2 posts tagged “community”

Records

Jillian and I went to the Palisades Mall today to meet Deanna and Altug for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory.  Afterwards, we did some shopping, and I got a new iPod nano along with Nike+iPod running kit.  I've been secretly dying to try out the running kit, but it only works right now with an iPod nano.  My iPod shuffle was suiting me just fine for my workouts, but recently it hasn't been working that well, ever since we traveled back in August around the time of the terrorist scare.  I think the airport security equipment might have damaged my iPod then.  Anyway, I'll take any excuse to buy the latest music gadget, and there you have it.

I just got back from my first run with the Nike+ running kit, and my initial reaction is very positive.  It's certainly a novel concept.  First, there is a "pedometer" transmitter which you insert into your Nike+ shoe (I don't have a compatible shoe, so Jillian helped me rig the transmitter onto my shoelaces with a ziploc bag and some tape).  The transmitter talks to the iPod nano, which displays elapsed running time, distance, average pace, and calories burned.  I think rigging my shoe affected the accuracy of the transmitter, since I'm pretty sure my usual running route is more than 3.17 miles, and closer to 3.5.  Nonetheless, my pace was bad, so I have plenty of room to improve!

I'm hoping this kit will get me in the habit of running more often, in the few months I have left before it gets too cold and too dark to run when I get home from the train.  I was running fairly consistently, about 3-5 times a week, from April until early July.  Two trips and lots of crappy weather finds me back to square one.

The running kit is great.  Besides the obvious benefit of tracking stats of a single run, you can upload your running data to the Nike+ community site by creating an account and linking it to iTunes.  From there, you can track your progress, set goals, challenge your friends, and more officially boast about your PRs (if running isn't your thing, PR = "personal record").  It builds a more compelling community amongst runners, since at the heart of the site are your actual running stats.

One last cool thing that I'll say about Nike+iPod.  There is a "power song" feature, allowing you can set one specific song before your workout that gets you pumped up.  At any point during the run, you can hit the center button on the iPod nano, and the power song will start playing.  As you can see from the graph below, the power song helped improve my pace tremendously at the end of my run.

Running Graph

Ok, after having lots of fun with Vox the past few days, it's time to give you some feedback.

1. You made it about me.  You made the blog central to the social experience.  My thoughts and musings and links to stuff I find interesting are all at the center.  My friends and things that are "related" spin out from that center.  A much more interesting homepage than some top 10 or "did you know?" or worse, some boilerplate marketese that I would have ignored.  Plus, I totally dig the personal url.
2. You made it easy.  Ok, it's obvious that Vox is trying to appeal to a wide audience, especially people who may be new to the blogging scene and aren't super familiar with html, handling photos, links, etc.  Besides some of the obvious things, several of my favorite UI elements that seem to be unique to Vox are: a) top navigation that follows me on everyone's blog; b) the modal dialogs that prevent all sorts of browser history confusion and remind me (via faded page underneath) why I was performing an action in the first place; c) easy image placement in the rich content editor, and that images and other media are pulled into my library so there are no worries of future broken links.
3. I love your metaphors.  Neighbors - perfect!  No anxiety over assigning friendship status to acquaintences or strangers.  Just like blogs, the link love doesn't have to be reciprocal, and with the neighbor metaphor, it's not as creepy (I hope) when a stranger links to you.
4. Exploring is fun.  It feels a lot easier to walk through the neighborhood on Vox than on other social networking sites.  Again, since the blog is central in purpose, each page is unique and makes me want to click around more.
5. Yet I feel very safe.  The privacy controls are just right, so I don't worry about what I say or do.  I can always hide things I don't want the entire world knowing about.
   
6. You give me things to do.  Writer's block, not a problem, thanks to the ingenious question of the day feature.  A great continuous icebreaker, it encourages a lot of new daily content, and I lot of people's posts to read.  Usually that gets the mind going and helps me think of even more to say.

So, this is stuff Vox already knows, and consciously designed, but I wanted to say thanks and emphasize that you really nailed these parts.  Vox strikes a great balance of community and individual.  I needed a home for a more personal blog, and I'm hoping this turns out to be it.