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Week in Review–June 25th, 2017

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The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered what to do with all of the coolness that people write, and while I share a lot of it on Twitter and Facebook, this is a better forum for sending it on to y’all. Most times these different streams don’t overlap, so be on the lookout at all these places for good stuff!

So with that, let’s get into the action!

DCRainmaker.com posts in the past week:

Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this past week:

Monday: 5 Random Things I Did This Weekend in the Netherlands
Tuesday: Last Week in Review–June 20th, 2017

Ok, a bit slower week.  Was trying to concurrently write three in-depth reviews, and got about 80% the way down on all three…I suck at prioritization.

YouTube Videos I Published!

Here’s some YouTube goodness that I published this past week, don’t forget to subscribe!

Ok, this is probably one of the more complex videos I’ve ever put together.  While it may seem relatively simple – there are so many cameras/screen recording devices, audio recordings, and everything else to make it seem semi-cohesive.  Yikes!

Stuff that I found interesting around the interwebs:

Here’s a not-so-small smattering of all the random things that I stumbled on while doing my civic duty to find the end of the Internet.

1) Cyclist triggers emergency stop on bus, after getting buzzed: Well then, I’ve seen a lot of YouTube bike vs vehicle videos – but never quite expected that. (via Race Radio)

2) Ironman 70.3 Tire Deflator apologizes: Gotta wonder how many other things she’s cheated/etc on over the years.

3) A bike lock that disables bike when using phone: As noted in the article, given how many apps these days are legit useful while cycling (i.e. head unit type apps), this seems like it’s a solution in search of a problem.

4) How Elite makes cycling water bottles: I’d seen a chunk of this during a tour to Elite’s HQ about this time last year, but Titanium Geek does a good job at rounding it all up into a nifty post.  Fun stuff.

5) Wearables stickers that make you and astronauts awesome? Not exactly.  Love this take-down of BS science claims for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop product.  Side note: Who the heck names their product Goop? (via Sarah Fit)

6) Veloviewer adds way to visualize how much you explore via Strava: As always, Veloviewer keeps doing cool shit. As you might remember, it’s all about doing cool shit.  Here’s mine for Paris:

image

7) UCI to shrink pro cycling team sizes in 2018: The move should make for a more lively WorldTour circuit. Plus a handful of other changes as well.

8) Withings finally gets full rebranded Nokia, craps all over itself: The response was swift and ugly – people are pissed about how poorly the new apps work.  And by ‘poorly’, I mean doesn’t work at all.  Functionality that’s worked fine for the better part of a decade has stopped working, and other features have been cut.  Withings released another app update yesterday, with the descriptions basically saying ‘Making core functions actually work’.  Unfortunately I’m traveling this week, so I can’t test everything out for myself till I get back (since it’s scale focused).  But c’mon Withings – you’ve been my go-to scale recommendation for years, you’re better than this fiasco.

Sports Technology Software/Firmware Updates This Week:

Each week I quickly highlight some of the new firmware, app, software and website service updates that I see go out. If you’re a sports technology company and release an update – shoot me a quick note (just one-liners are perfect, or Tweet it at me is even better) and I’ll make mention of it here. If I don’t know about it, I won’t be able to post about it. Sound good?  Oh – and if you want to get a head start on things, this page is a great resource for watching Garmin firmware updates.

Garmin Edge 1000 Firmware Update: Fixes an issue for people in Singapore.

Garmin Fenix 5/5S/5X/Chronos BETA firmware update: Includes a pretty cool new treadmill calibration mode to get more accurate treadmill data.  And a crapton more things.

Garmin VIRB 360 firmware update: Some minor bug fixes.

Garmin Varia Vision firmware update: Two bug fixes.

Thanks for reading!

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18 Comments

  1. Paul S.

    The one thing I like about the Nokia app is that the UI for the blood pressure cuff is a little bit better. They seem to have separated off readings from the Thermo entirely into the Thermo app. And activities from Runkeeper no longer show up; I guess that means I can finally drop Runkeeper. The only reason I used it was to get cycling into my Withings feed.

  2. Heberto

    I hope Nokia takes into considerations changing back the design of the UI of the app and website. I have a watch withings Steel and I’m very happy with it and I was very happy with the app and website. But NOKIA arrives and destroyed the UI and I’m stuck with a horrendous app and health website!!! I already gave them a 1 star in the android store and send 2 emails asking to revert or change the current app and website.

    The withings UI design/display of the data was logical and gave you a nice overview of your progress or lack of progress. The new Nokia design is more simple but super ugly and the white background hurt the eyes, all the data has the same color, so your sleep/step tracks/activities etc… they all look the same! when before you had a color scheme for each data.

    Anyway, the worst is the data display, it is horrendous, ugly as hell and useless the way they display it now.

    I didn’t have problems from the first update with the app working, everything is working fine, but the new UI is a piece of crap!

    • Adam

      Totally agree.

      I don’t usually moan about changes, but the new Nokia Health Web UI is such a massive step backwards.

      The Dashboard has been stripped of all information except this ridiculous “Journal” that just shows me a new tiny chart every day of my latest 6 weigh-ins; when you try to view your historical weight data, the charts are so stretched out and non-customisable that it makes it difficult to discern anything useful; the data in the List View of measurements has been stripped back from 2 decimal points to 1; and finally the none of the fonts display properly in Chrome!

      Extremely disappointing. The only saving grace is that it’s still pushing my data to TrainingPeaks, where you can actually use a decent interface.

    • Heberto

      Yes I agree with you so much and much better explained than me. I hope Nokia fix things sooner than later.

    • Paul

      Agree completely. What is even more annoying is that on FB Nokia are replying to critical comments with patronising – “We know change is difficult for some people” and “We hope you learn to love the new app as much as we do” type comments.

  3. MAGNUS

    The treadmill calibration feature sounds interesting.

    Any idea if this is also coming to the 935? Also, how does this work when using a footpod?

    • Graham R

      I always wondered why watches didn’t have this as an option when finishing a treadmill run.

      Im 99% sure (its been a while) but my TomTom multisport used to do this.

      It “shouldn’t” be that hard (but clearly is behind the scenes)

  4. Paul

    Ok. That seals it. Was on the fence but I guess I’m going with the Garmin scale after all.

  5. Occamsrazor

    The Nokia app is a mess. Putting aside the various design aspects which are a topic of their own, the new app completely broke my Apple Health integration. When I contacted their support they made me go through a series of steps such as removing the app and reinstalling etc, which didn’t fix the problem but erased all the weight history in Apple Health going back months. Since then they have “escalated” my query but provided no fix. The data is still there in the Nokia app so I hope one day to get it back into Apple Health. Then they release version 3.0.2 which claimed to fix the Apple Health syncing. Great…. except it doesn’t at all. At this stage all I want is to reinstall the old Withings app, but I can’t even do that because Nokia “took over” that app in the appstore rather than creating a new one. Was really hoping Nokia taking it over would lead to improvements and new features but it’s been the exact opposite.

  6. Patrick Utrecht

    For what it’s worth, the bike lock is designed to prevent people (mainly younger people) that pay more attention to their whatsapp and other stuff on the mobile phone than they do to their surroundings / traffic. In the Netherlands it’s becoming an increasingly bigger problem. Though it’s not useful for sport app users. Nor do I think that it is a solid solution, but at least it’s a start.

  7. Juro

    The Withings/Nokia situation is a good illustration of the dark side on today’s dependency on cloud (or provider-hosted) data. In the old world when I bought my first GPS watch I downloaded all data from the watch locally and processed it in any software I wanted (or stored locally).

    Today I can still do that with runs/rides…. but not with daily activity, calorie, sleep, resting HR, weight and other data. If anything happens to Garmin (less likely) or Fitbit (more likely) my investment into hardware can become crippled in an instant.

  8. John

    Orange Goop is my favorite waterless hand cleaner, it does a wonderful job on bike grease. I always keep the container in the garage. As an added bonus, it’s not affiliated in any way with Gwyneth Paltrow 🙂

  9. Ray,
    On the updates sides, Lezyne rolled out bunch of new features for the enhanced super GPS
    among which the rotating track for navigation which actually makes it usable !

    link to lezyne.com

    Also different bike profiles.

  10. Mr T

    Now that cyclist have taken it upon themselves to be judge and jury who is watching them when they ride recklessly, fail to obey traffic signals, and generally act like spoiled jerks, etc.

  11. Eldiablojoe

    “Goop.” (Guh-oop). Verb. Pronounced with a soft “G.”

    Definition – An ancient guttural Latin word for “Selling useless crap at inflated prices and pretending it actually does something quantifiable that it does not, and absolving itself of all liability for people actually buying or using said aforementioned crap.”