MBlog

MB Viewports

On the long list of reasons why MB chose to be a web application, you’ll find Viewports. Like the email activity function, Viewports are just another way to share your activities on the Internet. It’s all part of what we call “MotionBased Everywhere”, empowering customers to share their great feats and favorite routes, all while spreading the good word of MotionBased.

Viewports are a quick and easy way to add MB activity frames to your website or blog. Whether you’re a retailer or club looking for a mapping solution, or a blogger that wants to prove that you do more than keyboard workouts, we've made it easy to share your activities.

What is a Viewport
It’s an iframe or graphic summary of a MB activity that is designed for websites and blogs. Viewports also include a View Activity link that takes you to a MotionBased invitation page, where they can learn more about the makeup of the route.

Here are a few examples of Viewports being used by some MotionBased customers:
    TC Hazzard
    Brad Culberson
    Focus. Play.

How Do I Create a Viewport
First things first, you can only create Viewports from your own activities. So, you’ll definitely need a MB account and maybe even a little help from the Quick Start Guide to get activities into your digest.

So let's get started. While viewing an activity in the Dashboard view, click the Options button on the top right.

This will take you to the edit activity page, where you can change the activity name, classification, export track to GPX, as well as create a Viewport by clicking the link on the lower right.

After choosing the map background and size, hit generate.

You’ll see that we produce several options for you to choose from. Want the whole package, the code is there. Just want the link, you got it. Simply copy and paste the corresponding HTML code into your site or blog.

After that, you’re on your own. Viewports may not bring overnight fame, but they'll definitely get your friends talking.

Stay tuned. More good tips to come.

 

 

The Norton Police

Well, I guess Symantec the makers of Norton Internet Security and Norton Anti-Spam decided they control what we see and don't see at websites.

Norton Internet Security and/or Norton Anti-Spam can completely block the Map Player and Analyzer from appearing on the MotionBased website. For some unimaginable reason, they view the Map Player and Analyzer as either ads or spam.  This is particularly problematic with the 2004 versions which enable Ad Blocking by default thus wiping out the Map Player and Analyzer from our site. Pretty rude if you ask us.

Solution
We just need to convince the Norton police to ease up a bit.  After all, viewing distance splits and moving dots ain't no crime, right?  Please follow these instructions to override Ad Blocking with Norton Internet Security and/or Norton Anti-Spam.

MB Soapbox
Norton has no right to strip legitimate content from a website -- especially when they make this "feature" the default setting.  We understand and agree with their end goal -- get rid of annoying ads -- but their execution was abysmal. Fortunately, they learned from this mistake and changed the default setting to "off" in the 2005 versions (too bad it seems live everybody is using 2004).

Here's a good article explaining what they did.  And if you're looking for "quality"  security software, you should look here and here.

Norton Firewall

Norton Internet Security and/or Norton Firewall can prevent the MotionBased Agent from communicating with the MotionBased website.  If you're experiencing difficulties sending your data from the Agent to MotionBased, you may want to check your firewall settings.  This can be a problem with any firewall software application although we tend to see this happening more with Norton.

Solution
Norton is suspicious of the Agent and won't let it send your data to MotionBased. All you need to do is instruct Norton that all is good with the Agent.

If this doesn't resolve the problem, please view MotionBased Agent Help.

Finally, we don't mean to pick on Norton (save that for the next post) because these Firewall issues can happen with other software applications (although we're yet to hear about one).  If you use another firewall software app and run into problems with the Agent, please post them in our Forum or the comments below.

Big Day for MB

Two things hit close to home today as we continue to watch the popularity of MotionBased grow.

Today we are going to reach 25,000 activities in the TrailNetwork (there are many more that are marked as private that do not make it into the TrailNetwork).  This number, although symbolic, is a great milestone that has come much quicker than our projections indicated it would.  Exponential rather than linear growth is always a good sign.

The other "close-to-home" thing actually happened to my partner Carol last night while she was running at Kezar track with many others from the SF Tri Club.  Carol holds a lot of MB milestones like the first to completely track a complete Triathlon on MB, the first to receive a MB e-Card, she is in the top 20 for all time activity posts and she was on the backpack trip where MotionBased was conceived.

You can imagine Carol has heard enough about MotionBased at every dinner we eat, every park we ride, every trail we run and every person we meet.  So she was running around the track last night and her Forerunner 301 was spotted by another runner.  We all know it is pretty easy to spot since the GPS unit is still large enough to make a statement.  Anyway, this person started asking her about the device and then, with some enthusiasm, tells Carol she can upload to MotionBased.  Carol was flattered and shared her close connection with MotionBased with the other person.

So both of these milestones come together.  Our growth is a clear indicator that the word is starting to spread.  Not because of us, but because of you.  Send those emails, talk up MB and more than anything continue to be active in the outdoors and in the MB TrailNetwork.  I guarentee that your participation will be rewarded with continued feature and community development. 

Thank you!

Aaron

Europe - Where is it?

So we've been saying for quite some time that we are right around the corner to supporting Europe.  So where is it?  Well it is east of here or perhaps west of here, depending upon which way keyhole decides to fly.

Seriously, supporting Europe and the rest of the world is not about us having problems with the technology to support different countries.  Yes, that is a part of it and we do have some bugs to work out, but they are relatively simple.  It is about us NOT GETTING IN OVER OUR HEADS.

Back in the day when MotionBased was in beta things were relatively easy.  If there was a problem then heck, we're in beta.  Everyone can deal with it.  Well, we actually had fewer bugs and broken features than we do now.  We did add features which made the Digest / Reports about ten times more powerful (even if I am the only one that understands truly how to use it).  Our early beta feedback told us that the most important thing that MotionBased was offering is the Digest so we listened and made the necessary improvements.

So what does any of this have to do with Europe?  We have made a contract with our paying customers.  We are happy to say that many people are paying and that leap of faith deserves a QUALITY SERVICE in return.  Across the website and the customer support.  It has been our desired level of quality that has been keeping us from supporting Europe and nothing else.

MotionBased is not software, but a community.  A community of people that are sharing their workouts to help understand and quantify their own efforts, help others benefit from their own efforts and hopefully have a little fun in the process.  Software is easy to sell without bounds.  Heck, you pay us and we barely hear from you again. 

A web service is connection between you and us.  One that we watch closely all the time to make sure that you are getting the experience you are paying for.  We back up your data nightly so you don't have to worry about losing your precious information.   We get woken up in the middle of the night when the system is having problems and yes we have to fix them.

When we launch Europe we are going to see a flood of activities from around the world.  The UK by itself will be a major addition.  We want to make sure that we can provide a good level of service to everyone that uses our service.  Call me a hopeless romantic from the days of old school business, but that is what you are buying into when you subscribe to MotionBased...a company that cares about our existing customers more than getting new customers!  There goes our potential investors I am sure! 

We are trying to grow this company naturally and not fall into the traps of our .com predecessors.  It is not easy.  We started this business because we wanted to make a difference in something that matters to us, enjoy a lifestyle beyond software development that crosses into our personal interests.  We have definitely succeeded at that, but there is one problem...we don't have any personal interests anymore!  Which is the other reason why Europe isn't out there yet.  Because I took last 2 weekends off.  The weather has been unreal!!! 

Back to the question...Where is MB Europe support?  A better question is when?   I just spent $700 fixing my squeaky bike and I won't be riding it until Europe support is done. I will be working around the clock to make sure it gets there soon.  One last binge effort before we take a step back and start making MotionBased easier to use with less defects. 

Our customer service is starting to stablize, Heart Rate support is going strong and the system errors/slow responses are almost completely gone so we are finally ready!  Are you?  Check out http://trailtest.motionbased.com to see the latest progress on our world support.

Aaron

Keyhole

We secretly introduced a new feature to MotionBased last week -- integration with Keyhole. For those of you who don't know about Keyhole and it's incredible 3-D mapping capabilities, we highly encourage you to check it out. Google liked it so much... they bought the company.

Before I get into instructions on how to use MotionBased and Keyhole, let's start off with the good stuff first... check out this flash movie I made of some screen shots from Keyhole.

Even though Keyhole is a separate client application, we made it easy to view MotionBased data. You'll be amazed by the seamless process.

After you install the trial version Keyhole 2 LT or NV, go to My Activities or the TrailNetwork and click the check box of the activity(s) in the Digest that you wish to view; then click on the "Keyhole" button.

You may also launch Keyhole by clicking on the "Export" link directly from the Dashboard: Summary page.

At first, your browser will prompt you to Save" or "Open" the .kml file. You should open the file and be sure to associate it to Keyhole. This way Keyhole will launch automatically the next time you come from MotionBased.

Keyhole will automatically zoom to the selected MotionBased activity.  From there... have at it!!!  Don't be shy and be sure to play around with the controls -- especially the tilt and layering features.  You'll notice that we provide summary information for each activity directly in the Keyhole application for reference information and an easy way to get back to good ol' MB.

Keyhole is a subscription service starting at $30/year.  We don't have any affiliation with Keyhole at this time, so there is no MotionBased special.

Have fun!!!

Welcome

Please stay tuned to the MBlog as we keep you posted on the latest news, trends, and musings from the MotionBased crew.

We'll even throw a few tips now and then -- you never know what little nugget you've been missing out on at good ol' MB.