With your terrific support, CardioTrainer is slowly growing up. This means ever more users, more features, and an ever-growing responsibility to reliability from us. I’d like to share an important lesson we received recently, and what we learned from it.

An Important Lesson & CardioTrainer version 0.9.3

On January 26th, we updated the CardioTrainer website to include several new features: remembering your access code (a long-time request!), a CardioTrainer Help/Tutorial page, and many other fixes. Please check out the improved website.

That was the good news. Unfortunately, because of an error in the Website update process, there was a temporary problem uploading tracks to the website between Jan 26 16:50:26 EST and Jan 27 13:30 EST (18 hours). The G1 believed it was uploading the tracks, but the website had a problem receiving them. At our scale, this meant missing some 4000 miles of tracks from our users, a very serious problem! Read on, all is not lost!

Once we learned about the problem, the whole team took emergency measures: working around the clock, we released CardioTrainer 0.9.3, just 20 hours later. This release includes code to auto-retransmit the tracks that were not sent successfully, as well as code that lets you manually retransmit any track from the history. This version also includes some other bug fixes, so there is an upside for you as well.

For the best experience, please head over to the Market and install the latest version, CardioTrainer 0.9.3. All of your data will be saved. If you have any problems, please write back to us.

Since then, we have done a lot to make sure this kind of error will not happen again: improved our server stability, created many additional automatic notifications systems, and new diagnostic and repair tools. We are very sorry for the inconvenience to you, but are also very happy to learn such a valuable lesson. Thank you for your patience, and for continuing to support us on this journey.

The features ahead

We are working very hard to add new features to CardioTrainer. They include simple things like calorie counting, pace measurement, and website improvements, but we are also working on some much bigger ideas. We’d like to keep them a surprise, but we have a feeling you will like them.

We need your help!

We are spending all of our resources on features, so we are really counting on you to get the word out. CardioTrainer is already getting some press coverage. We think we can do much better — if you have any time, please post about us to your favorite blog, or tell that tech columnist friend of yours about CardioTrainer. If you’d like to help even more, please get in touch with us and tell us your ideas.

On behalf of the whole WorkSmart Labs family, I would like to wish you a very Happy New Year!
We’ve been keeping very busy, and I wanted to update you briefly on the Christmas presents we have gotten you.

As some of you already noticed, on Christmas day we posted a new version of CardioTrainer – v0.9.2. Because of a small bug in the way it was uploaded, the Market still says v0.9.1, but it is indeed a new version. If you haven’t tried it yet, check it out — it adds: (drumroll please)

• Voice Output — CardioTrainer now has a voice! It can tell you how far you’ve gone, and how long it took to get there. In the settings screen, you can customize how often you get notified — either based on distance or time, or even completely disable it if you’d rather tune out and enjoy your music. For those of you that exercise with music, CardioTrainer will turn down the music when it talks to you, and then turn it back up when it’s done. A lot more exciting developments coming for this feature!
• Statistics Screen — you can access this either by going to the Statistics menu when you are exercising or by simply clicking on the map. We are going to add more here soon. Look for calories and pace information in the next update!
• Advanced GPS Settings — some of you exercise in areas with dense vegetation or skyscrapers, where the GPS sensitivity level prevents you from getting any GPS points. If so, head over to the Advanced GPS settings screen (reachable from the Settings screen) and adjust the filter level there. Or maybe you’d like to save power for those 20-hour hikes you do. We have a setting for you as well.

We have also fixed a few bugs on the website — KML/GPX export should now export correct timestamps and elevations, and you can now zoom in all the way on your track without it disappearing. We also have a lot more features planned for the website.

Please try them out, let us know what you think of the new features, and if you have a second, jot down a comment in the Market.

We can’t thank you enough for your continued support of CardioTrainer. Your feedback, ideas, comments is what keeps us motivated and allows us to build an amazing product. We are always listening. And we will keep listening in 2009 and beyond.