Walker Tracker Blog

I’ve got two quick announcements – the first is we’ve been using the excellent help desk software at ZenDesk to power support and ticketing for our program administrators and we’ve really liked it (sometime I’ll write a list of all the great web software companies we use to help run Walker Tracker).

As of this week support.walkertracker.com is open to all walkers in our custom walking programs.

Or you can access it under ‘Help’ in the navigation.

(The community program already has its own forum, so support.walkertracker.com is not linked from their menus)

Introducing: Footpath

We’ve had a number of requests for a smaller-sized, inexpensive plan in our Walking Programs to fit small businesses and families. As of today we have one! Introducing the Footpath plan – for up to 20 walkers at $29/month.

Footpath has all the features of our larger plans, but we ask that you rely on our support site support.walkertracker.com (hey! Introduced above) for support.

Let us know what you think.

I’m very thrilled to announce that Walker Tracker is a sponsor of:  Get Going Oregon! Get Going Oregon is a 30 Day  challenge and  fundraiser to benefit the Harold Schnitzer Diabetes Health Center at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU).

Participants will use Walker Tracker from July 24th through August 31st on a Highway 101 challenge map to race down the coast of Oregon. It’s going to be a tremendously good challenge and it couldn’t be for a better cause.

You’ll get a free pedometer (Oregon Scientific with a 7 day memory and calorie counter), health screening (if you’re local) and will have the chance to win prizes along the way.

Join the fundraiser – it’s a $20 donation – at Get Going Oregon – www.getgoingoregon.org

This has been an oft-asked-for feature: Convert your other activities to steps.

Say you rode your bike for 5 miles and your pedometer only registered 18 steps: You want credit for that!

Now our custom programs can do just that.

If you’re a program administrator, turn this feature on under Features in your administration panel.

Let us know what you think!

Is this coming to the Walker Tracker community program for individuals?

Short answer: Maybe…

I’m guessing it’s going to be a controversial issue among the  pedometer-purists. And if it does come, since we offer really a lot of features for free, it would likely be a pro-only feature.

Do you think we should we enable it in the community program? Let us know.

We’ve just made it a little easier to organize a walking team.

Now you can pull not-yet-registered walkers directly into your walking group without requiring them to find and join your group.

Create a Walker Tracker group and then surf to your new group’s administration pane.

There’s a new option there for inviting people to your group. You’ve always been able to invite already-registered walkers, but now you can enter in a string of email addresses. Once those people register, they will automatically be placed on your walking team. Presto!

Invite existing members of your walking program, or walkers who haven't yet joined the site.

While you’re there – check out your Competitions screen. If there are no walking team competitions there yet, start one up!

I’m very thrilled to introduce map-based competitions.

We’re a big fan of Walker Tracker competitions here. They help you visualize your progress over a period of time. You can compete as a team or as an individual while poking friendly jibes at each other. Alternately, you can have your own private party, where you (or just you and your friends) are the star of the competition.

But when you walk — you cover real distance, and so it’s especially fun to put that analogy on a real map.

How long does it take to walk along the Grand Canyon? To stride along the Columbia river to the ocean? Now you can find out for sure.

As you walk along, milestones are revealed to you, adding a sense of discovery to your journey.

Map competitions are in beta — but please feel free to hop in and try them out.

We received help from the very talented Adam DuVander, who is writing a book on map development on the web. Thanks Adam!

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).

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.

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

In many ways, Walker Tracker is already a game.

You play yourself, using statistics and charts to achieve a better average, walk more and game yourself into better physical shape.

You compete with others in Walker Tracker Competitions

However, we wanted to go one better by creating a sense of progression and currency to the system. We wanted to find a way to reward positive behavior, and to allow our walkers to reward each other.

I spent a lot of time looking at other systems that do this. Role playing games, World of Warcraft, slashdot/digg, school, life, economies, etc. In creating the system I tried to create mathematical point calculations that would reward fairness and walking improvement as well as to create a functioning ecosystem with a balance of supply and demand.

In Walker Tracker’s Levels/Points system

• You can earn points
• You can give away points
• With a certain amount of points you gain a level
• A level is mostly a symbol of progress and status
  • That said, gaining levels does open up new features on Walker Tracker, and you do receive more ‘Giveaway points’ each time you ‘level up’. More is planned for tying features and secret parts of Walker Tracker to the level system.

The most important metric we can track is Diligence. One of the largest goals of Walker Tracker is to permanently change one’s lifestyle behavior. To build physical activity into a routine. Walking every day, logging your steps, measuring your change is one of the best things we can help you accomplish. That which is measured, improves. For that reason, levels and points are weighted heavily toward diligence and meeting your own goals. It’s not a measure of how many steps you’ve walked, but whether you’re achieving what you set out to do by joining a walking program.

So far, I think it’s going fantastically well. I feel an excitement at each time I progress up a level or receive points from someone else.

Let us know what you think!

If you want to become a level one walker right now, all it takes is your first step entry!

Sign up to get started

It’s my pleasure to introduce Robin Jennings:

Robin will be joining Walker Tracker to help energize this blog, among many other things. Robin is a writer, traveler and parent, and it’s going to be great having her help. She’s been a long-time walker, but she’s new to pedometers – so drop on by and give her a warm welcome. In the meantime, watch this space for some new posts on walking and walking communities. If you have a particular interest related to walking you’d like to see talked about here – let Robin know!

@Robin on Walker Tracker