Week in Review–February 1st, 2014

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 past week.

Saturday: Week in Review–January 25th, 2014
Sunday: First look at Polar V650 GPS bike computer
Monday: 5 Random Things I Did This Past Weekend
Tuesday: A look at Suunto’s new Ambit2 R GPS
Thursday: TomTom releases phone app, allows for mobile uploading with TomTom Runner & Multisport units
Friday: The Because It’s Cold…and January…Giveaway

In the Queue:

These are items that hit the queue over the past week or so:

Friday: LifeBEAM Smart Helmet with integrated heart rate sensor

Stuff that I found interesting around the interwebs:

1) Stealing and lying within the pro triathlon ranks: It was interesting watching the reaction to this in the comments section of the article.  In my opinion, if one of the world’s top triathletes is willing to steal over $10,000 – and do it from friends, and then setup servers, fake internet domains, fake employees and fake companies to hide it…why wouldn’t that person simply pop a pill or two to cheat when it comes to doping?  Seems pretty relevant to me.

2) Uneasy Rider: Bicycling in Las Vegas: A pretty fun look at one German CES attendee’s attempt to simply rent and use a bike to get around during the show last month.  Entertaining reading. (via Eli)

3) What’s getting run over by a car during a race between friends?  Apparently, friendship was not exactly flying sky-high down in the Tour de San Luis this past week.  Just ignore those paceline punches as well.

4) 102 year old cyclist beats his own record: Darn, I meant to go over and watch this yesterday (it happened here in Paris).  For some reason I thought it was on Sunday.  Congrats! (via BikeHugger)

5) Austin Tri Cyclist publishes free training video: Pretty cool, just over an hour long and easily watchable on YouTube while you’re on a trainer.  It’d be neat to see them publish it up to the Virtual Training suite with a GPX/GPS file, so folks could re-ride the whole thing with the more advanced trainers controlling terrain/speed/etc…

6) Apple TV to offer platform for bike trainers apps?  Well, if they open up to apps as rumored, it would.  Apple TV has a Bluetooth chipset in it (albeit, older non-4.0), but a new hardware variant would almost certainly have BT4.0 (Update: Apparently the current gen does actually have BT4) , which would work perfectly for controlling the Wahoo KICKR, CycleOps PowerBeam Pro, and Tacx units over BT, via apps like Trainer Road.

7) Samsung Glass Competitor coming in September?  Will be interesting to see how this, and the many other heads up display units converging on the market work in the sporting realm.

8) Massive Triathlon Expo in DC and Boston opens for registration: I’ve been to this a number of times in the past, but this year, it’s a bit of a haul to go across the pond for.

9) Farewell Inside Triathlon Magazine: Inside Tri is closing down, here’s a quick look back from Slowtwitch.

10) Life as a bicycle race photographer in Asia: Interesting piece.  Many of the photos this photographer takes are a bit more on the ‘arty’ side, which may or may not appeal to different folks.  Still, good read.

11) Los Angeles to Host 2016 US Olympic Marathon Trials: The event will be held in February, and broadcast on national TV.  Cool stuff. (via RunCompetitor)

12) Industry Standards and Bike Weights: An interesting piece looking at how different companies differ in terms of measured weights.  Worth a quick read.

13) Idiotrod vs Iditarod: Ok, this is funny.  Obviously, you know the Iditarod, but apparently they were upset when a bunch of dudes dressed up and ran around NYC with shopping carts, emulating the famous Alaskan race.  So, they sued.

14) UK Magazine blatantly copies Boston magazine marathon tribute cover: Wow, this wasn’t just ‘sorta copied’. this was ‘thou must exactly re-create’.  Unfortunately, the initial Twitter response from a Boston Magazine Senior Editor was a little…unpolished.

Crowd Funded Projects of Athletic Note:

Most of this content used to be found within the main section, but I figured I’d just call it out up here and make it easy to find. I regularly sift through Kickstarter and Indiegogo (plus a few others on occasion) looking for sports projects. Note that as always with crowd funded projects, assume the project will be late and will under-deliver on features. Thus far, on the numerous products I’ve helped ‘fund’ (except a leather bike handle), that’s been the case.

(Another week with very few interesting sport-related Kickstarter-type projects.  Though, there have been a few Kickstarter projects that have begun or will begin shipping in the next week or two.  That includes the SmartBEAM helmet up above ‘In the Queue’, as well as the Bia watch I’ve previously talked about.  For those interested, reader Eli did find a few semi-sport related, but not so much sport technology related.)

Sports Technology Software/Firmware Updates This Week:

Each week I quickly highlight some of the new firmware, app, software and website service updates that I see go out. If you’re a sports technology company and release an update – shoot me a quick note (just one liners is perfect, or Tweet it at me is even better) and I’ll make mention of it here. If I don’t know about it, I won’t be able to post about it. Sound good?

Site/Firmware Updates:

Garmin FR220/FR620 Firmware Update: This update claims to resolve a bunch of bugs, including some footpod related issues/troubles.  No new features.

Garmin VIRB Edit update: This update was primarily bug fix related, especially around exporting of videos (including some issues that were keeping me tied up on some videos).

Garmin Connect to Suunto Movescount Activity Mover: Somehow, I never knew about this cool utility.  Or, I did but forgot about it.  Either way, if you’re migrating from Garmin Connect (or Polar) to Suunto, this will move everything over. Work Complete!

TomTom Runner & Multisport Firmware Update: This not only includes the new phone app that I talked about (see the full post), but also a firmware update as well.

Sigma Releases iOS app: Sigma is the company behind a few cycling head units.  They’ve released an iOS app for cycling with Bluetooth Smart connectivity. While none of their head units have Bluetooth capabilities yet, I’ve gotta believe that’ll be in the cards. (Post in German, but you can use this Google Translate link to read in English).

Metawatch is working on step-counter: Interesting little photo showing an integrated step-counter into the Metawatch. Smart move.

iPhone Apps:

iPad Apps:

Android Apps:

Ok, we’ll have to skip this week.  I ended up flattening my phone, and in said process all apps re-installed as new.  Thus…yeah.

Windows Phone Apps:

No sport related updates on my phone this week.

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Thanks for reading!

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