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by Runner’s World magazine today announced the release of its SmartCoach iPhone app, which creates customized training guides for race distances between a 5-K and a marathon. Users can input their most recent race time, weekly and long-term distance goals, training level (maintenance, moderate, hard or very hard), the day they’d like to schedule their long runs and the amount of time they’d like to train for (up to 16 weeks) to receive their customized plan. The app suggests a running distance and pace that varies each day, increasing in distance and speed and then tapering off shortly before race day. The plans are based upon the work of exercise physiologist Jack Daniels PhD, who co-published two equations that relate oxygen consumption to the speed and length of various running performances. These equations, the app’s Background section explains, have helped shape nearly every training program since developed for runners. The app is available in two versions: one for $0.99 [iTunes link], and a second for free [iTunes link], courtesy of New Balance. The paid version is ad-free and allows users to e-mail and print their training plans, as well as receive special discounts and other offers. While the app offers a much more convenient alternative to planning my own training guide (which I’ve somewhat inefficiently been doing in iCal for the past two years), it doesn’t offer enough functionality to be truly useful. I can’t, for instance, switch my long run to a Saturday because of a scheduling conflict, or adjust my Wednesday run to eight miles because I only had time to do four on Monday. Nor can I record my runs to track my progress. The app would also benefit with the addition of iCal and Google Calendar integration, as well as a timer and GPS-based distance meter which could automatically be saved in the app and on my calendars. Several other running apps already offer these features, like Fitnio [iTunes link], a $1.99 app that tracks your speed, distance and caloric burn, and keeps an ongoing log of your workouts in the app and on its website. The app that offers the best value, I believe, is Revolver’s $0.99 Run Coach Pro [iTunes link]. It offers flexible scheduling, the ability to track runs (both distance and location) and graph your progress, eight-32 weeks of personalized training schedules reportedly designed by a team of Olympic and professional runners, and Read More

Men's Health, the world's largest men's magazine with editions in 40 countries across the globe, has released the Men's Health iPad Edition. With each issue you get everything you'd get in the pages of the regular magazine, but the iPad edition gives you extra benefits including an "Enhanced View" interface that overlays icons on any given page to highlight a page's multimedia features including video of exercises, real-time Snap Polls, bookmarking, and Twitter and Facebook integration. In addition to a Table of Contents pop-up, there's also a Scrub pane feature that allows readers to quickly flip through the entire issue via a film-strip view. Interestingly enough, Men's Health say they will start making enhanced back issues available on the iPad. The iPad is creating a new market for digital magazines and publishers are going to go through a trial-and-error period for a few months to find out what readers want. Right now Men's Health is not offering a bundled print magazine and iPad edition. They do note that the iPad edition will be identical to the print edition, with the exception of adding the interactive features discussed above. If you are a current subscriber to the Men's Health print edition, you will need to purchase the iPad edition separately. What about a subscription for the iPad edition? Men's Health says for now you'll need to purchase each issue à la carte, but they hope to make digital subscriptions to the iPad edition available soon. Men's Health Magazine for iPad is a free app that gives you a 10-page preview of the April issue. Additional issues can be purchased for $4.99. Read More

AT&T responds to famous blogger, Fake Steve Jobs’ attempt to insight a digital flashmob.  AT&T says Operation Chokehold was just an irresponsible cry for attention, but Fake Steve Jobs says it was already a success. Check out the podcast to see why. Bing has hit the App Store. Check out the show to see why people are getting so excited. Utility Toolbox: Pastebot Holiday Bargain Bin: Shape services is having a huge holiday sale on all their ‘+’ applications. EA 25 Days ‘Til Xmas Sale deal of the day was not only on one, but nine of their most popular titles. App of the Day: Eat This, Not That! Eat This, Not that! is a great guide for the holidays. It’s packed with options and has a reasonable price point of $4.99, but the best part, it will help you keep those holiday pounds at a minimum. Read More

I have a new workout buddy, Men’s Health Workouts. A couple weeks ago I was browsing menshealth.com looking for some new workouts when a picture of the ever so sexy iPhone showed up on the middle of the page followed by the words "new iPhone app". Being a sucker for cool new iPhone apps I immediately clicked on the Download now button. The iPhone is turning into a great resource for just about anything on the go, so it is only natural that workouts and fitness would make it there too. What it does: Just as you would expect, this application is a library of workouts and exercises. With over 20 complete workouts and 150 individual exercises, this is a great resource for workout material. Men’s Health has promised to add new workouts and exercises every week, so this app will continue to grow and become more useful. Workouts Workouts are sets of exercises assembled to focus on a certain group of muscles (e.g., biceps) or achieve a specific goal (e.g., burn fat). There are several ways to browse through the workouts the find just the right one: alphabetically, goal or body part. Once you choose a workout, you slide your finger from side-to-side to browse through the exercises in that workout. The workout also includes a timer, so you can watch how long it takes to complete the entire workout. Exercises If you’re the build-your-own type, you can browse through the list of 150 exercises to pick-and-choose the exercises that you would like to do. Exercises can be browsed alphabetically or by body part. Each exercise, in a workout or individually, has a description, pictures of the complete motion and the prescribed number of sets, repetitions per set and rest time between sets. For each exercise you log the number of sets and reps you completed during that session and you can see the results you logged from any previous workout session. Logging a session is really simple with the standard dials to select the number of reps and weight, if applicable. Expansion Packs If the included content isn’t enough, there are several expansion packs you can purchase to add even more exercises. At the time of writing, there are four packs available at $.99 or $1.99 ea. Expansion packs include: The Ultimate Golf Workout Series, Build A Beach Ready Body, The Ultimate Abs Pack, and Huge Arms in a Read More