Author Archives: caitlinburke

The Nike+ World Turns

The FuelBand activity is over, and the devices are returned. I asked a Nike executive at the conference about what happens to the other Nike fitness properties, now that it looks like Nike is recomposing the “Fuel” concept from calories to this weighted score. He said, oh, it will take months to reorganize that stuff. I said I was worried, because the FuelBand and site do so much less than I already getting from the Nike tracking I was using, and he said he wasn’t really involved with that. Fair enough.

Today the tracking product that drew me into the Nike+ ecology announced that their site will be down for months while they get rolled into the new thing.

The tracking product I’ve shifted to is still alive and well, prominently linked directly from the new hotness as a menu item, and so, one hopes, unlikely to disappear anytime soon. It is a very different product from FuelBand, and fits well into a mix that serves all activity levels. Nike+ has turned into a confusing crowd of sites and products, and simplification is good, but the timing woke me up abruptly this morning.

I am glad I’m not on the support queue that will take calls today from people who spent the last couple of weeks or months getting hooked on the website companion to a different piece of hardware they already bought. The email tells them that their data will still be there at that indeterminate point in the future, but these products are about habits and regular reinforcement. Months from now might as well be the heat death of the universe. I remember how entertained I was by rewards displays when I first found those sites, and I know I’d be pretty frustrated if I were waking up this morning to learn that I’d never get a chance to see all the levels.

Trying Out the Nike+ FuelBand

I am using the Nike+ FuelBand this week as part of an activity for a conference I’m attending. I like gadgets and already wear a pedometer, and I’ve been curious about the FuelBand. It’s been an interesting few days.

Nike hints that the FuelBand is something special, with lots of different ways to evaluate your activity, but it’s mainly a wrist-based pedometer. As a consequence, it can’t always capture your steps and records “steps” for rhythmic arm motions. (I have worn it overnight a few times and “learned” that I took a couple of dozen steps in my sleep, which I definitely didn’t, although I do move around a bit.)

Nonwalking activities are represented as “steps,” generally yielding low activity estimates. Rowing on a machine or riding a bicycle shows strokes as steps, and it acknowledges stroke rate – the bike is more ‘caloriffic’ than the rowing machine – but can’t understand resistance. (Nike claims its logic is more than just pedometry, but I have kept wearing a pedometer, too, and it looks like pedometry to me.) Of course, those activities are better measured with other devices, but it puts the active user in the position of having having irrelevant information when thinking about their overall activity for the day.

The display is simple and narrow, with a few measures (steps, calories, and “Nike Fuel” – a weighted calculation that seeks to provide a common measurement unit across individuals and activities). It also serves as a watch. The display includes a line of tiny dots that light up as you progress toward your goal for the day, with the first dots in red, the middle dots in yellow, and the final dots in green. The device itself is simple and attractive, and sits unobtrusively on the wrist. I placed it on my ankle for bike rides. It is too small to clasp over my ankle but the shape is sufficient to hold it there as a cuff-style bracelet.

FuelBand offers no way to designate a start and stop for a specific activity, has no stopwatch, and displays only a few built-in measures. The web interface and iPhone app show an hour-by-hour breakout of your activity level on a graph, but they don’t show start and stop times or splits. In general, though, the app and web interface are pleasant to use, with stylish visualizations and cute reward sequences for meeting goals. You can also sync to your iOS device anytime throughout the day, which makes the device more engaging and interactive than a simple pedometer.

On setup, FuelBand invites you to set a daily goal, but changing it only takes effect the following day. I first selected 3000 points as a goal (defined by the system as an active day). I swamped that on a normal work day and selected 5000 points the next day, exceeding that as well, but when I decided to have a slow day, I was out of luck; I’m now wearing a device that is chiding me with little red dots for being lazy all day just because I didn’t plan my laziness last night. This merely annoyed me as a motivated, athletic person, but I wonder if it would make a less combative person take the FuelBand off and put it in a drawer.* Battery life is rated at about 4 days, but I find the battery is down to around 20% at the end of single day. In short, I’m getting lots of cues that this device was definitely not designed with me in mind.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to test the FuelBand. Nike has promoted it heavily with its Nike aesthetic, which is much higher energy than the apparent target audience, and the promotion definitely activated my covet drive. FuelBand is a good choice for someone who is already using iOS (the only OS the app supports for now), wants a set-it-and-forget-it tracking device, and just wants some reinforcement for moving around more during the day. It’s particularly bad news for the Jawbone UP, which suffers from much less name recognition combined with a recent episode of major manufacturing trouble. If you’re an active athlete, you’re better off sticking with your sport-specific devices. But it’s a nice gateway device for people looking to get more movement into their daily lives, just as walking is a good gateway activity.

*There are lot of good reasons to decide on the fly to have a slow day – illness, injury, or a dramatic change in plan, for example. The user can add a brief note and choose a mood icon in the web interface, but the purpose of the red dots on the progress display is to remind you to shake a leg. If the developers are already counting on the user to be susceptible to being nudged, they can expect the user to feel criticized, too – and not best pleased if it feels unfair.

Thoughts about Introducing Minimalist Running

Running Times shares this video showing some flexibility tests you can do if you are wondering whether minimalist running is for you.

Some people find this approach fussy and overly complex, but I think it’s attempting to be mindful of the reality that there is a very wide range of starting points. For most people it’s not enough to say, “Try it out, and if it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it.” This is a hard problem. You have a few minutes – how do you account for different strides, levels of experience, levels of confidence, medical history, terrain interests?

Bonus: It does a nice job of saying “this is a long-valued approach” by showing some vintage flats, designed for the Olympics, from before the ascendancy of today’s heavy-soled, built-up-heel “traditional” running shoe.

Heaven

I don’t have any spiritual beliefs, but when I’ve lost a pet, I always find myself hoping that kitty is in an eternal sunspot somewhere, having a nice nap. It’s just a nice wish for someone you want the best for.

I feel that way about Steve Jobs. Maybe not the sunspot part, but wouldn’t it be nice if he’s someplace warm, maybe looking at turtlenecks with Carl Sagan? (Surely that little legal dust-up is water under the bridge by now—and Steve wasn’t even there at the time, right?)

The Writing Life

Hilary Mantel remains my favourite literary stoic, however. Despite her producing A Place of Greater Safety and other magnificent novels, prize juries overlooked her. After she finally won the Booker in 2009, she had every right to be triumphalist. Instead, she wrote in the Economist of how ‘once, when I was trudging home from my second failure to win the £20,000 Sunday Express award, a small boy I knew bobbed out on to the balcony of his flat. “Did you win?” I shook my head. “Never mind,” he said, just like everyone else. And then, quite unlike everyone else: “If you like, you can come up and play with my guinea pig.”’ I suspect that Mantel knew for years that she was the real thing, and just needed to wait for the rest of us to catch up.

From July 9 Diary, by Nick Cohen, which is mainly about something else entirely.