FitnessKeeper, Inc.

Getting featured in the Android Market is starting to have a meaningful impact for mobile app developers. According to the recent news from fitness app maker RunKeeper, the company saw a 637% increase in downloads since November after just a few days of being a featured app in the Android Market “Health & Fitness” section. But is RunKeeper seeing the boost because of the New Year’s resolution-making crowd? Or is being featured in the Android Market really bumping up download numbers in the extreme for anyone who makes it there? RunKeeper’s success story is a great one. On January 1st, the app became featured in the Android Market, which led it to become the #3 “Health & Fitness” app, up from a previous ranking in the 20′s, and #288 in the entire Android Market, which, as we now know, is at 400,000 apps. It’s certainly a hopeful tale, but one that left us with questions – how much is being featured really worth? Was being a “Health & Fitness” app the real story here? Apparently not. Another popular Android application, Lightbox, a photo-sharing app that’s sort of like a mashup of Instagram and Tumblr, was also featured in the Android Market over the holidays, starting on Christmas Eve. Says CEO Thai Tran, in the week following its new highly visible status, Lightbox saw over 500,000 downloads to bring its total number of downloads to over 1.5 million. For comparison purposes, it took Lightbox three months to reach its first 500,000 downloads. More importantly, getting “featured” didn’t always amount to this level of traction. In summer 2011, for example, as Lightbox was working on its first 500K, it was featured in the Android Market for nearly an entire month. And yet, it still took three months to reach 500K. Lightbox’s growth also mirrors Android’s international growth, Tran notes.  Previously, the U.S. accounted for 55% of Lightbox’s usage, and the U.K. was its #2 country.  But now the U.S. is down to 33% of its usage, and India and Brazil have leapfrogged the U.K. to become its #2 and #3 countries respectively. Lightbox is also seeing traction in Mexico, Malaysia, and Indonesia, says Tran. But Lightbox’s jump was during the holidays – a time when many people are getting brand-new mobile devices and downloading apps. In fact, Flurry said that 1.2 billion apps were downloaded during the 2011 holiday season. What about the Android Market’s Read More

Getting featured in the Android Market is starting to have a meaningful impact for mobile app developers. According to the recent news from fitness app maker RunKeeper, the company saw a 637% increase in downloads since November after just a few days of being a featured app in the Android Market “Health & Fitness” section. But is RunKeeper seeing the boost because of the New Year’s resolution-making crowd? Or is being featured in the Android Market really bumping up download numbers in the extreme for anyone who makes it there? RunKeeper’s success story is a great one. On January 1st, the app became featured in the Android Market, which led it to become the #3 “Health & Fitness” app, up from a previous ranking in the 20′s, and #288 in the entire Android Market, which, as we now know, is at 400,000 apps. It’s certainly a hopeful tale, but one that left us with questions – how much is being featured really worth? Was being a “Health & Fitness” app the real story here? Apparently not. Another popular Android application, Lightbox, a photo-sharing app that’s sort of like a mashup of Instagram and Tumblr, was also featured in the Android Market over the holidays, starting on Christmas Eve. Says CEO Thai Tran, in the week following its new highly visible status, Lightbox saw over 500,000 downloads to bring its total number of downloads to over 1.5 million. For comparison purposes, it took Lightbox three months to reach its first 500,000 downloads. More importantly, getting “featured” didn’t always amount to this level of traction. In summer 2011, for example, as Lightbox was working on its first 500K, it was featured in the Android Market for nearly an entire month. And yet, it still took three months to reach 500K. Lightbox’s growth also mirrors Android’s international growth, Tran notes.  Previously, the U.S. accounted for 55% of Lightbox’s usage, and the U.K. was its #2 country.  But now the U.S. is down to 33% of its usage, and India and Brazil have leapfrogged the U.K. to become its #2 and #3 countries respectively. Lightbox is also seeing traction in Mexico, Malaysia, and Indonesia, says Tran. But Lightbox’s jump was during the holidays – a time when many people are getting brand-new mobile devices and downloading apps. In fact, Flurry said that 1.2 billion apps were downloaded during the 2011 holiday season. What about the Android Market’s Read More

With the first day of the new year falling on a Sunday, it's is a great day to organize whatever resolutions you've made. Here are a few apps to get started with. I'm spending my day getting my tasks lined up in 2Do ($6.99), which is one of the most reasonably priced to-do apps; it not only looks nice but packs in a lot of features. We took a look at the app in October and were impressed with the intuitive interface. I keep it synced between my iPad and iPhone using Dropbox. If you're looking to cut down on paperwork and implement a scan-to-cloud solution, you can invest in a Doxie Go for quick and painless scanning to the cloud service of your choice. If you already have a scanner or multi-function printer but you'd like to move to cloud storage of your scans, give the $19.99 ScanDrop for the Mac a try. ScanDrop works with Evernote, Google Docs or OfficeDrop's cloud service, but scanned files can also be saved on Dropbox or whatever other cloud service you utilize. You can check out our review from March into a fuller look at the service. If you want to give it a try without dropping $20, the company offers the free ScanDrop Lite allowing scanning of up to 15 pages. When Evernote is your destination and you'd prefer a DIY solution, you can roll your own watched folder setup for Evernote (a feature the Windows Evernote client ships with, sad to say). Using that script as a Folder Action quickly uploads any scans or other compatible files via the Evernote Mac client. We took a look at LIVESTRONG Calorie Tracker ($2.99) last year, which Steve Sande felt was the best all-around fitness app for keeping track of both food and exercise. For a free app, Lose It! is a perennial favorite and has added a number of features in the past year including barcode scanning. For focusing just on exercise, there's Fitness HD for iPad, which is currently on sale for $.99 and is also recommended by Steve. Runkeeper also went free during the past year and received a major upgrade at the end of October, and it's the app I use to keep track of my exercise. Steve has another new favorite: the Fitbit Ultra Wireless Tracker ($99.95) and the accompanying free Fitbit app. The device, which Steve reviewed here, Read More

These days, your Android phone is your best friend when it comes to diet and fitness. There are tons of free and paid Android apps to help you on your path to well-being. Start the New Year off right with some of the best health and fitness apps of 2011 for Android. The free RunKeeper Pro app tracks your overall weekly mileage and pace, so you can one-up yourself with more miles earned the following week, or work on improving your pace. You can also keep track for activities like cycling, hiking, downhill skiing, snowboarding, elliptical and more. Other features of the running-themed app include audio cues, customized interval workouts, manual entry for treadmill and other cardio equipment, integrated RunKeeper FitnessClasses and no advertising. Overall, this fitness app works well for wellness walkers, professional runners and general sports enthusiasts to keep track of workouts for improvement week after week. Hit the mat just about anywhere with the Pocket Yoga app for Android ($2.99). This yoga app offers a picture glossary of poses as well as three different types of practices. For each practice, you can choose from beginner, intermediate and expert, as well as follow voice instructions for each pose. There is accompanying music during the practices, which is sort of awful, so I put on my own "om" playlist — an easy change in the settings. Once you pick your ideal practice, you select the time for your workout from 30, 45 or 60 minutes. I love that you can press pause during the workouts at anytime and pick it up later with the "Workout in Progress" button. The free Endomondo Sports Tracker app helps users keep track of their favorite running paths and so much more. Not only does the app track your running path through GPS, it allows you to compete with friends and other users, as well as keeping track of calories burned and mileage. It also offers random pep talks from friends while you run, hike or bike. Another cool feature allows you to download routes, and try to beat the champion of that route — it's kind of like "mayorships" in Foursquare, but for running, cycling and the like. So, yes, you can use this app for more than just running, you can track spinning, hiking, skating, snowboarding, golfing and more. Looking for a simple way to watch your calorie intake and balance that out with calories Read More

And when we say ‘away’ we don’t necessarily mean a vacation (though that would be nice). We mean away from the family for a bit, or away from the constant barrage of Black Friday sales and leftover turkey sandwiches. We’ve already published our lists of great apps for Thanksgiving and for Black Friday, but if you’re stuck at home this weekend, or lumbered with annoying relatives and you really feel the urge to escape or need some time alone, why not try some of these. Nothing like a bit of exercise to relieve some stress or escape for a bit. The good thing about RunKeeper is that it will track your route for you so you don’t get lost (just in case you’re in a different neighborhood). It will also monitor the usual stuff like calories burned, distance run, pace and heart rate. If you’re feeling stifled at home or at the in-laws this holiday weekend, RunKeeper might be just the ticket. How about being thoroughly anti-social for a bit? You don’t even have to fork out a penny for this one, too. Download it, start from the beginning, and just spend hours flinging little birds at green pigs while the rest of the family watches TV or goes shopping. If anyone asks what you’re up to, just pretend you’re working or something. This seriously addictive title will definitely help you escape for a while, and even if you’ve played it before, chances are there’s some new levels you haven’t yet conquered. A Wikipedia app? Yep, hear us out here. We’re choosing this one for a simple reason: the random article feature. Imagine the hours you could while away repeatedly hitting that ‘random article’ button in this app on your tablet or smartphone. Read about something interesting, rinse, repeat. You’ll never know what you’ll learn or what exciting article you’ll come across next. With its access to other interesting wikis (like Wikiquote, Uncyclopedia and Wikitravel) you could lose yourself for hours in this one. While Netflix and Hulu may offer a wider selection of movies and TV shows, they also need a subscription. Crackle, meanwhile, is free and gathers a somewhat random selection of old TV shows and movies many of which may surprise you (for better or for worse). Cranking up the app today I discovered movies such as Donnie Brasco, Snatch and... erm... Resident Evil. TV shows include classics Read More

The popular sports tracking app RunKeeper has been recently updated with few features demanded by its users. Without further ado, here’s what’s new: In addition, new photos and workout countdown features are now available both for iPhone and Android users… So what are you waiting for – grab the new RunKeeper and get back to your running (or whichever activity you prefer the most). Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis. Read More

RunKeeper, the free fitness tracking app, just received a major upgrade that was announced this morning. The app has been gaining a lot of attention since mid-summer, when the company launched a Health Graph API that developers have been using to integrate RunKeeper capabilities into third-party apps and devices. That's not keeping the RunKeeper team from keeping an eye on the core mobile app, and the upgrade shows that RunKeeper is listening to the desires of the user community. So what are the changes? Auto Pause takes care of one common problem with apps that record your running, cycling and walking. When you stop running to tie a shoe, talk to a neighbor, wait for a traffic light to change, or take a picture of the snake that just crossed your path, you need to remember to pause the app's timer. If you don't, you'll find that your average speed for a run, ride or walk drops drastically. Auto Pause pauses tracking when you stop moving, then starts up the timer again when you begin running again. If you use a third-party heart rate monitor with RunKeeper, the app now has Heart Rate Zone visuals and audio cues to let you know when you're in your optimal heart rate zone. The app has had audio coaching around target paces for a while, telling you if you're ahead or behind your pace. Now you can do the same thing with your heart rate, knowing when you're in the zone, need to work yourself a bit harder, or need to slow down a bit. Finally, the RunKeeper team has included updates to their GPS algorithms that improve tracking performance and stability. Altogether, the team says that the performance of the app has improved as well. Read More

The Android Market is full of fitness apps that track your jogs, hikes and bike rides using GPS, recommending trails to explore and documenting how far you’ve gone. But for many, the autumn and winter seasons drive us into hibernation, shortening our daylight hours and covering our jogging trails with inches of snow. Combined with the holiday season of plenty, the winter fats seem inevitable. But with the help of these Android apps, you’ll never be at a loss for indoor workouts, whether you’re in a gym, on a treadmill or are limited to household items. Staying fit is a combination of diet and exercise, and for many of us, the lip-smacking anticipation for Halloween candy, Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts add up to some serious obstacles in our road to healthy living. Keep track of your food intake along with your exercise with Absolute Fitness, an Android app that counts calories, gives you nutrition facts for a variety of dishes, totals your fat, carbs, protein and cholesterol, and helps you tally it all up. Absolute Fitness is known for its charts and graphs, offering you on-hand feedback to encourage your progression by identifying strengths and weaknesses. RunKeeper is a pretty popular app in the Android Market, used by runners to track fitness activities across distance and time. But even without the need for GPS tracking, this free app can monitor your workouts for treadmill and other cardio equipment use. It measures everything you track during a run, including distance, time, pace, calories and heart rate. Looking to the promise of connected devices, RunKeeper also supports the Polar WearLink heart monitor for pairing, letting you automatically incorporate your heart rate with the other real-time data this Android app tracks. Crunches are something you can do anywhere to keep your mid-section toned. Working out for a few minutes a day, you can turn to the Daily Ab Workout for exercises geared to fend off belly fat. The app features about 30 ab-sculpting exercises, curated by a personal trainer. The full version of the Android app has video tutorials and a timer (which you set), and a randomizing feature if you’d like to switch up the daily routine. Daily Ab Workout is just one app in a series of workout apps from Daniel Miller, which also include apps for daily cardio, arm and glut workouts. Pocket Yoga for Android is a digital yoga instructor Read More

I'm a lazy blogger. For most of the day, my exercise consists of clicking and typing, then heading down the stairs for another cup of coffee. Over the years I've blogged about my various attempts and methods of tracking exercise and calorie intake with iOS apps, but I find that I get frustrated with how much work is involved just in tracking what I'm doing. The Fitbit Ultra (US$99.95, announced and available today) might be the unobtrusive fitness buddy I've been looking for. Using my iPhone for tracking fitness walks, I have to remember to start up the app (RunKeeper), pause if I stop for a rest or to chat with someone, stop it when I get home and then type in a tag for the exercise. Since these types of apps use location services, they tends to suck down my battery quickly, which is the reason I've had a Mophie Juick Pack Air installed on the iPhone for the last ten months. Finally, the iPhone and associated fitness apps don't track the work I'm doing around the house. I tend to go up and down the stairs in our house a lot, which is a surprisingly good workout, yet those iPhone apps don't take that into account. The Fitbit Ultra is a tiny device about the size of a flash drive, weighing just .4 ounces and shaped like a small clip. There's a reason for that shape, since you can just clip the Fitbit Ultra onto clothing and let it track your movements throughout the day. The device has just one button, and uses a bright OLED display that is invisible when it's not in use. I found that the best way for me to use the Fitbit Ultra is to just drop it in my front pocket. That's what I love about the Fitbit Ultra -- I don't constantly have to be futzing around with it. I also don't have to do anything to get the data from the Fitbit to the Fitbit website (more about that in a moment) except be within about 25 feet of my computer. It checks to see if the combo charging stand / syncing transmitter is nearby about every 15 minutes, and when it is, the device sends changes to the Fitbit site via a plugin that is installed on your Mac. So, what does it track? To quote the old Police song, Read More

If you're a Nike+ user and you've been experiencing issues with the service lately, you're not alone. According to TechCrunch, enough users have been having problems with Nike+ over the past few months that Nike has sent an email to users apologizing for the service's troubles and promising a fix. Jayme Martin, VP and GM of Nike Running, confessed to users that "Just like you, we hold ourselves to incredibly high standards, and right now Nike+ isn't living up to them." Immediate fixes outlined in Martin's letter: "As of today we have increased login speed and eliminated a majority of login failures. We have improved your ability to sync devices, log runs and post information to Facebook. We are also working on a new version of the Nike+ GPS app that will be released shortly. It will introduce some great new features and address some of the recent bugs." Martin also says that Nike is "working on a brand new platform for Nike+ that includes better coaching, maps and challenges. It will be much faster, more social, and easier to use, providing more information and analysis of your runs." Meanwhile, if you've been experiencing problems with Nike+ yourself, multiple alternatives to the service exist which offer functionality that meets or exceeds that of Nike+. I've been an avid RunKeeper user for a couple years, and I can definitely recommend that platform to any iOS user looking to track their fitness regime. If your electronic workout partner is an iPod nano, however, Nike+ is still the only game in town. Read More