Week in Review–December 18th, 2010

I’ve long since wondered what to do with all the random tidbits of things I collect each week – or the little thoughts that don’t quite make for a full post.  But I finally came up with a solution: The Week in Review Post.  This takes the place of my Weekly Mailbag – which is over on Slowtwitch.  These are just quick snippets of things that I’ve found interesting.  Nice and easy Saturday reading.  Plus, a recap of my Weekly Mailbag post a well.

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

Weekly Mailbag Over at Slowtwitch.com: 
A pretty wide swath of topics this weeks from my favorite scale picks to viewing raw heart rate data.  Go on over and check it out here!

1) Will there be a Women’s FR210?
2) Withings WiFi Scale vs Tanita BC-1000
3) How to view raw HR data from GPS devices

You can read all my past weekly mailbags at Slowtwitch here.  Or the pre-Slowtwitch days here.

Posts this past week:
With bouncing from DC to India and back this week, I was pretty tight on time – so not quite the full compliment of posts, but in case you missed anything from the past 7 days, here ya have it.

Saturday: Week in Review – December 11th, 2010
Monday: Back to DC, and time to cook a grand dinner!
Tuesday: Swimsense, FR410, Garmin Connect & Bing, and giveaway results
Thursday: Behind the scenes on product reviews
Friday: The India Runaround

Stuff that I found interesting around the interwebs: 
As always, here’s a sampler platter of some of the interesting articles and posts I found around the Internet this week.

#1) Driver ‘sentenced’ after the Vail hit and run and fix your Mercedes incident: There was a court hearing on Thursday to essentially finalize the previous agreement reached with the defendant that he doesn’t have to serve any time for a cyclist hit and run in Vail – more details on how it all went down.

#2) Macca on the Wheaties Box: You may have seen or heard the news already – but Macca will be sporting himself on the good old orange box here shortly.

#3) Outside Magazine’s Top 10 Adventure Stories: A pretty cool collection of some pretty wild adventures.  This is a great article (with everything from photos to links to YouTube vids) if you have some time to burn.

#4) Pro Cyclists Secrets, Quirks and Superstitions: A interesting and funny look at all sorts of weird things pro cyclists do.  Really, they lose all ability to say bad things about triathletes after some of these…

#5) Actually…one more really good article and analysis on the Vail incident: This one is by the same author as a few I’ve previously linked to, and really goes into detail on a lot of fronts.  Think of it as the DCRainmaker of cycling legal analysis.

Random Thoughts Section:

Basis Heart Rate Watch…without a heart rate strap.

I got an e-mail from the folks at Basis about their HR strap that’s in development.  They don’t quite have a unit for me to play with yet – but it’s an interesting concept.  Basically, it monitors your heart rate 24×7 – but without the requirement of a heart rate strap.  I could see this being useful for resting heart rate tracking 24×7.

While I’m not yet a big fan of actual watch look (seems a bit too ‘toyish’ for me – but then again, I’ve been told I might not understand style and fashion…), I like the technology and functional concept – and I like that it’s built on Bluetooth – allowing easy access to communicate with my existing phone or computers.

Given it has an accelerometer – I could see it being a distinct competitor to the FitBit, which is also accelerometer based.  Though, the Basis unit having a temperature sensor seems to set it apart in that particular area – I’d love to see some applications there.

Finally, I’d hope that they follow the lead of many other companies in allowing more open data access to your own data.  Folks like Withings, Zeo and others allowing easy access for other application to take advantage of access your data if you permit.  I’m optimistic that given the background of some of the members of the team, they’ll see the value in this.

Adminstrivia

I’m slowly but surely catching up e-mails and getting posts all set for the Holidays.  Later next week I leave for a few weeks of Christmas break stuffs – but the goodness will keep on flying – both with regular sport-related posts, as well as a peak into where I am along the way.

Beyond that, I don’t have many other random thoughts at the moment.  I’m writing this on a plane heading back to DC – just passed over Baghdad a bit ago, with the Black Sea ahead before heading towards Greenland and then back down again.  Kinda unreal that in just a ‘few’ hours, I’ll be half-way around the world back in DC.  No matter how many times I do it, it still amazes me.

Have a great weekend all!

Holiday Reminder: If you’re still slackin’ on the Christmas present front, you can both dig yourself out of trouble and help support the site via any of the products listed in my 2010 Holiday Gifts for Endurance Athletes.  Just sayin’…

(And yes, the above graphic is the pinnacle of my image editing skillz, anything else would simply cause my stick-figure-esque capabilities to implode)

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