IF THE Beijing Olympics inspired you to improve your athletic
performance or just spend a little less time on the couch, the
technology industry can help.
Gadgets and web services won't make you faster or stronger but, by
recording your efforts and enabling you to measure your progress
and compare against friends' or rivals' results, they'll provide
plenty of motivation to keep striving for a personal best.
For a very few dollars, cheap devices such as a pedometer tell you
how many steps you take, the distance covered and the kilojoules
burned during a workout.
Cyclists can buy a speedometer, trip meter and ride timers for
about $15 - the price of a basic bicycle computer at sites such as
Torpedo7 (torpedo7.com.au).
If you follow the same route for your workouts and record your
times, you'll soon be able to create a history of your performances
and compare results from different days.
There's much more fun to be had if you marry these devices with
your PC. You can accomplish this feat with devices such as USB
pedometers that store data from your walk and upload it to your PC,
where special software builds a profile of your workouts.
The Omron HJ720ITC PC pocket pedometer is such a device and is $65
at pedometersaustralia.com.
Sites such as mapmyrun.com or bikely.com add another dimension by
letting you create maps of your runs or rides in Google Maps. When
you enter your journey, the sites calculate the distance
travelled.
Bikely shows you an altitude profile of a ride so you can see just
how high you climbed and calculate the total ascent and descent you
achieved.
These sites also let you share routes. Once you have plotted a
course, all you need to do is save it, agree to share it and your
feats will be available for anyone to view, making a
more-than-useful resource for finding useful places to
exercise.
Both sites let you annotate a route, so you can let others know
about hazards such as bumpy paths or just leave behind instructions
for hard-to-navigate sections.
Bikely and MapMyRun have three problems: entering a route
accurately is fiddly and time-consuming; you need to remember the
route you rode or ran to enter it into a PC and they rely on dodgy
data, especially for altitudes - we plotted rides along waterside
bike paths and, according to Bikely, we were in a submarine, not
riding a bicycle.
Gadgets that use global positioning systems (GPS) to track your
workout with satellites are a useful alternative, especially now
that many mobile phones include the technology.
Nokia has created free software called Sports Tracker
(sportstracker.nokia.com) that turns 20 of its phone models into
exercise-tracking machines.
It overlays your exercise progress on a map while reporting your
speed, average speed and distance. And some phones can count your
steps like a pedometer. It comes into its own once you upload the
results of a workout to the Sports Tracker site where it overlays
the GPS data on Google Maps so you can see where you went. Upload
as many workouts as you want, compare them, file through a library
of past workouts and share them with friends.
We tested the application with a Nokia N95 8GB and found the
software intuitive, although the GPS tracking was a little
inaccurate - one ride apparently saw us veer through the grounds of
a private school, taking out a fence, a building and several tennis
courts along the way. The program also needs careful attention to
set it in motion.
Features that allow you to upload data wirelessly mean you'll
record your rides with ease.
An enhancement we would have appreciated is a bracket to mount the
phone on a bicycle, a third-party product available online but
sadly missing from the N95 box. Instead, we slipped the phone into
the back pocket of a cycling jersey where we worried that sweat or
rain could damage it.
We got lucky with the weather on our test ride and the unit stayed
dry and did its job well - although we couldn't see it while
riding.
The alternative to a phone is a rugged sports GPS, which eradicates
the rain and sweat problems. We tested Garmin's Edge705, a $649
device that is the peak of computer-aided exercise.
Such models combine the functions of a GPS phone plus Sports
Tracker but come with everything you need to mount them on a bike.
Other models designed for runners include arm or wrist straps.
Dedicated devices will survive a hard knock and other exigencies of
exercise.
The 705, for example, has a weatherproof cover for its USB port.
And it beeps like a 1970s video game.
Its maps don't match the resolution of Google's maps, a minor
disappointment correctable with an upgrade for a fee.
The upside is that it also has a wireless heart-rate monitor and a
cadence meter to measure how often you turn the pedals of your
bike.
All this data may be uploaded, along with route maps, making
thisjust about the ultimate exerciseaid.
Source : http://www.smh.com.au/
performance or just spend a little less time on the couch, the
technology industry can help.
Gadgets and web services won't make you faster or stronger but, by
recording your efforts and enabling you to measure your progress
and compare against friends' or rivals' results, they'll provide
plenty of motivation to keep striving for a personal best.
For a very few dollars, cheap devices such as a pedometer tell you
how many steps you take, the distance covered and the kilojoules
burned during a workout.
Cyclists can buy a speedometer, trip meter and ride timers for
about $15 - the price of a basic bicycle computer at sites such as
Torpedo7 (torpedo7.com.au).
If you follow the same route for your workouts and record your
times, you'll soon be able to create a history of your performances
and compare results from different days.
There's much more fun to be had if you marry these devices with
your PC. You can accomplish this feat with devices such as USB
pedometers that store data from your walk and upload it to your PC,
where special software builds a profile of your workouts.
The Omron HJ720ITC PC pocket pedometer is such a device and is $65
at pedometersaustralia.com.
Sites such as mapmyrun.com or bikely.com add another dimension by
letting you create maps of your runs or rides in Google Maps. When
you enter your journey, the sites calculate the distance
travelled.
Bikely shows you an altitude profile of a ride so you can see just
how high you climbed and calculate the total ascent and descent you
achieved.
These sites also let you share routes. Once you have plotted a
course, all you need to do is save it, agree to share it and your
feats will be available for anyone to view, making a
more-than-useful resource for finding useful places to
exercise.
Both sites let you annotate a route, so you can let others know
about hazards such as bumpy paths or just leave behind instructions
for hard-to-navigate sections.
Bikely and MapMyRun have three problems: entering a route
accurately is fiddly and time-consuming; you need to remember the
route you rode or ran to enter it into a PC and they rely on dodgy
data, especially for altitudes - we plotted rides along waterside
bike paths and, according to Bikely, we were in a submarine, not
riding a bicycle.
Gadgets that use global positioning systems (GPS) to track your
workout with satellites are a useful alternative, especially now
that many mobile phones include the technology.
Nokia has created free software called Sports Tracker
(sportstracker.nokia.com) that turns 20 of its phone models into
exercise-tracking machines.
It overlays your exercise progress on a map while reporting your
speed, average speed and distance. And some phones can count your
steps like a pedometer. It comes into its own once you upload the
results of a workout to the Sports Tracker site where it overlays
the GPS data on Google Maps so you can see where you went. Upload
as many workouts as you want, compare them, file through a library
of past workouts and share them with friends.
We tested the application with a Nokia N95 8GB and found the
software intuitive, although the GPS tracking was a little
inaccurate - one ride apparently saw us veer through the grounds of
a private school, taking out a fence, a building and several tennis
courts along the way. The program also needs careful attention to
set it in motion.
Features that allow you to upload data wirelessly mean you'll
record your rides with ease.
An enhancement we would have appreciated is a bracket to mount the
phone on a bicycle, a third-party product available online but
sadly missing from the N95 box. Instead, we slipped the phone into
the back pocket of a cycling jersey where we worried that sweat or
rain could damage it.
We got lucky with the weather on our test ride and the unit stayed
dry and did its job well - although we couldn't see it while
riding.
The alternative to a phone is a rugged sports GPS, which eradicates
the rain and sweat problems. We tested Garmin's Edge705, a $649
device that is the peak of computer-aided exercise.
Such models combine the functions of a GPS phone plus Sports
Tracker but come with everything you need to mount them on a bike.
Other models designed for runners include arm or wrist straps.
Dedicated devices will survive a hard knock and other exigencies of
exercise.
The 705, for example, has a weatherproof cover for its USB port.
And it beeps like a 1970s video game.
Its maps don't match the resolution of Google's maps, a minor
disappointment correctable with an upgrade for a fee.
The upside is that it also has a wireless heart-rate monitor and a
cadence meter to measure how often you turn the pedals of your
bike.
All this data may be uploaded, along with route maps, making
thisjust about the ultimate exerciseaid.
Source : http://www.smh.com.au/
