Category: Geek Stuff

Time out for some Fanboy Fun: I’m adding Frank Miller’s Robocop vs. Terminator for Bahlactus’ Friday Night Fights:

So tonight the Boston Niketown Running Club is having a special event for the 10th Anniversary of the store. The running club has been around for almost as long, and I’ve logged close to 400 miles with them, even though I’ve only been 2 or 3 times in the past 3 years.

The running club is another example of excellent marketing. Wednesdays just before 7 people meet and go out in groups for a run around Boston, a great town to run in with pathways around the river Charles. Runners get snacks and water when they return. It’s free and you get to meet like minded runners and of course, you are hanging out in the store every week.

There’s no sales activity going on at all, yet when I go to the gym now I notice I have Nike shoes, shirt and shorts, all in this high tech stuff that is lighter and more comfortable than cotton.

I’m also addicted to the Nike+ system, and would like to invite an runners that would be interested in doing a marketing race (or perhaps a fatblogging challenge?). My only complaint about Nike+ is that there were some photos leaked back in the spring about some new watches that would be able to control the Nano. This is a desperately needed feature,  the clothes with integrated pockets are cool but it makes it difficult to skip tracks, change volume, etc. The instruction manual has been updated to talk about remotes, but no devices yet. Engadget said maybe by summer, I’ll be in line outside the store as soon as I hear about it.

Of course if it had integrated GPS, and heart rate monitor I’d pay $500 for that, but if I was marketing that I’d do it as a multi-year roll out.

I usually save gushing about Nike for the podcast, but I was reading Coach Bob today and it just blows me away how good this blog is. If anyone thinks that conversational media won’t become mainstream, you really need to sit down with Coach Bob. I can almost smell the track when I read his column, and as soon as it pops up in my newsreader I go straight to it.

Call me a fanboy, but Nike+ is the coolest thing that has happened to running in the past 10 years. The worst part of this is I can see the potential and I’m just sitting around waiting for the brains at Nike and Apple to put it together. I really want to use it on my full size iPod b/c I like to watch “Heroes” on the treadmill (I’m confident enough to go to the gym before my morning shower, but to look like a slob AND have 2 iPods running at the same time seems too dorky for even me).

I have no doubt there’s a heart rate monitor right around the corner for it, and how cool is that? Your song fades out a bit and Lance Armstrong tells you you’re slacking and better turn it up a notch. GPS is asking a lot at that form factor, but I’d pay extra for that too – completely accurate distance stats.

Enough with the gushing, I’ve got to get back to work, but some cool stories brewing…

Palm announced a new device today. I have been a devoted Palm user since my 1000, back in the day when they were called palmPilots and were owned by US Robotics (there’s some geek street cred for you beyatch).

My only thought on this is that it’s not about the hardware. Instant on is pretty cool but aside from that it’s a bunch of apps that may or may not work with my office docs, etc. If I’m going to the trouble of carrying a big screen the two most important things for me are to be able to handle every file type I might run into in a crunch, like tweaking a brochure design in Adobe, editing an audio file in Goldwave, or yes, just reading email.

The other major point that I didn’t see anything on was media files. If I’m traveling I want to watch movies and listen to podcasts, if the device can’t do that I’m not interested – and be able to download pics from my digital camera’s media card so that I don’t have to carry around more than one card, and can check them out on a bigger screen.

I wish them the best of luck because I am a diehard fan, but I don’t see myself throwing down $500 for it.