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Will Verizon’s paperless receipts be part of Isis?

According to IntoMobile, Verizon is about to introduce paperless receipts at their retails stores.  This seems like a great idea for existing customers though I’d love to see this get some NFC integration … tap to pay have it billed via ISIS (the VZ invested consortium) and show up in your docs and receipts.

I don’t even use VZ, but this seems like a very natural fit that could offer great customer benefit.  Isis has yet to announce what phones will be supported though Verizon does currently carry the payments-capable Galaxy Nexus.  I’m not sure you’d really even need the secure element aspect of NFC payments (opening to potentially more NFC devices) though it would benefit the Isis bit more if they focused on that for newer phones and upgrades.

 

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Reading on Android

Following my last post I though it would be interesting to show a quick comparison between the options for InstaPaper (InstaFetch), ReaditLater and Readability. This is far from scientific and really just a single article but in my experience still highlights the reading experience. Of course this is purely subjective and your preferences may vary.

As I was perusing Flipboard over coffee I found a good piece with lots of links to catch up on. Here’s the first I decided to read … before becoming distracted with this test.

Here’s what that piece looks like via InstaFetch:

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And now in ReaditLater:

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And finally in Readability:

20111226-101126.jpg20111226-101220.jpg

Readability stands as my favorite as it tends to render the cleanest copy and also provides a terrific desktop experience if you want to use it there. Both InstaFetch and ReaditLater can sync in the background which is great for offline access. Readability is perfect for real-time conversions … at least until the app appears when I expect it will suit the full range.

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iOS Apps I’d Really Like to See on Android

I’ve been using an Android device for a little over a year and my mobile habits are pretty formed. I also carry an iPhone and I’d love to find app parity between platforms. In general I’m equally productive across the two, but there are a few things I’d really like to have on Android that are simply missing at the moment… Nothing critical but all nice to have at different levels.

  • Reading: Flipboard, Zite Instapaper and a client for Readability (also missing on iOS). Google Currents is solid on both platforms and Android can do some really slick “send to” things with Intents for sharing but I’m looking for more app-ified reading to keep it flowing.
  • Photos: Instagram. Picplz and Lightbox are both nice but it’s the social side of Instagram I’m missing and what’d I’m looking forward to seeing finally arrive. I should acknowledge that since taking up Path, my desire for Instagram has lessened but mainly because the Galaxy Nexus is becoming my go to device. Path has some nice free / pay filters and excellent social sharing.
  • Notifications: Boxcar for social messaging and Slice for package tracking and shipping notices. Neither are critical but both would be quite nice to have. Boxcar captures a deeper look at twitter than mentions (favorites and lists) and was supposed to have arrived by now. I’ve spent less time engaged on twitter since the arrival of Google+ which is much better on Android … Though no surprise there.

In all the list isn’t that long. The main missing piece is reading which I do a tone of as a self-confessed I formation junkie. Google Reader is great anywhere but the curated content is a great way to mix it up. Photos should evolve soon enough. I’m guessing that with a snap in Instagram, I’ll be able to “send to” anywhere much the way Android typically allow which will probably earn more of my time.

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Enhanced sports tracking with your phone.

Like quite a few people I’ve run and biked with my phone. I ride more than I run but with running I typically track with my phone. I’ve used Nike+, Runkeeper, and currently use Strava to consolidate my training.

My preference for tracking is via a Garmin computer as it tends to capture a much richer picture of what’s happened including heart rate and in biking cadence and for some power. These additional details are tricky to acquire on a phone as very few phones use ANT+ the typical wireless tech on these devices. It’s only a matter of tine however and phones are likely to be the main route for most people – assuming of course the connectivity and importantly battery issues are resolved.

image?

Wahoo Fitness has been pushing an accessory dongle for ANT+ connectivity and is about to release a heart rate monitor as noted by Engadget. While you do need to pay extra to gain access to extra data it’s definitely less expensive than a standalone system. Until battery life is resolved its going to be hard to justify using my phone for biking but for running this seems like a great solution.

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Small but very annoying Android bug

I’ve got two Google accounts. One is linked with my Gmail and something I use for just about everything within the Google ecosystem. The second, is linked with my work email and is really used for Google Docs.  I’ve added it along with my Gmail to my Galaxy Nexus (it’s awesome) so I can get mobile doc access.

Anyway the problem is that with my work account I do not have chat access. I don’t really want it either but for some reason the Android system is constantly trying to log me in to chat. There’s no way to simply say there’s no chat on the account or to permanently say no thanks. Instead every few minutes I get an alert.

As you can see here, the alert presents itself and offers more info, but there’s no way around it other than to try again … and again.

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Looks like the NYT is playing the link game …

As you can see with the image here, there’s a second click required to read the actual story which is pretty lame. I clicked through from Google Reader and actually noticed this on an earlier post as well. Why would we want to click through to read a story just to click through to a read a story? Oh yeah, so we use up our monthly free clicks … getting you closer to the paywall at each step.

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PayPal’s Coolest Mobile Wallet Feature: The Oops Button

Good overview of the latest paypal mobile wallet (and offline features) … they have a lot to overcome to become a viable in-store solution.

The most notable feature of PayPal’s mobile wallet is payment flexibility. Users of PayPal’s mobile wallet application will be able to choose how they want to pay for purchases even after the sale. That means a purchase can be transferred to a different credit card, a debit card, a PayPal account or even a store gift card, if necessary, directly through the PayPal app. The payment could also be split between multiple cards/payment sources.

via Forbes.

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Optimum Online – Wifi – Authentication – Sorry

Optimum Online – Wifi – Authentication – Sorry.

I’m sure I’ve ranted about this previously but Cablevision needs to get a clue.  I use this service daily while at the train and find it helpful, though frustrating to manage … You can’t update your devices for their metro wifi service when connected to it in the city or on your mobile device.  It only works from home when connected via your home service.  You also have to understand and find the MAC Address which is not really very consumer friendly at all.

 

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Apparently Consumers Don’t Trust Google or Apple With Mobile Payments

An interesting study from Ogilvy … and a not so surprising response given our historical payment relationships are with the traditional payment brands. Should be interesting to track changes here though as it’s quite clear that Apple and Google will both be evolving considerable solutions. Even though Apple has yet to formally announce payments, they already have over 200 Million cards on file and are ready to roll. With or without NFC.

via Adage

 

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2011 Tour of the Catskills: Assault on Devil’s Kitchen

 

Yesterday I competed in my second road race, the Tour of Catskills and it was awesome! I chose a one day race option over the 3-day stage and of the two possible days picked the Assault on Devil’s Kitchen which turned out to be the hardest climb I’ve ever tried.

 

My race was a mixed class 4/5 65 mile road race and as you can see from the results, only 36 of the 47 registered riders competed.  I placed 7th which I’m quite pleased with knowing I trained well and raced hard.  We left from Tannersville, NY which is on Hunter Mountain and raced through some gorgeous roads in the Catskills.  There were a few climbs in the early stages of the race, but the Devil’s Kitchen climb at the end would clearly define how things resolved in the end.

From the prior race I had entered I knew I wanted to be up front early to avoid any chaos or potential crashing and while I did not start right in the front, I quickly found a hole on the side of the peloton and moved right up the line.  I guess everyone thought I was crazy, since no one followed and I was easily off the pack and riding alone which was quite exciting even if it was only the first few miles.  Unfortunately my chain dropped after a quick descent as we turned onto Scribner Hollow road and into the first small climb.  It took two tries to get the chain looped back and by that time the group had passed me again.  It took a bit more effort than I would have liked to catch back up, but I managed to reconnect with the bigger group and recovered from my adrenaline burst of nerves.  I fought back some cotton mouth as well and soon enough settled back into the general pace.

Throughout the race I found myself either with the lead group or in the chase group which was generally right behind a small gap.  I was taking note of the guys around as we rode and it seemed there was some aggressive posturing going on with a few guys mainly on the flatter portions but those guys quickly gave way as we hit each of the climbs along the way.  I knew I was in a good position within this group as I felt I was one of the stronger climbers – not really knowing what was in store towards the end of course.  There were a few really nice descents including one amazingly long smooth and ridiculously fast run down where I hit a new top speed (55mph!).  During the descents I was generally careful and more cautious than if I’d been by myself allowing guys to float by and to make sure that I had enough space around me.  I don’t generally ride with too many other people and felt it would be best to be safe here.  During that major descent, I think down County Rt 20, I was able to bridge a big gap which was a pretty exciting moment in the race for me both from the adrenaline pumping at that speed, but also as an achievement to ensure my position.

Over the next 20 or so miles the ride got a bit windy and the group really started to thin out.  We dropped a bunch of guys including 3 in a crash which I think happened when a rider lost his chain and was a standing target for guys coming around the corner.  There was a small break of 2 and then 4 guys and they stayed about 30-45 seconds ahead of us for a few miles, but leading up to Devil’s Kitchen we finally caught two of the guys.  We had a really pace line going and I did a pretty long pull to ensure I did some hard work.  The line up chase group leading to the climb was four guys including myself and then … well then Devil’s Kitchen arrived.  Platte Clove Road is a 5K Cat 2 climb that goes up about 1400ft and appears to be mainly straight up.  There are a few slight steps and a few mild curves … it’s absolutely brutal.  Of the four guys, in my group two escaped and I fought on with another rider until we frankly had to dismount.  I was pretty unhappy that it got to that point, but after about 2.5K of climbing I wasn’t sure I could turn the pedals around fast enough to stay on my bike.  I ended up walking much of the rest of the way to the top – though even when I eventually pedaled across the KOM line, the damn hill kept on going!  Amazingly the guys behind and those I passed on the way up from other groups never caught any time on me and for the next six miles I went into time trial mode, pedaling as hard as I could over the rolling terrain.  As the signs starting counting down the final 5K, I could feel the excitement of finishing my first road race and cornering into the crowded town of Tannersville I fired away my last bit of energy to sprint in.  I heard the announcer call me the Man in Black as I crossed the line and I felt great bringing it all to a close.  Full details on Strava …

The event was awesome — well organized, guys were great – competitive, but friendly and I look forward to competing again soon.  I’m hoping to do the Tour of the Adirondacks in mid September which is also put on by the same organization.  I pre-rode the main loop a few weeks ago near Lake George and it’s a beautiful run as well.

 

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Strava’s Social Fitness Works You Harder

I’ve become a huge fan of Strava for tracking my cycling workouts as well as sharing and tracking friends and pros.  The data viz portion of Strava is really solid, easy to understand and actually quite robust.  I’ve been a Garmin Connect user since I bought my bike (and GPS) three summers ago, but Garmin has always lacked social connections.  As a result of Garmin’s lacking social functions, I’ve also been using DailyMile and while I really like DailyMile as well, I can see how the updates and strides Strava continues to make will probably assist in my full migration soon …

The basics … Strava gets cycling.  More than any other service, they break down hill sections of your rides into competitive segments and allow you to automatically compete against yourself as well as all other riders who also sync their rides into Strava.  Initially I missed this piece when I first tried it months ago as I was early in and did not appreciate the difference with Garmin.

The ability to quickly see that I’ve climbed my best that day (regardless of how my legs felt) is immediately rewarding, but it’s also quite motivating to learn that even though I felt strong, my time was better on a prior ride.  This gets me thinking of the conditions of that prior ride and how I can do better the next time out.  Adding in the social layer makes it even more competitive and even passively (without actually knowing the other people) you can still compete and set goals to try and ladder up the King or Queen of the Mountain competition for a particular climb.

Another really excellent feature within Strava is that it automatically groups you with the people you’ve ridden with that day as everyone syncs their data.  Today as you can see from the screenshot below, I rode with 3 other people and Strava automatically grouped us so we can easily compare and discuss how things went afterwards.  This type of discussion is happening naturally even with people I’ve just met (like today) and it’s quite powerful stuff.

 

The updates that Strava added today have only enhanced both the views of your ride data as well as the ability to slice the competitive ladder more discretely (even fairly) so you can compete on age and weight which certainly play a factor in some rides.  I particularly like the Suffer Score and also how your power and heart rate are displayed to show the real level of effort for a particular ride.  Strava calculates power using some algorithmic special sauce.  I don’t have a power meter currently so there’s no way to know how accurate it really is, but for the moment it’s a great baseline to compare like my other stats on the regular rides I do.  I should note that while Strava does offer a free service, it’s $6/month to get the full range of utility and I believe it’s well worth it.

Strava isn’t the only game in town and while today’s update also includes mention of the Running beta and potential for Triathletes, Runkeeper is pushing out their own update to include more social inclusion.  Runkeeper already has Street Teammates which work like DailyMile’s and Nike+ friends.  You can track how each other do each week and cheer people on.  I consider that the basics … Today Runkeeper sent out an email pushing their new update which like Strava will let you digitally run with friends.

You’ll note as it mentions in the email above, you need to do this afterwards by selecting your Street Teammates or Facebook friends.  While this isn’t hard to do, it’s that extra step that Strava does automatically that ensures you are actually using it.  I’m really interested to see how Strava continues to evolve around new sports and particularly how deep they go with Cycling.  If you’d like you can follow me.  I’ve also recently added a widget that shows my recent rides on the ride sidebar if you still visit the site.

Ride safe!

 

 

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Consider the user …

I know it’s obvious, but it’s amazing how some companies don’t take user experience into account when designing their products.  Take for example the bike route mapping sites MapMyRide and RidewithGPS … MapMyRide appears to be the market leader given they’ve been around for a long time, but man is it painful to use.  They have a decent number of routes if you look around, but the site compresses the map to a small area and there are really a pretty gross number of ads on the page as well as on the map itself.  Their goal is of course to get you to upgrade to a paid account and certainly the incentives are there given the volume of ads … The problem for MapMyRide though is that they are not the only game in town and RidewithGPS arrived on the scene with an excellent route planner and a great map browser.

Take a look at the two screens …

From Route Planning
From Route Planning

Both are views of my local area and show available routes … so the experiences are as “parallel” as they can be to show the difference.  I went into fullscreen mode to try and maximize as much of the view as possible.

Which would you prefer to use?

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Social fitness can really get you going

I enjoyed +Kevin Tofel‘s post on social fitness at GigaOm… I’m a big fan and love the data.

I don’t particularly care about the live streaming aspects though.  To me it’s more about comparative results, challenges and motivations of the community. I now have social sports friends met through DailyMile and even here on G+.

I recently started to really use Strava which is a cycling community site that greatly enhances the experience Garmin let lag on Garmin Connect through social features and specific breakdowns of events like climbs which even get classified. Whether the data is being used to motivate (like Kevin’s insane number of continuous running days) or note personal bests, firsts or other achievements it’s all easily possible thanks to the data.

As has also been discussed recently on Google+ getting access to and enabling the meshing of our data for maximum use is still really missing in the market.  Runkeeper seems to be leading the charge with their goal of becoming a fitness hub through the Health Graph API, but it’s still quite early.

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Firespotter Labs launches their first product – Nosh

Today, Firespotter labs has revealed their first product called Nosh. As you may know, Firespotter is a spinout of some former Googler’s including Craig Walker of Google Voice / Grand Central fame. They received funding from Google Ventures in April of this year and sprinted towards this month with their initial release.

So what is Nosh? Well it’s a social recommendation system for restaurants and food, though unlike other services which focus on the restaurant, Nosh is looking to get down to the item level. This detail will provide much better insight into what’s good and importantly what’s not so great at restaurants all around you.

They’ve posted a nice video overview which I’ll share here to give you the full pitch.

Nosh: Three Dinners from Firespotter Labs on Vimeo.

Nosh works on both Android and iPhone which is great. The experience is quite similar across both systems. Here’s how it works – First either browse your feed for interesting posts and pictures to find what’s good to eat nearby. Or if you like you can explore the local establishments in the directory or even add your own. When you get to the place you’ve decided to dine, you can add the item you’ve chosen, give it a quick rating and snap a pic. Everything is synced up on the Nosh website though I believe you need to be initiating posts via mobile to confirm (via GPS) that you were in fact there …

  

While Nosh is just getting started, it’s a very interesting service. The goal of Nosh and Firespotter according to Mr. Walker is to empower users with information in industries that are ripe for change. Given that the essential dining and discovery experience has stayed the same for quite a while, they prioritized Nosh as their first shot. There are currently about 150,000 menus in the system to ease the process of reviews, but there’s also quite a bit missing, which isn’t a ding it’s just the reality of starting something so large.  I look forward to sharing and learning from you … be sure to add me as a buddy if you signup, I’m just getting started myself.

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Google Sync For iPhone

I guess I knew about this, but had yet to consider why I’d want to switch my Gmail config over to Google Sync.  5 minutes later I can assure you that it’s the right move.

Thanks to Business Insider’s quick guide, you can setup sync for Mail, Calendar and Contacts which has immediately reconciled my years of .Mac BS sync conflicts and duplications in contacts and added a multi-calendar view as well.  Mail remains the same …

With the addition of Google+, I’m  deep in Google services and this just keeps it all nicely together. And no I don’t have any invites at the moment unfortunately …

 

 

 

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After all these years … iPhone goes unlocked

Waking up to see the iPhone finally and officially offered as an unlocked device made me quite happy. It’s somewhat ironically showing up the day Apple also agreed to settle with Nokia over their long debated patent issues which is interesting given my long history using Nokia unlocked devices.

If you don’t want a multiyear service contract or if you prefer to use a local carrier when traveling abroad, the unlocked iPhone 4 is the best choice. It arrives without a micro-SIM card, so you’ll need an active micro-SIM card from any supported GSM carrier worldwide. via Apple Store U.S..

In the years since I’ve left Nokia, I’ve also gone back to buying on contract for my personal devices as the Apple / AT&T upgrade plan has worked just fine and I’m fortunate enough to be able to migrate devices for business using a work-provided SIM. I haven’t seen anything but positive reporting about the changes to iPhone availability … some noting of course the “high” pricing though those prices are close if not even more expensive than the historical “expensive” unlocked Nokia devices which used to be counted against them.

As times have continued to evolve courtesy of the pressures Apple has been able to provide in the industry it’s likely the real buyer is the more niche traveler (able to find micro sim cards) but really the grey market. With an unlocked iPhone now available you don’t even have to jailbreak it to resell in a capable GSM country. It’s ready right from the box ….