Walker Tracker Blog

We do a lot of data visualization here on Walker Tracker, not the least of which is using maps to visualize data (oops! Not yet announced!). For this reason, I really love the work of David McCandless on informationisbeautiful.net. He takes huge amounts of data and makes it visually stunning, and very easy to, for lack of a better word, grok.

His latest work – “Snake Oil? Scientific Evidence for Health Supplements” is relevant to anyone who ponders whether to take a Vitamin C for their next cold (spoiler: maybe), take Folic Acid if you’re pregnant (spoiler: Yes!), or Vitamin E for your heart (spoiler: might be best to try something else).

Here’s the image version

The interactive version allows you to isolate them by cause

As my friend Dr. David Naimon pointed out, not all supplements are evenly studied. The chart might be a little deceiving as some of the items low on the list may have also received inadequate testing.

Apparently January 31st is National Backward Day.

Of course, we expect all of you to:

1) Walk backwards

2) Start counting from 10,000 steps and end at zero.

Best of luck!

We’re very excited to be announcing new pricing plans for Walker Tracker custom walking programs.

The new pricing should allow a company or organization to have a set cost for their walking program, and not worry about how many new members they have signing up. Take a look at our pricing plans here. As always, these come with a 30-day free trial and take about 3 minutes to get up and running on.

All of our front (logged-out) pages have undergone a redesign (Yay!) featuring a greened-out pair of Keen shoes in the banner, and there’s a nifty new upload-and-crop widget for uploading the top banner on your walking program (in admin -> edit layout), or for your profile pictures (in preferences).

Here’s the survey we’re going to post in our newsletter that goes out tomorrow.

Who is using an iPod Nano pedometer? How accurate is it? Are you using Nike+? Should we find a way to automagically pull in the data?

iPod Nano Pedometer Survey >

Feel free to get a jump on the responses! The responses are open – so you’ll be able to see the results (of multiple-choice questions, not the text fields)

I’m very excited to introduce:

text-message integration!

A new Pro feature at Walker Tracker.

There are plenty of times where you just want to text your steps in and call it good.

Now you can – and you can also check up on your friends, get your stats and add a step blog.

Getting started couldn’t be easier, just send your username:password to

our number: 425-522-2960:

Once you do that – your phone is registered and we’ll remember you next time.

Want to add steps – just text us the number: 9,232

Want to send in a date from the past, send us the number plus a date: 9232 Oct15

Or a blog post?

9232 Oct15 Rained in the morning, but I braved the weather and now I’m on top of Mt. Tabor

Here’s @Athena comparing her stats to @Odysseus

Right now this number works best in the U.S. or Canada. (please check with your network carrier for text-messaging fees — we don’t charge for individual texts, but they might)

Check out our page on Mobile Phone Integration for solutions for walkers outside of N. America.

Yesterday I posted about walking some really fun stairs.

It seems appropriate to follow that up with an incredibly scary walk.

Warning: This video is vertigo-inducing.

More information on this walkway, built in 1905 in Spain, is here: Caminito del Rey

Walker @Destinye pointed us to this great video:

Sweet. I want stairs like that in my house.

Hi, I’m David and I’m working on Walker Tracker’s corporate walking programs initiative. We’re fans of the Global Corporate Challenge (http://www.gettheworldmoving.com/). It’s ending this week, and so what do you do the rest of the year?

At Walker Tracker, we welcome any company teams that want to continue their walking program during the “offseason”.   After touring the world with the GCC2009, now would be a great time to recruit team members for next year’s event by setting up some friendy challenges in Walker Tracker.  Please let us know if you’ve recently completed the GCC – we’re anxious to hear about your experiences.

We did a pretty big update to the Walker Tracker code base last night. So, what’s new?

A lot of what was changed isn’t visible. A ton of small bugs were fixed, code was consolidated and refactored and the groundwork was laid for new, cool stuff down the road.

That said, you should notice a few things, here’s a partial list:

PREFERENCES

– you can now add your real name on the first preferences pane and it will show up in your profile.

POINTS

– Points went out of beta!

– You now receive a fraction of a Giveaway point each time you update. This is somewhat of a big deal, and should result in a far more liquid economy, to use economics-speak.

– You can no longer give your Giveaway points to yourself. This was a hard decision to make, but in the end I think it’ll have a positive difference.

– For administrators, there’s now a Points pane under statistics where you can award Giveaway points or regular points to each user, as well as see who has passed a level recently.

PHOTOS

– All ~32,000 step blog photos were deleted in the process of updating the code during one accidental, anxiety-inducing miscalculation. This was not a planned feature! Fortunately, we keep regular backups around here and all but about 140 were recovered. Those whose photos weren’t recovered have been notified and apologized to. Again, sorry.

– Photos are now stored offsite at a CDN – what this means for you: Quicker photo loading from all geographic locations, better backup in case of a fail.

– Group (team) competitions now show photo backgrounds like individual competitions

COMPETITIONS

– there’s now an example competition called “Challenge Three Greek Myths!”. Simply clicking on that link will set up a one week competition between you, Icarus, Athena and Odysseus. Our community Walker Tracker walkers have been able to challenge those three to a competition for a while – so this is a nice bonus for the custom walking programs and a good way to learn how competitions work.

– You can now run a Group Goal Challenge around Averages.

ADMINISTRATION PANEL

– the aforementioned points panel

– There’s a setting to require walkers to enter their real names.

– There’s a new admin support area that will be going live today. It doesn’t have a lot of content there yet, but this will be a great way for administrators to share information about their programs, seek help, and submit help tickets. You’ll see the link on the home page of your administration panel.

– billing is now automated, as of today

– Ability to reset all data for your program and start from scratch

– new data downloads, with clearer explanations

– Bulk registration template

WALK-THROUGH

Want to see what a Walker Tracker custom program is like before you try out the 30-day free trial? Have a look at our Walk-Through

Hi all -

We’re going to have a scheduled downtime for approximately 30 minutes starting at 4pm today for updates and maintenance.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

See you on the other side.