Time for a new color picker

Posted by

We’re trying out something a little different this month… instead of looking for another generic color picker, we figured it made sense to open it up to our Smashrun community. So if you’ve got a photo that you think would be a perfect candidate, you should definitely share it!

The entry process is pretty straightforward: post your photo on Smashrun’s Facebook wall , include a 120-character description, tag Smashrun on the photo, and share it on your own wall. Ta-da! Easy peasy. Of course, if your photo is chosen, you get a snazzy color-picker badge to go along with it.

As usual, if you have any suggestions or ideas, we’re always keen to hear them. We’ll be choosing a new color picker every month so, over time, we’ll have a crazy range of “team colors” you can choose from! Just remember to read the contest Terms and Conditions.

And, for those who didn’t receive this morning’s somewhat more detailed email, you can view it here.

birthdays (and your birthday badge)

Posted by

This month’s most popular question: how do I set my birthday so I can earn my birthday badge?

Ahh yes.. we definitely should have included this in the FAQ section. Very truly sorry about that. Here’s the answer: at the moment, we’re currently getting your birthday from Facebook. So, as long as your birthday is public information on your Facebook profile, Smashrun will be able to track your birthday and reward you that awesome birthday badge! Not to mention, you get a cake too.

Going forward, we will change this process and just add a birthday field in the settings page. We should have something in place by next release – more updates to follow regarding when that’ll be.

In the meantime, if your birthday is coming up soon (like in the next month) and you don’t currently publish your birthday on Facebook, you can just let us know via email when your birthday is and we’ll make sure you get the badge!

Facebook posting delays – resolved.

Posted by

Over the past 2-3 weeks, we’ve had quite a few users email in about a range of Facebook issues: delays in posting, missing Facebook posts, posts that show up on the “Activity Feed” or the newsfeed but not on the Timeline – lots of weird stuff going on.

We tried to figure out what the problem was as things came up, but because the Timeline was still evolving in many ways, things kept breaking. And then we found out that the problem was actually related to Facebook’s privacy settings.

With the introduction of the Timeline, there were a lot of default permissions that have since changed and some 3rd party platforms integrated with Facebook inadvertently required re-authentication after Facebook’s last major release. So here’s what you have to do…

First you’ll need to go to your Facebook Privacy Settings.

 

 

 

 

 

On the subsequent page, next to “Apps and Websites” – click on Edit Settings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, you’ll have to select Smashrun and manually remove each Facebook permission before clicking on “remove app” at the top.

 

 

 

 

 

Afterwards, you just log back into Smashrun, go to “settings” > Facebook > the page should prompt you to log back into Facebook and re-authorize Smashrun.

Many thanks to our Smashrunner, Mai, for giving us the heads up regarding the changes in Facebook’s old privacy settings! For any questions regarding the above, or if this doesn’t work for you, please let us know by sending us an email at hi@smashrun.com

Nike upgrades

Posted by

Looks like Nike’s down while they make upgrades. Unfortunately that means our Nike integration is down too…

On the subject of PRs

Posted by

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the PR (personal record) section of Smashrun recently, and as they come up I’ve begun to think a lot about the way I’ve implemented it and the pros and cons of the approach.

The PR section on Smashrun is pretty straight forward. I take the speed you ran and then for any run just equal to or farther than a common PR distance for the unit (km/mi) you’ve selected and I multiply the speed by the rounded distance.

An example should make this clear:

You run 10.5k in 1 hour.

So your speed is 10.5k per hour.

Running at 10.5k/hr for 10k would take only 57 mins and 8 secs.

So I use 57:08 as your PR, that way you’re not penalized for running a bit farther. The idea that something would have been a PR if only you stopped at exactly 10k just seems silly to me.

What’s good about this is that you can compare every about a 10k with every other about a 10k. I find this great because usually I just walk out my door and run, and only stop when I get home – I’m not about to start walking just because my GPS says I’ve hit exactly 10k.

Ah, but, how about if you’re in a race? Every course is different, and every racing line is different. I’ve run 10k’s that are curvy and crowded and my GPS has registered well over 10k. I think most people feel that your time is your time for a race. Your 26.6 mile marathon at 4:01:00 isn’t a sub four just because you made wide turns, right?

But at present Smashrun doesn’t this work this way. Whether a run is tagged as race or not. Your PR is the run where you ran the fastest. Period. If you ran 10.5kph on average for a 10k race that your wide turns turned into a 10.5k race. Smashrun will say that that’s faster than a race where you ran 10.1kph on a pretty straight line for exactly 10k.

So, I’m considering having two models. For races your time will be your time, but for all other runs your time will continue to be calculated as it is. But before I make this change we wanted to get your thoughts.

What makes the most sense?

Do you have any better ideas on how to handle this?

New features and fixes

Posted by

Everyone’s running is different, so each persons running stats can expose unique problems. Over the past couple months we’ve had dozens of bug reports from our users. In this latest release we’ve hopefully fixed most of the major ones. We’ve also added a few nice features and tweaks, they’re small things, but they’re things that we think you’ll like.

  • An enhanced battery meter for Nike+ users .Just click on the battery icon in the header to see a report of all the Nike sensors you’ve used in the past.

  • An enhanced PR section that includes a separate “official” flag for runs that you’ve tagged with “Race”. You’ll probably want to edit in your official time for the race as well. (Although this does lead to questions of distance ran vs. official distance for when your stuck in a big pack taking wide turns).

  • The morning/afternoon run pie chart now breaks out days in which you ran both.

  • On some badges where it makes sense, you can click on the badge to see how close you’ve come to getting the bade. The running streak, days logged in a row, and miles run in a week/month badges now show your records and when those records occurred.

  • We’ve also taken some steps to improve the internationalization of the site. Date formats, time formats, and kilometer/mile support should be working correctly throughout the site.

Happy Running,

Chris

PS.

Special thanks to Peter F, and the dozens of other users whose screenshots and detailed reports made our work a thousand times easier.

Tweet your 2011 running stats

Posted by

So last week: I posted my 2011 running report on Quantified Self’s LinkedIn group and got a message from someone who said I should also tweet it. Of course, that was easier said than done, especially because my post was so darn long:

 

 

 

I tested a few tweet variations and eventually we settled on something like Joe Cullin‘s – yeah!

 

 

 

Consider it our first step towards many more tweeting action for your sharing preferences. Keep an eye on that bouncy bird on the right… one day, that little guy will move on to doing bigger and better things within Smashrun….. but, for now, he’s sticking around so you can tweet your 2011 running stats.

Nike+ troubles / new functionality

Posted by

Nike+ has been going up and down all day again today. Lots of people trying out the sensors they got in their stockings for Christmas, I’m guessing. Expect some difficulty uploading your Nike runs until they resolve this issue.

We’re going to take this opportunity to push out a new release. Smashrun will be down for approximately 10-15mins, starting at 1:45pm

UPDATE 1:50pm

The update is now live. This includes a few small fixes, and a new Tweet your 2011 stats button stuck on the edge. It’s wiggling just now, so you’ll notice it, but we’ll turn that off in a week or so, or lose it all together if you guys hate it.

What do you think?

Facebook patches

Posted by

We’ve just put in a fix for some of the Facebook issues we’ve been having. There’s a few changes to how Facebook works now that you’ll want to note.

  • Relink your Facebook account. If you log in with Facebook this will be done automatically, but if not you’ll want to go to Settings -> Facebook -> Connect to Facebook. You’ll need to do this to see publish your runs, or see your Facebook friends on Smashrun
  • Follow your Facebook friends On the Facebook settings page you’ll see your Facebook friends who are on Smashrun. Just click their photos and their stats will appear in your friend list. Follow relationships are one way like they are in Twitter.

Hopefully this will fix the problems we’ve been having as Facebook makes changes to their API, but if you notice any strange behavior, please shoot us an email at hi@smashrun.com and we’ll start fixing it right away.

Facebook troubles

Posted by

Facebook has made some changes which are causing some user’s to have trouble logging into Smashrun with their Facebook credentials. We’re working on a fix and should have one in place shortly. In the meantime, you should be able to login with either your Nike password or your Smashrun password. If this doesn’t work shoot us an email at hi@smashrun.com and we’ll sort you out.

Really sorry for the inconvenience.