CardioTrainer & WorkSmart Labs are growing up
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.
April 12th, 2009 at 10:49 am
One new feature I would very much like is the ability to link to my tracks for friends to see without having to give them my access code. Also the facebook app could do with posting about tracks or at least the option of doing so, thorugh the news feed.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:57 am
I have what I think are some good feature ideas for you guys. I also think I have a really good marketing opportunity. Please either email me or give a call sometime.
ph. 208.596.6165
Andrew
November 14th, 2009 at 1:31 am
Is there a way you can add elliptical as a selection for activity? I would like to be able to select it instead of running indoors and I am not so sure it is measuring my distance or workout correctly. I really like the app and once I am in a little better shape will start outdoor running again. I am also using a polar watch with my workouts to monitor my heart rate. But if you guys could like a heart rate monitor to the app that would make it the perfect workout solution.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
i just downloaded this app along with the weight loss trainer and they work great. like George Pfannschmidt said i would also like an elliptical option added for the same reasons eh posted. I am in the military so i would like to see an option added to change the notifications i.e. change it to announce how fast i am running a 1.5 miles since the navy PRT (physical readiness test) is 1.5 miles long and also to change the increments in which the app tells me i am running i.e. like set it to notify me of my progress every .1 mile or .5 or some such thing like that.