MBlog

Mac Support Goes One Step Further

You Mac users have heard it countless times . . . "make friends with PC user and update your device software."  Now you don't have to make nice with a PC user when upgrading your device software.  Garmin recently released the beta version of the WebUpdater for Mac:

Now you can update your device software at your own convenience. We recommend that all Garmin customers run the WebUpdater every few months to ensure that you have the latest and greatest features on your GPS device. It REALLY does help.

Customize Digest Columns

MotionBased users can now Customize their Digest.  By utilizing this new feature you can keep certain analysis tools on your front page.  Not only can you customize your Digest in My Activities, you can also customize how you see the TrailNetwork.

Ease of use is key, and you'll find that it's very simple to Customize your Digest.  Simply hover over the item you want to move, click, and drag the item to the "Current View" row.  When you're done selecting the columns, save you customization and you'll have your own personalized Digest.

 

For more information check out the Customize Digest Columns article on our Knowledge Base.

 

Product Roadmap Survey

Help us decide what features should come next at MotionBased by taking a quick survey.

There's no shortage of great ideas to be implemented at MotionBased. We've been aggregating a mighty product roadmap since our inception a few years back. But before we start launching the next round of features, we'd like to get a gut-check by asking you to set the priorities.

Please take a few minutes to complete our online survey and point MotionBased in the right direction. We're giving a FREE 1-year subscription or extension of MotionBased Standard to 5 random people who complete the survey by July 31, 2006. Thanks!!!

Google Maps and more

We just released a new version of MotionBased comprised of mostly bug fixes, but we added a few nuggets to wet your appetite of things to come:

Google Maps in Dashboard Map Preview - The most obvious change is that we've switched to Google Maps in the Map Preview section of the Dashboard. This allows you to pan and zoom on your route using the familiar Google Map interface.  For those who live in areas where Google Maps does not provide good coverage, you may switch back to our original maps by changing the default map setting in your Account Preferences.

View activities in Google Maps - Map Preview not big enough? How about viewing one of more activities on a full page Google Map? Just follow these steps:

1. Go to the Digest in My Activities or TrailNetwork
2. Select the check boxes of the activities you would like to view in Google Maps
3. Click on the "More Actions..." pull down menu
4. Select "Google Maps" under Activity Exports

And the result...

And what about the Map Player and Analyzer? Let's just say we're working on it -- not too far off.

Activity Info Links - We're making it easier to browse your activities and those in the TrailNetwork by adding keyword links directly from the Activity Info portion of each activity. The blue links don't stand out, but there sure do add a lot of functionality.

Improved Course Download - We've made some improvements with Course Downloads, so you should be able to download any activity at MotionBased as a Course using the MotionBased Agent. We encourage everyone to start experimenting with Courses. Once you get the hang of using Courses during your workouts, you'll begin to really see the value of your GPS device.

Improved Filters - Saved Reports

The next generation of MB filters has arrived. We’ve done our best to integrate the search functionality similar of our favorites tools out there. Like - Google suggest and iTunes smart playlists. Released in tandem with the opening of the TrailNetwork, now anyone can explore the TrailNetwork with greater precision, added ease, and have more fun. The much anticipated Saved Reports are also now available.   

Improved Filters
Filters now use keywords. As you type into the filter box, MB guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time. So, let’s say you're looking for Trail Running – Race – Colorado. As you start typing tr.., the drop down populates. Select Trail Running and hit the Add button to apply.

As you add filters, they build in the Filter area to reference and delete.

   

For now, the Advanced Filters don’t have the same suggest functionality, but are great to filter for  username, location, activity name, and comments.

   

Don’t forget about Map Filters. The best way to search within an area or defined boundary.

Saved Reports
Do you find yourself creating the same report? Wish you could just save it? Well, now MB Standard customers can with Saved Reports. An unlimited number of Saved Reports are available in both the Digest and TrailNetwork. Save for another session, modify at anytime, and build-off previous reports with “Save As”. Whether you’re watching for new routes in an area, keeping an eye on a friendly competitor, or you’re like me and tracking how many miles you’ve ridden this year, saved reports are the fast track to results.

Now that the TrialNetwork is open, don’t forget to login before crafting that perfect report. MB can’t save a report if it doesn’t know who you are.

Happy Filtering!

Browse by Google Maps

Ever since Google launched their Maps earlier this year there has been a buzz around the Internet.  Hackers found their way to display geo-tagged photos and Craig's List Housing on Google Maps.  The same day the London terrorist attacks took place there was a Google Map with all the locations.  MB has been excited to see this break-through in web-mapping technology, but being a commercial web application we could not participate in the hack...until now!

Introducing MotionBased Map View in your personal Digest and the TrailNetwork!  MotionBased is all about training and recreating by location so you'll find browsing by map to be one of the best additions we've made to MotionBased.  Here's a snapshot of the TrailNetwork today...

You may click on the MB Dot icon on the Map or the listing to the right.  The trail will draw on the map.  Click on the Icon again or choose the Info link in the listings and the Information Popup will show the elevation profile and offer links to the Dashboard, Map Player and Analyzer.  Google Earth and GPX export are also offered for all activities on the TrailNetwork.  Check out my mountain bike ride in Whistler, British Columbia a few weeks ago...

This new feature is loaded with cool stuff so I encourage you to play around with it a bunch, but one thing worth mentioning is the introduction of the Map Filter.  This allows you to see only those activities in a certain area.  Here I just zoomed into Japan using the Google Map controls and I pressed the "Apply" button for the Map Filter. 

Pressing the button created the red boundary on the Map and all the activities found within the boundary are shown.  A great way to explore an area that you may be visiting to see where others are running or cycling.

Note: These maps are a bit of a memory hog so you may find restarting your browser every now and again will increase performance.  We'll continue to work on this problem, but it is an unfortunate limitation that both Internet Explorer and Firefox seem to share with advanced web applications. 

It was just too cool to keep to ourselves any longer. We hope you enjoy it.

Aaron
The Digital Trailblazer

Google Earth - FREE

In March we announced MB's integration with Keyhole, enabling users to easily export MB activities into their powerful 3-D satellite imagery application. As a Google owned company we anticipated great things, and they delivered. It's morphed into Google Earth with more functionality and improved imagery. Including; 3-D city models (US cities), Google Local search, and fly-throughs. That's right, simply export an activity from MB and you'll be flying-through the route in no time. Even better, they offer three versions and the first level is FREE! So, do yourself a favor and download Google Earth. You'll be amazed with MB's seamless integration.   

Thanks Google Earth....

BTW - We need to change the Keyhole buttons to Google Earth. In the mean time, the Keyhole buttons export activities to Google Earth or Keyhole, depending on which application is installed on the machine.

Improved Upload Process - New Agent

The MotionBased Agent 2.1 was just released for download yesterday.  We highly recommend this Agent for all to use.

Choose Activities to Send

The big addition for the new Agent is the ability to choose which activities you'd like to send to MotionBased.  No longer will you have to Send Entire History!

Notice the radio buttons in the Configure Agent page:

If you choose Send new activities only then the Agent will behave much as it did before.  Only the new activities will go and you won't see any selection page. 

If you choose Always choose activities to send then you will always see the new choice page...

Notice only the activities that have not already been sent to MB on this computer are checked. 

NOTE: Even though you have Send new activities only checked this screen will appear if you choose Synchronize and the Agent doesn't find any new activities to send.  This way you can pick which activities to send instead of sending the entire history.  Yes, that was painful.  Sorry to make some of you deal with that poorly implemented feature.

NOTE: For all non-Forerunner users the sport type will be Unknown and you will see a lot more entries on this page than activities that you performed.  This is a limitation of the track log segmentation found on Garmin non-Forerunner devices.  Simply choose to send all those that appeared on the date you performed your activity or better yet just use the Send new activities only  feature. 

Foreign Language Support

In preparation for our World launch, the Agent has now been modified to send languages other than English.  Previous Agents were having trouble encoding some language written into the speed zones and workouts.

Email Address Verification - No More GPS Spam

This one is for you John, Mike, Eric and all the other early MBers that won your first name as your username.  Since we used to require only a username to send activities to MB sometimes another Mike or John would send their activities into the wrong inbox.  Not fun for the recipient that gets someone else's activities and definitely not fun for the person that can't find their activities in the inbox.

Note:  We require your Email Address and not your password.  This is done so you may have someone else send activities for you without having to expose your password. 

Import Activities

Essentially the same as the manual upload via a web browser, but since the Agent is sending the activities the files are compressed.  This will save you lots of time uploading those big Logbook and Garmin Training Center Export files.

Note:  Garmin Training Center Export Files are not being accepted at this time.  We will be doing so shortly once we can ensure there will be no performance degradation for the server.

Messaging

Pretty much the only time you are going to get a red X is when MotionBased is unavailable, you aren't connected to the Internet or you have a firewall blocking the Agent from sending files.

If your Agent can't communicate with MotionBased you will see Send Queued Activities at the top of the list on the main menu after you have chosen synchronize.  This means that your files were successfully retrieved from your device and stored in a local queue, but not able to be sent to MB.  You can simply try to resend this generated file until it is processed.  This is especially handy if you are on a road trip and uploading activities to your laptop when you don't have an Internet connection.

 

For most other errors then you will get the green check-mark telling you synchronization is successful, but the messages on the right side will be the final say about the status of the upload.

Notice the error message on the right. I sent a file that MotionBased does not recognize.  Every time there is an error MotionBased Customer Support receives an email and starts to investigate.

The Green check-mark says all was successful, but the message on the right side says there was an error.  The message on the right explains the results of the upload where the messages on the left tell you if the Agent was able to communicate or not.

We admit that the green check-box successful message can be contradictory to the actual results relayed by MotionBased on the right side of the Agent.  We may change the wording of the Green Check-mark message, but the results will always be relayed almost entirely by the Upload Results messages.

Inbox and Upload Restrictions

Some of you have noticed that we are not allowing you to upload if you have more than 5 activities already in your Inbox.  This DOES NOT mean that you must upload 5 or fewer activities at once.  It simply means that you cannot start a new upload if you have too many activities waiting in your Inbox.  If you have 30 activities in your Forerunner and want to upload you may do so...once.  You won't be able to send another activity until you have submitted those 30 into your Digest.

We are also restricting only 3 uploads per user per hour.  This shouldn't affect the normal user, but will restrict someone that is having difficulty sending their files from continually trying.  We have found many people are impatient and instead of waiting for MotionBased to finish processing the uploads they send again and again and again. Ironically the more times you send the slower the system gets. Perhaps if the stoplight crosswalk button would make people wait longer the more times the button is pressed then we wouldn't have this dilemma.

These changes are not meant to keep anyone from sending actual activities to MotionBased, but are necessary to help some users understand that they don't need to send their upload 15 times.  The record was over 400 activities in the Inbox...in the long run we are doing everyone a favor.

If you have a special need then please email customer service.

Advanced Users

The presence of Send Queued Activities means you have a file waiting to be sent to MotionBased.  Your files are stored locally in system folder that is accessible by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + F from the main Agent screen.  There you will see folder named Queue where your files are temporarily stored.  QueueResend is the place where files that will be sent and will show up in your inbox whether you have already uploaded them or not.  Sent is a history of all the files sent to MotionBased.  If you are running out of Disk Drive space then you may want to delete all the files in your Sent directory.

Summary

The upload process has been one of the biggest bummers about using MotionBased for many people.  We do our best to stay in tune with our customers and react with new features that should continue to make MotionBased a cool place to track your activities and share them with the community.

MB Gravity Elevation Correction

Bringing GPS Elevation Down to Earth™

MB Gravity™ is our next solution to just one of the many accuracy issues that are present when using GPS to train and record your outdoor experiences.

The Problem

Too many activities have displayed that 100 meter spike when viewing an elevation profile in the Dashboard.  This often occurs when the satellite signals are blocked from the sky above (trees, buildings, deep canyons).  Even though your horizontal location is still accurate enough to place you on the correct side of the road, the third dimension (alititude) is harder for your GPS unit to calculate...it requires a lock on four satellites where location only requires three.

Even if you don't get a big spike, it is often a bunch of little spikes that end up causing incorrect cumulative statistics.  We call that the Elevation Heart Attack. 

Nuts and Bolts

MB Gravity is a MotionBased.net web service that will cross-reference the horizontal location of every point along a GPS track and provide a more accurate and consistent elevation value provided by an elevation database built by the government.

Results

So what does all this mean for you...better elevation statistics.  Total Elevation Gain/Loss, no more spikes, more consistent grades.  Distance calculation will be more accurate because we won't be measuring the extra distance required to travel up and down all that incorrect elevation.  The MB Tune Up™ auto corrections won't need to be so agressive because the numbers will make more sense.

Let's take a typical ride with our good friend Randy Warren (you know him as rwarren on the TrailNetwork).  Randy lives in the Great Plains as many of you do.  No offense, I grew up in Minnesota myself.  Randy's ego has been stroked by MotionBased because his GPS reports him as being a stud climber.  Well, his numbers have been wrong sorry to say.  View this before and after situation:

Before MB Gravity

Few things to notice...Is this an elevation heart attack?  Did Randy really do 2,700 feet (820 meters) of climbing?  I think not! Was he picked up by a bird flown up a few hundred feet and dropped back down?  I really think not!  Why does this ever get reported to MotionBased by the GPS unit??? We have no idea, but we don't like it any more than you do!!!

After MB Gravity

So check this out?  The map looks like the same activity, but the elevation profile would make you think otherwise.  2700 feet is now 533 feet.  The elevation that was reported by the GPS unit was off by about 5x off reality.

This is just one example of how MB Gravity is going to help your numbers make some real sense.

Current Limitations

O.K.  MB Gravity is way cool.  I am not selling you snake oil just to get a subscription or two, but there are some known limitations to MB Gravity.

1. It works much better on roads and flat terrain than it does on steep grades or trails on a steep hillside.  We have a plan to fix that.
2. If you are crossing a bridge, MB Gravity will think you are swimming.  Don't worry we have a long-term solution to this problem...it's you!  Be sure to track all of your rides at MB so we can use the data collected from all the other activities on the TrailNetwork to know that you were high above the water.
   
   
   Notice the big square drop on the MB Gravity corrected photo on the right compared to the original on the left.  This is crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.  Too bad since you can see the profile at the end of the corrected photo looks a lot better than the original on the left.
   
   
3. You have to choose to apply the corrections to each activity.  It is not automatic.  We will eventually be providing you a way to easily correct all of your activities at once so don't spend too much time correcting the historical.  We wanted to get some more feedback before we go correcting our 50,000 activities and slowing down an already overburdened server.

Who will benefit?

I do imagine we could get a few more of you to pay for a yearly subscription if we charged for MB Gravity.  It will put an exclamation mark at the end of the bullets that differentiate MotionBased from other GPS mapping and training solutions.  MB Gravity is avaialable to all MB Customers both Lite and Standard. 

Here at MB we don't feel that anyone should have bad data.  Providing MB Gravity to everyone will benefit the community by putting more trust into their GPS training experience when coupled with MB.  We have plenty of features left to implement and yes they will only be available to Standard customers, but our MB Tune Up and MotionBased Everywhere™ products will be available to all.  You may not understand why just yet, but trust us on this one...it will pay off.

How and When?

MB Gravity is available right now at MotionBased.com since Monday, May 9th. 

Just view the activity of interest, click on Activity Options in the upper right corner when viewing the Dashboard or Map Player and choose MB Gravity Checkbox.  Notice that auto-corrections is required to be enabled at this time.

Remember, we will be providing a way to correct all your existing activities at once so don't get carple tunnel checking that MB Gravity box.  We want you to spend your time outdoors and not on the computer doing maintenance...that's our job!

Last note...Thanx to Brad Culberson a fellow MB Tester for implementing the MB Gravity Web Service on contact with MB. Brad, your efforts are much appreciated and you've done the GPS Fitness community a great favor by helping us get MB Gravity built quickly and with great quality.

Aaron
The Digital Trailblazer™

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