A week or two I finally broke down and purchased a Nike+ sensor for my second generation iPod Nano. For those of you not familiar with this product, it's basically a super-fancy pedometer you attach to your shoe that communicates with your iPod wirelessly via a small attachment plugged into the bottom of the iPod (it only works with the Nano.) In terms of base execution, it's fantastic -- it absolutely performs as advertised, records distance and pace, and your iPod can even tell you during a run how far and fast you've gone. After you run, your data is automatically uploaded to the Nike+ website, which keeps track of your training and can even track your exercise pattern versus long-term goals. The quality of the fundamental project, however, make's Nike's approach to the web site extremely fustrating. It's a totally closed system (you can't even get an RSS feed of your run data, nor can anyone make a screen-scraper because it's entirely done in flash) and it's totally lacking in what we'd expect from any "Web 2.0" era site (think Flickr, Youtube, etc.) There are some community features, but they're weak and ad-hoc, allowing you to manually create "challenges" and add users to them. Why can't I simply connect with other people I know who are using this, and stay connected, a-la Flickr or MySpace? Or why can't Nike at least provide enough of an API (like Flickr, Amazon, or any other of a million of immensely popular sites) so that the legions of programmers out there can think up even better things, that will drive sales, etc.? Surely Apple understands this dynamic, so I can only assume that this traces back to Nike having a relatively old-school (Web "1.0") attitude around marketing, and around allowing end customers to use their data as they please and leverage relationships online. That said, anyone out there using this, and want to join a friendly challenge group? Let me know. (BTW, I'm not using the Nike+ shoes; I purchased the Marware Sensor+, which lets me use the system with my regular running shoes. It doesn't seem to affect accuracy to any material degree.)
« October 2006 | Main | December 2006 »
Nike+... fantastic, yet so 2002
A week or two I finally broke down and purchased a Nike+ sensor for my second generation iPod Nano. For those of you not familiar with this product, it's basically a super-fancy pedometer you attach to your shoe that communicates with your iPod wirelessly via a small attachment plugged into the bottom of the iPod (it only works with the Nano.) In terms of base execution, it's fantastic -- it absolutely performs as advertised, records distance and pace, and your iPod can even tell you during a run how far and fast you've gone. After you run, your data is automatically uploaded to the Nike+ website, which keeps track of your training and can even track your exercise pattern versus long-term goals. The quality of the fundamental project, however, make's Nike's approach to the web site extremely fustrating. It's a totally closed system (you can't even get an RSS feed of your run data, nor can anyone make a screen-scraper because it's entirely done in flash) and it's totally lacking in what we'd expect from any "Web 2.0" era site (think Flickr, Youtube, etc.) There are some community features, but they're weak and ad-hoc, allowing you to manually create "challenges" and add users to them. Why can't I simply connect with other people I know who are using this, and stay connected, a-la Flickr or MySpace? Or why can't Nike at least provide enough of an API (like Flickr, Amazon, or any other of a million of immensely popular sites) so that the legions of programmers out there can think up even better things, that will drive sales, etc.? Surely Apple understands this dynamic, so I can only assume that this traces back to Nike having a relatively old-school (Web "1.0") attitude around marketing, and around allowing end customers to use their data as they please and leverage relationships online. That said, anyone out there using this, and want to join a friendly challenge group? Let me know. (BTW, I'm not using the Nike+ shoes; I purchased the Marware Sensor+, which lets me use the system with my regular running shoes. It doesn't seem to affect accuracy to any material degree.)
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links for 2006-11-21
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"Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun. Put bluntly, Sony has failed
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