the rest of my life with you.

For about 3 months I have been using the Nike+ SportWatch GPS. It’s ultimate strength has been it’s ability to track distance easily and accurately. The TomTom GPS, coupled with the Nike+ Pod I have not had a run that did not track distance, until today.

With both the Pod and the GPS active, there were no miles recorded. The odd thing is, the route was recorded but the watch still reported no miles after being uploaded. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here it is:

The last time I wrote about the watch I was praising the accuracy and consistency of the watch as a distance tracker. In addition, the use of the goals provided that extra motivation to get out there and execute the daily workout.

Today, I was disappointed. Once again I’m tracking down a distance, time and frequency goal. In addition to my reliable watch, I had a real running partner as well, and had a great workout. When syncing the watch to the computer, I got the login screen that I got the first time plugged my watch in. After attempting to sync three times, I unplugged the watch and looked at the watch history (this is very easy, just two button presses) and sure enough, the watch says “No Runs Yet.”

The watch has gone back to factory settings and today’s run is lost. I’ll keep you up to date, but if this happens again, the watch is going back to the store .

Another good training week with the Nike+ GPS watch. The screen, simple controls and accuracy of the GPS remain to be the strength of this watch.

This week I got to really feel the pressure of the Goals feature of the Nike+ website. It was the final week for my 2 Nike+ Goals. One was distance and one was for speed.

I had reached the speed goal earlier in the week and I was congratulated when I synced the watch by and elite athlete, that was nice . The distance goal, on the other hand, seemed out of reach. The distance goal was in my head from preparation and well into my long run this morning. As the run progressed the idea of one more mile for the goal motivated me. After doing this mental exercise 3 times the goal was met and the run was that much more fulfilling.

This type of motivation, like a good running partner, was amazing. Tomorrow new goals will be set, and I look forward to hearing the next athlete sing my praises for achieving those goals.

Sorry I missed last week. There was a race on Sunday that ended at a brewery, and well, you can connect the dots (the Boilermaker is a great race if you can ever get out to Utica for it).

The watch performed like a champ at the race and for all training runs before and since the race, but the lack of heart rate zone “alerts” is a little bit of a downer. It was nice when when my watch would tell me where I was with respect to hear rate. The screen on the Nike+ GPS watch is great for reading it, but having the ability to set and be notified of your changing heart rate zones is a very nice feature.

The Nike+ site does a nice job of making you aware of heart rate, and even the zones to an extent so I’m surprised this was not a feature of the watch. I would guess this could be added as a software update at a later date, so I think I might start lobbying.

Have a great week all.

Having this watch for a second week, I have come to appreciate the simplicity of this device as a distance tool and run recorder. I wear the watch as a timepiece as well which brings some comments from both runners and non-runners alike.

Life got in the way of many of my runs over the week, but that’s just life . Today I went on my first run in a new place, and the watch performed like a champ. I had no worries about going to long and missing breakfast with my wife, heart rate was nails and another run was recorded.

This run was a quite nice up and back on the Saratoga Lake. It was a beautiful scene with a light mist above  the water and perfect running temperature. I I’m sorry there’s no picture, my cell phone was dead this morning, but please take my word for it.

The one disappointing aspect of the logging of the runs is that Nike+ no longer syncs with the Nike Training Log. I have been using the Nike Training Log site to record my runs since I started running. I use this log for 2 reasons: 1. My running partner told me I needed to log my runs and 2: the Nike Training Log provides a place to record many aspects of your run and as an early adopter of the Nike+ system years ago, after some writing into the Nike+ forums, there was automatic integration of your Nike+ data into your Nike Training Log. I have ~5years of running data in the Nike+ Training Log, and it’s fun and or educational to refer back to certain moments in time  for training purposes. We will see how this plays out, I hope to get the integration to the Training Log again, for now I am still doing manual entries (I’m back on the forums again , we’ll see what happens).

Until next week.

I’ll get a more granular in posts to come, but the general outlook for the Nike+ SportWatch GPS is very good. So far it has delivered on what it is billed as and I would say a great value for a recreational+ runner.

I had 2 issues this week on my runs, but they were user errors:

1. My first run was intended to use all sensors(GPS, Heart Monitor and Pod). I did not wait for the watch to say ready and instead hit the “Quick Start” option thinking they would all sync. The manual specifically says if you use Quick Start, only the pod will be used on your run.

2. Ran out of battery. Again the manual specifically says good for about 4 runs. Not being used to having a GPS watch I did not even think about charging it. This will not happen again .

Beside those to hiccups, it’s nice to have a watch again and in this case, a watch with a very easy to read and navigate screen. It’s been about 2 years since I’ve run with a timing device. It’s even better to have a heart rate monitor back. Heart rate is my second favorite running partner (second to a human). It is really great to have GPS, I can now do up and backs in completely unknown areas and not worry about how far I’m going out. An added bonus is the Pod, the original Nike+ “pedometer” pod that goes in your shoe to count steps, distance and pace. It calibrates on all your runs to your GPS and if the GPS drops in the middle of a run because of tree or building cover, the pod picks up and continues marking distance, nice feature.

If you want to know something specific about the device, please comment, and I’ll try to address it.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve had the opportunity to use the latest Microsoft Office Live, and I like it a lot.

Through the years Microsoft has been putting out online tools that have been helpful. Features ranging from file collaboration , online / sharing of storage for any of your digital media, but now the online office suite is available. I guess we knew it was an inevitable step, and finally the wait is over. That’s right Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote are all available online and they are phenomenal.

The familiar interface and features you come to expect in the office suite are right there online and free. As the year goes on I’m interested to see if there will be any hype around this new toolset. Will it challenge Google Docs, how will it differentiate itself from other online collaboration / document repository and editing platforms, and will it be pushed or promoted by Microsoft as an alternative to the Desktop Office Suite, or will it continue to be an online tool to work with your Office Docs?

Time will tell, and we’ll be watching.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any musings on the DROID and for that I am sorry.

With the 2.2.1 OTA Android update release by Verizon, I have high hopes for the updates they have done with the Native Exchange Client and will once again “turn off” Touchdown and evaluate the effectiveness of the update.

I can say that the setup proved to be less painless than any previous version. Previously with Exchange 2010, the only way I could get my account registered was by turning on WIFI and then registering. On the latest rev, a 3g setup, in sub-par coverage, was all that was needed to get the account registered and running. As for the delivery of mail, right now it is solid. With 2 days of 2.2.1 under the DROID’s belt, I’m getting mail consistently and on time, no more 1-5hr delays (the first update provided a short amount of success as well, so I won’t count my chickens yet).

I will get back to you all in a week and let you know if I’m still using the native client or have gone back to The always solid Touchdown App.

After manual upgrading to 2.2, mail server migrations and beta software, there are too many variables to trouble shoot my Droid. So here’s an oldy but goody that you might want to check out if there are just too many variables, the good ole fashion hard reset (Warning, you will lose all your data):

1. Turn the Droid off. If it won’t turn off, take the battery out then place it back in.

2. Open the keyboard and press the X key while pressing and holding Power. The device will power on. Keep holding the buttons down until a white triangle with a yellow exclamation point appears.

3. Press the Camera and Volume Up buttons at the same time to get to the menu. Timing on the button pressing is key; you may need to do this many times before you get it, so keep trying until it comes up J.

4. Use the direction pad to the right of the keyboard to select the Format option.