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Week in Review–Nov 6th, 2016

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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

Thanks for reading all!

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17 Comments

  1. David

    I also just started getting turn notifications on my F3 when navigating a course created in Garmin Connect. I assume that also came with the new firmware.

    • Dom

      Nope. That’s a change in Garmin Connect support for sending turn notifications to the F3 as part of the course, which has been supported for ages on other devices. The watch itself has supported doing this since it was first released.

    • Zan

      Does this also work with the 920XT?

    • gingerneil

      This has been a total pain in the past, having to use this party sites then convert to tcx.
      Ray – a summary post about this could go down well?

  2. Dave Moor

    I’ve just read the Brim Brothers article, it will be intersting to see if the Look (?) sole plate meter suffers the same issue. Perhaps because it looks to fix to the heel as well, and is aimed at their own shoes, it will not suffer the same problems. Although the article did say peddling style had an effect.

    • Mike Richie

      I just read it too. Certainly tough for Barry Redmond (as well as the backers), looks like he really tried to make it work. It seems to me though, that given the two pieces at the sole of the foot, the shoe is not solid or fixed, where as the pedal is. Why, then, would you put your strain gauge on the shoe? It really almost seems to be a case of, gee, where else can we put a power meter, just to be different. It also may seem more convenient, but, really, how hard is it to change your pedals?

    • Yeah, will be interesting to see on Luck. As I noted earlier this fall, I think they’re far away from actual delivery of accuracy product. Albeit that’s without getting to ride it, but just a gut feel.

      That said, one tiny (but really important potentially) element that Luck has going for it would be that they control the shoe material, the very piece that Barry couldn’t control. Whether or not that makes a difference in the end for them, I’ve got no idea.

  3. Michael Harman

    Ray, wondering if you saw this Kickstarter campaign? Caught it on BikeRumor this morning. I know bike computer mounts aren’t incredibly sexy things to talk about, but this one seems interesting.

    link to kickstarter.com

  4. Kyle

    Groupon also has the Garmin 230 for $199 or with a HR strap for $249

  5. Jon

    Ray, I was JUST commenting to a friend this past weekend about “whatever happened to Timex in the GPS market?” It seems like they just completely stopped manufacturing them. Is this true? I always had good luck with their devices.

    • I’m pretty sure it’s true. I’m not aware of any active production/etc going on. Some folks have also received notice of some sort of service closures planned for certain units, but I haven’t looked into it closely yet.

  6. Alex

    For next week? Maybe to good to be treu??

    link to arofly.com

  7. Peter Gibson

    One other interesting thing that happened last week was that Cyclops Magnus started to ship. I see its now available from Cyclops site and from Amazon.com.

  8. Enrique

    The upgrade to Edge 520 software version 9.10 has bricked my device! Totally unresponsive. Watch out!

    • Enrique

      Just to report that I managed to reset the Edge 520 and then proceeded with version 9.1 upgrade. I ignore why it got hung in the first time but now the unit is OK again.

  9. Thomas Allred

    Will you be doing a Radar Pace review soon?