Week in Review–January 2nd, 2012

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, Facebook, and Google Plus, 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 this past week:
Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this week:

Saturday: Week in Review- Dec 24th, 2011
Sunday: So you just got a Garmin Fitness watch- Start here- 2011 Edition 
Wednesday: New Zealand Part I- Caves, cows, sheep and mountain biking
Thursday: Pushing the envelope- Ultra-long time tests on Timex Run Trainer andFR910XT
Friday: New Zealand Part II- Glaciers, peaks, long hikes…and a lot more sheep

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) Lots about saddles: A great three part series on saddles over on Slowtwitch – definitely check it out.  It’s more about design, concepts and theory – tons of awesome information in there.

2) Google Health is no more: As you probably saw over the past few months – Google Health is shutting down, with the last day for data modification being last Saturday.  You can still grab any data you have there though, for a bit longer.  Ultimately, I think they’ve made a shortsighted decision that long term I believe they’ll regret.

3) Solar charge your sports gadgets: While I struggle to see why you’d solar charge from within a car, when you can just use the car’s cigarette lighter charger – this is cool, similar to the Garmin one that’s OEM’d by Powermonkey that I’ve played with in my FR910XT review.  Though, the airplane example is a cool one (until the flight attendants yell at you…which, trust me, they will).

4) Why Best Buy is Going out of Business (and how it applies to other segments): A good article, that also applies to many retailers we use in endurance sports.  Of course, some retailers differentiate themselves (either in service or price), but I think it’s still an interesting article. (via Justin Knotzke)

5) Track and Field loosens sponsorship logo rules: Good article from the NYT, though, I’ve always wondered what the payoff is from a corporate standpoint on non-major athlete sponsorship (i.e. triathlon, running, etc…) (via Steve Fleck)

6) A fun Quantified Self Numbers post: If you don’t read Quantified Self, and you like what you generally read here, you should definitely subscribe to their feed.  Lots of coolness about the tracking of data about ourselves.

7) Weighing in every day: Another QS post, but one that illustrates the primary reason I recommend scales like the Withings WiFi scale.  The documentation of your weight on a daily basis (if your trying to lose weight) is fascinating – and more importantly, if done through automated means, tends to really help drive diet change.

It’s a quiet week, with very little news out there, as most folks are on vacation (including yours truly) – but I suspect the next two weeks will be crazy busy for news goodness, leading into and through CES.

Happy New Year!

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