Week in Review–Nov 6th, 2016

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 and Facebook, 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 in the past week:

Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this past week.

Sunday: Week in Review–October 30th, 2016
Tuesday: The Winter 2016-2017 Trainer App In-Depth Guide
Thursday: 5 Random Things I Did This Weekend
Friday: The Halloween GoPro Hero5 Giveaway Winner!

More Sports Tech Deals!

A new round of sales begins today, this time from TomTom:

TomTom Runner – $89 (normally $129)
TomTom Spark – $89 (normally $149)
TomTom Spark Music – $129 (normally $199)
TomTom Spark Music + Cardio  – $174 (normally $249)
TomTom Spark Music + Cardio w/headphones – $224 (normally $299)

Note that the ‘Cardio’ version means it has optical HR in it.  My review of all these watches can be found here (Runner) and here (Spark).  Note, I see absolutely no logical reason why you’d get the older Runner vs the Multisport Spark, given they are the same price and the Spark has more features.

In related (and important news), the mother lode of sales will kick off later this week form almost everyone, so stay tuned for that.  Most notable being the Fenix3 HR for 25% off (and a ton more items).  The day of Black Friday itself will be largely overrated this year for sports tech.

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) The Rise and Fall of Brim Brothers: An excellent piece from James Huang at Cycling Tips on the Brim Brothers crowd funding collapse over the past week or so.

2) Mio Global gets 15 million in funding: This being the same Mio behind products like the Mio Link and Mio Alpha series (different than the Mio that makes bike computers).  You’ll remember that Mio Slice was announced nearly a year ago, but has otherwise gone quiet.  The new activity tracker was set to offer unique metrics, but also more importantly change the underlying optical HR sensor tech away from what they used to license from Philips. (via Jamey W.)

3) Some minor Suunto internal org shake-ups: Of note is that Jason used to be at Timex.  Interestingly, there’s also been some shake-ups at Polar in the last few months, with folks from both Recon and Timex ending up in new leadership positions on the US side of Polar.  Note that I wouldn’t necessarily judge Timex’s past efforts too much on their engineering staff – which simply weren’t given many (barely any) resources to actually produce the higher end GPS units that the market wanted.

4) How to install a dropper post on a cyclocross bike: Nifty little DIY project tutorial from the folks at TrainerRoad.

5) Norwegian Council Upset about Sports Tech Companies: What’s interesting here is how this headline has skewed.  If one reads the actual report, there’s been no data leakage or anything.  They just want clearer terms of service on certain areas, which is reasonable.  However, it seems like they’ve likely been pitching this as a story to media outlets that these companies are somehow leaking data – which isn’t what they said. (via Marc)

6) The Rise of Crowd funding Bike Projects: Another great article from James at Cycling Tips.

7) United Airlines gives free pre-marathon dinner: Pretty cool way of showing some loyalty love to frequent flyers.

8) There’s a car named The Triathlon: And, the marketing pics do at least include lots of bikes, shoes, and other sporty things. (via TriBulations)

9) Fitbit had a bad week on Wall Street: Here’s a bit more detail as to why and what’s going wrong on the production line.

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 are 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?  Oh – and if you want to get a head start on things, this page is a great resource for watching Garmin firmware updates.

Garmin Vivoactive HR Firmware Update: A bunch of new features!

Garmin FR230, FR235, FR630 and FR920XT Firmware Update: Fix around VO2Max issues

Garmin FR35 Firmware Update: A few fixes, and some new things.

Garmin Vivosmart Firmware Update: Calorie tweaks.

Garmin Fenix3/Tactix Bravo/Quatix 3/Fenix3 HR Firmware Update: Connect IQ support, new Live Track Auto Start integration, and a bunch of fixes.

Garmin Vivofit Firmware Update: Fix for Daylight Savings Time.

Garmin Vivoactive Firmware Update: Connect IQ update, pool swim distance fix, other fixes

Polar M600 Firmware Update: Adds manual lap option, plus training load features, along with bug fixes

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Thanks for reading all!

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