Week in Review–July 17th, 2017

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:

Sunday: Week in Review–July 9th, 2017
Monday: Paris Blog: A Trip to A French Costco- Wine tasting, caviar, and so much fromage!
Tuesday: Amazon Prime Day Deals Today in Sports Tech
Wednesday: Tour de France Behind the Scenes: How Dimension Data Rider Live Tracking Works

Sports Tech Deals This Week:

While it was crazy busy for Amazon Prime day, and most deals have disappeared, there are a few holdovers from prime day that I’ve added below. I don’t know how long those will stay, they might disappear in like 5 minutes or 5 weeks.  No idea.

Garmin Fenix 3 Sapphire GPS Watch with leather band: Normally $599, now $399

Garmin Forerunner 630 with HR strap: Normally $449, now $340

Polar Red M400 GPS watch: Normally $169, now $104. Solid deal.

Not a huge list, but certainly better than no list!

Of note below is that the Garmin FR735XT deal/price drop finally started.  Given the ‘successor’ of that came out back in April, this is more of a logical price adjustment:

There are no deals currently.

Also of note is that ELEMNT $80 rebate for the larger unit.  Helps to equalize the price compared to the smaller BOLT.  Both contain the same software, though the larger unit has an additional LED stripe.

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) Airdog ADII announced on Kickstarter: This latest version of the sports-tracking focused Airdog just launched.  You’ll remember my in-depth review of the V1 version here.  And you’ll be able to find a First Look post of the ADII here on the site on Wednesday. In the meantime, the below photo from testing:

2) The decline of USAT in events?  After Life Time triathlon decided to forgo the USAT requirement, many are asking why day-passes need to be as high as they are…among other things.  Of course, USAT supports more than just your individual race, but also pro athletes too.  But there needs to be some balance for trying to get new people into the sport.

3) The World’s Largest Super Soaker: Seriously, how awesome is this?  It shoots water at 272MPH!!! I like how this former NASA engineer wrote in the description of the video (where they share the CAD files), that if you make it and kill yourself, he’s not coming to your funeral.

4) Another company sues Fitbit: It’s the popular thing to do these days.

5) Some more GoPro Fusion sample footage: I always like looking at sample footage from in-progress units.  This looks pretty darn good from a stitching standpoint, as well as the lighting portions too.  But do take this with a grain of salt, my suspicion is that the GoPro team edited it, and likely did some post-production work like they did on their announcement teaser video (since GoPro staff are seen holding the camera).  Nothing inherently wrong with that at all in a video like this that’s meant really more for show-casing the team than GoPro, but just beware your mileage will likely vary when it comes to stitching.

6) Wanna make a wind tunnel out of your garage? There’s a solution on the way for that.  Regrettably, I lack a garage.  Though, I do at least have a large cooking studio.

7) You can count all 3,000 of your dollars that I won’t be reviewing this Android Wear Smartwatch: Seriously, who on earth spends that much money on something that in 18-24 months will be close to useless?

8) Apple extends 1st gen watch warranty to 3 years: That’s a nice touch. It’ll be interesting to see what Apple does in this area over the next few years (with other watches), and whether or not companies like Garmin or Fitbit (for higher end units) might match it.  In Europe, these companies are held to a 2-year minimum warranty, but in the US it’s only a year.

9) GoPro water bottle mount: While I’m not a huge fan of most Indiegogo projects, this seems incredibly low-risk and incredibly cheap.  Plus, they plan to ship next month.  At worst, I’m out about 2-3 Starbucks drinks worth of cash.

Stay tuned!

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.

{Best I can tell, there were actually no sports tech firmware updates in the last 7 days}

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Thanks for reading!