Walker Tracker Blog

We added a few new features this weekend:

Competitions administration - for fine-tuning your walking competitions.

Group autolinking - add a pound sign in front of your group sign, ie #portlanders - similar to how you refer to usernames via the @username syntax. These two bits were borrowed from Twitter - great stuff.

Details in the forum

 

Also, we’ve added a new type of competition - Goal Challenge on Step averages. 

There are essentially two main types of competitions:

Goal challenges challenge everyone to strive for a certain goal - such as walking 100,000 steps in a week, or keeping an average above 8,000 for the month. Everyone who meets this goal ‘wins’.

Normal competitions have only one winner, whether it’s a group or an individual.

Details are here

Cheers,

Ben

 

 

We’re building a robust administration area for our private level administrators. I thought I’d share a few screenshots. The administrative interface has a fairly bare-bones look to it currently, but I’m excited about how far it’s come along and how powerful it is already.

As always, if you or your organization is interested in a private level - let’s talk!

(click on any picture to enlarge it)

 

Walker stevemac entered in the 2 Billionth Step yesterday (el Cinco de Mayo!) on Walker Tracker.

As a thank you, stevemac received a Lifetime Pro membership to Walker Tracker. When I congratulated him, he said:

“I’m part of a Project Team that is participating in a step challenge.  Our group is called CNRL EIT and we have multiple teams and monthly prizes at our team meetings.  We started as a group in February.

It’s been a fantastic health initiative for our team and a lot of competitive fun.  I’ve never seen everyone here walk so much.  Seems most of us are doing “walking” meetings now.”

Congrats on all that walking, everyone!

Backstory: Wordpress (the blogging engine this site uses) had a vulnerability in it that allowed the Walker Tracker blog (not our website, just the blog) to be hacked on April 29th. Google was kind enough to send us notification about this, for which I’m thankful. Along with that notification, they shut off all traffic to the blog and notified stopbadware.org, so that many browser’s internal mechanisms won’t let you surf to the blog either.

All this = Good!

Finding out that we were showing any kind of link weirdness/badware appalled me - I fixed the vulnerabilities and upgraded to a more secure version of Wordpress within an hour of the notification. This is actually the second time this has happened this year - an unfortunate mess for wordpress.org which, because of its popularity, is increasingly the target of attacks.

However, trying to get unlisted from Google’s ‘badware sites’ categorization is excruciatingly difficult. 8 days later, I’m still waiting for any kind of response. I can’t even surf to this blog in half the browsers I use.

We use Google and we’re a paying customer (Adwords and Adsense) and have a 2 and a half year history with them. We use Google’s webmaster tools and Google Analytics. They have our Tax ID #, credit card numbers, bank account numbers. We use Google Apps for email. Google can probably read out minds.

So why is it so hard for them to know that we’re not intentionally malicious? Why shut down a site for 8 days (and counting), punishing us for a vulnerability in an external provider’s piece of software, which we corrected within an hour of notification?

This seems like too much control.

I want to take this opportunity to tell everyone that as a web company, we know it takes a lot of work to earn your trust, and we’re going to do every last bit of that work to do so. We will never participate knowingly in anything close to what gets listed as a badware site.

There. I’ve gotten that off my chest. Back to walking!  

There are a bunch of new features to announce:

• Quick Post  (for Pro users)

See this on your Add Steps page. Clicking the link will bring up a window that will allow you to add 7-20 days of steps/blog entries in about a tenth of the time it took before. No need to hit submit, changes are saved automagically.

  Thanks go to @Tony for the idea!

• New Competition Type: Goal Challenge

More of a challenge than a competition: This allows you to create a community goal. ie: Everyone walk 25,000 steps over 5 days. Everyone who does wins.

  Thanks go to @Ms*Bindy for the idea!

• Competition Limitations

Want to create an Open Competition that only Walkers with step averages between 6,000 and 8,000 can join? It’s now possible with competition limitations. When you create a competition, select Public & Open Competition  to see this option.

  Thanks go to @Heikeakg for the idea!

• More

Competition initiators can now delete their own competitions Participants can now leave a competition if they no longer wish to take part On your profile page, the highest/lowest scores are now linked to those actual entries. Nifty. Bug fixes

More to come soon!

Have a great weekend, Walker Tracker

Walker Tracker has teamed up with getDowntown, a program of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, to create a private walking community on Walker Tracker for Ann Arbor, Michigan residents. The private level will be used to celebrate and promote Curb Your Car Month! We’re overjoyed to be part of such a great program. 

Considering that Prevention Magazine just voted Ann Arbor the 3rd most walkable city in the US this certainly seems like a perfect fit.  

The Ann Arbor development community is giving away 30 free pedometers, first come first serve, so stop by the getDowntown Blog to learn more about the Ann Arbor/ Walker Tracker contest.

note: If you’re an Ann Arbor resident and you’re already on Walker Tracker drop us a line for your options.

Interested in private levels for your organization or community? Let us know.

Prevention magazine voted Ann Arbor, MI the third best walking city in the US.

Read about it on Ann Arbor’s getDowntown Blog

Not surprising at all, considering the number of walkers we have who hail from Ann Arbor.

Congratulations Ann Arbor!

The magazine rates a city based on “more residents walking to work and more parks per square mile“

The top ten cities:

1. Cambridge, MA
2. New York City
3. Ann Arbor, MI
4. Chicago, IL
5. Washington, D.C.
6. San Francisco, CA
7. Honolulu, HI
8. Trenton, NJ
9. Boston, MA
10. Cincinnati, OH

In defense of Portland, OR - my city - we’re bike crazy

There’s a great article in BBC Technology today about a prototype gadget that allows you to generate electricity while you walk.

Knee dynamo taps ‘people power’

One minute of walking will power a cell phone for 30 minutes - I find that incredible.

I love the idea of ‘energy harvesting’, and I especially like the idea of being extra motivated to walk knowing that I would be recycling a lot of that energy into a battery source that could be plugged into other things. Can we go carbon free via walking?

“We’re pretty effective batteries,” Dr Donelan told BBC News. “In our fat we store the equivalent of about a 1,000kg battery.”

Awesome.

It’s resolution time and exercise and weight loss are the most universal and popular resolutions.

A few of my resolutions are to exercise more, read and write more, and get out of the city (camp, hike, etc) more often.

However a few of these resolutions sound suspiciously similar to the ones I made last year. — so how do you get a resolution to stick?

The New York Times attempts to answer that question here:

Will Your Resolutions Last to February?

The general idea is to make small, very specific resolutions. Don’t resolve to ‘get in shape’, resolve to keep a specific step average every month, to walk your dog twice per week, etc.

Best of luck to all of you, see you in 2008!

-Ben

The New York Times has a post on a new study in Italy that determined that regular walkers had a 27% lower chance of developing dementia.

What’s important about the study is that it again shows exercise doesn’t have to be excruciating to reap the benefits. “It’s important to note that an easy-to-perform moderate activity like walking provided the same cognitive benefits as other, more demanding activities,” said study author Dr. Giovanni Ravaglia of University Hospital S. Orsola Malpighi, in Bologna, Italy.

Go brain go!

Link: Walking May Lower Dementia Risk

I whipped up a quick example of using the Walker Tracker API together with the Google Charts API to draw a nifty looking chart.

The Google Charts API, while a teensy bit limited, is very cool. You can probably expect to see a little more of it here.

(not saying my step counts are awesome… unfortunately)

Have a look at the Walker Tracker API Example

Help your friends and family get a jump-start on resolutions this year by equipping them with a Walker Tracker Pro subscription and a whiz-bang pedometer.  Give Walker Tracker Pro as a Gift.You have three delivery methods:

1. Print out our fancy PDF card, follow the folding instructions, sign, deliver!
2. Instruct us to send the gift email at a precise hour and day
3. Commit the activation code to memory. Whisper it in their ear. 

 New! Want to reward your walking partners for their diligence? You can now Sponsor another walker. Go to their profile page. At the bottom of their stats will be a link to sponsor that walker. Have a great holiday,Ben 

It’s good to talk long walks - and some pedometers count those steps specially. A recent U of Michigan study suggests (as much as any study under controlled conditions suggests the truth, which may be different for you) that counting every step makes you happier than only counting the aerobic steps. The key quote:

In other words, a lifestyle group participant would have her steps counted whether she went for a half-hour walk or just walked outside to get the mail, while the structured group would only have the half-hour walk counted. But in both groups, the increase in the daily totals came from activities like half-hour walks, not by taking more short trips to the mailbox, to and from the car, or visiting a co-worker down the hall.

Reference: “A randomized trial comparing structures and lifestyle goals in an internet-mediated walking program for people with type 2 diabetes,” International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 4:59 (Nov. 16, 2007). www.ijbnpa.org/content/4/1/59 as cited in a UMHS press release Pedometers motivate people with diabetes to walk more.

(as noted by Edward Vielmetti)

Technorati Tags: walking, walk, walkertracker, diabetes, study, pedometer, medicine, development

From Reuters:

People who use a pedometer to measure how far they walk lose more weight, exercise more and have lower blood pressure than those who do not, researchers said on Tuesday.

But then, we already knew that.

View the article: It pays to count - pedometer study finds

All Summer and into the Fall I’ve been working at adding a number of new features to Walker Tracker. I’m very happy to announce that I’ve now released these into the wild.

There are many, many additions and changes to this release. I’ve listed all of the changes here.

Competitions

The headliner is Competitions. You can now lay down the step gauntlet against any other walker on the site, and even challenge those who have yet to join. Think you walk like a hero? Then challenge one! Odysseus, Athena and Icarus have all been recruited to provide walkers with mythological competition. I’ve included a couple of screenshots from the competition section below. I think this should be very fun.

Walker Tracker Pro

The second major change is there’s now a Walker Tracker Pro upgrade (you’ll need to be logged in). Upgrading to Walker Tracker Pro will unlock a few extra features and help support development (thanks!).

The features we’re starting off with are:

• See your daily rank
• Chart your aerobic steps
• Receive priority email support
• Never see ads

I’ve got many more pro features up my sleeve that I’m excited to implement over the coming months. Also, a huge thanks to those who have already upgraded. Oh, how much is it? You choose! I lifted the idea for variable pricing off of the awesome LibraryThing.

Let me know how you like the new stuff.

Thanks,

Ben

Create a competition:

From my friend Noah Magram on a subject that I think is very relevant to walkers in Oregon:

Today is the last day to vote on Measure 49! Please vote yes and save Oregon from massive sprawl. A defeat of Measure 49 is not something that can be undone! Once the pavement goes in, the farmland never comes back. Hood river valley is set to be one of the hardest hit. Want more condos and strip malls in covering some of the most beautiful farmland in the country? Then don’t vote.

If you didn’t get a ballot, or have moved, you can still get one. All it takes is a quick trip to the Multnomah Country Elections office on 11th and Morrison - they’re open until 8pm tonight. I went with a friend yesterday and we were in and out in under 10 minutes!

This is critical to Oregon’s future. Please vote and bring a friend!

Agreed!

We crossed a billion steps collectively in the last few days - Congratulations to all!

That is really a lot of steps you’ve all walked. When I hear the word Billion I still think of Carl Sagan’s Billyuns and Billyuns of stars, and so the obvious correlation here is that you’re all rock stars.

Nice job and keep walking.

Hooray! The Willamette Week has chosen Walker Tracker for its annual Best of Portland issue.

Have a look at what they say (you’ll need to scroll to the bottom).

The API for Walker Tracker has been baked. Have a look at the API documentation, or head on over to the Walker Tracker API Google Group. (What’s an API?)

Right now the API is read only — which means you won’t be able to add new step counts to it, etc. That will come next when we work through authentication. However, in the meantimequite a lot of data is available.

Enjoy. Let us know if you use it somewhere, we’d love to take a look.

Walker Tracker has grown since I started it on a lark a year and a half ago as a little project with which to goad my family members and friends into walking more. My friend David and I were the only ones on the site for a while. There are over two thousand members from all over the planet now, all who found their way here with very little guidance from me. Excepting a few adwords here and there, I’ve done very little to promote the site, but during this growth of my pet project, I’ve become steadily aware that there just might be something else to this.

For this reason I’ve asked two long term Walker Tracker members, bkerr (avg: 7,290) and edwardvielmetti (avg: 9,717) to join me in helping expand Walker Tracker in a meaningful way. They belong to the Ann Arbor, Michigan contingent (you’ll notice there are quite a few Ann Arborites on the site), and I’m very excited to have them help move the site forward. You can read more about them on their blogs (Ed / Brian)

Two weekends ago I flew back to Michigan and spent an intensive weekend with them. I drank coffee in half a dozen cafes, experienced rain that no one in a hollywood effects studio would ever simulate for fear of it seeming excessive and unrealistic, and was made a plastic pancake by Ed’s two year old. I left feeling very excited about the direction here. We have a lot of great plans for Walker Tracker, as a community and as a potential business.

So here’s a great thank you to those of you who have stuck around. There’s a few more of us here now making sure that the lights stay on and tinkering away on the secret projects in the basement.

Oh, and hey, we have a blog!