Nike+ Map It
Nike has just added Map It functionality to the the Nike+ website.
This functionality allows you to draw routes and assign them to your runs.
I have drawn my first route: Rundt om Jægersborg which is one of my “regular” routes. I must admit I get very bored running the same route too often (more than twice in a month), so talking about regular for me is a bit of a stretch. However, I feel this makes me qualified to rate the ease of the mapping tool since I’ll be using it a lot, and I’ve tried many tools already.
The most exciting thing was that it said “Draw & share routes with Map It” (emphasis mine). In my Nike+iPod review I called out for more sharing in the Nike+ experience. My hope is that this is only the first step into a more social online presence.
I know the Map It functionality is still beta, it says so in the upper left corner for crying out loud.
Sometimes it does, however, feel like it is more alpha than beta. When I was trying to map the run I ran on Thursday I ran out of line after ca 7.5 km (the image above). It wouldn’t let me create another interval, no matter where I clicked. Panning and zooming didn’t help either. Undoing the previous interval (stepping back) allowed me to create a new point, but then I was stuck again.
Also, why do they try and force it into the small widescreen format? I zoom in quite close, but still want to see as much as possible. Many of the tools I’ve used only allow you to see a small fixed container. Resizing the window doesn’t help, they already decided you don’t need more than 700 × 400 pixels to see your route. Allow me to zoom the container to the full window. Give me the options to see it my way.
After my failure to map my first route I decided to try a shorter route. Once I started panning to get the departure point, however, I was once more reminded that this is not finished software.
Panning or zooming didn’t help and I had to start all over again.
Once they get the bugs ironed out, and they need a big iron, I do feel this is a big step in the right direction for the Nike+ experience. Since we can now share the routes for our workouts we can hopefully soon share the workouts themselves. We can even share our routes with people who do not have a nike+ account. Visit my Rundt om Jægersborg route without being logged in and see what I mean. You can also view the details of it. Very nice. Edit: It did work earlier, but now it seems to divert you to the “home” page.
February 5th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
I had the same frustrations with the Nike map tool. It seems they are so intent on making things pretty they make the user suffer (it’s slow, and the screen size is small). I used a similar mapping tool that uses a typical web screen. I’d have to check my email to track it down. – Michael
Mountain View, CA
February 5th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
I was confused at first, because I didn’t find this feature, but then I changed my location on County Selector to English – United States and that did the trick. So, if anyone else is wondering about the lack of mapping at the moment, try going US
February 7th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
http://www.nike.com/nikeplus/?l=mapit%2C1086291802 should be http://www.nike.com/nikeplus/?l=mapit,1086291802
That should do the trick.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Also, according to the FAQ, number of waypoints have been bumped to 200. So hopefully that should be enough on those long runs!
February 8th, 2007 at 7:25 am
That should do the trick.
Now the question is, how do you tell wordpress (textile) not to encode the comma as %2C? For some reason it works fine in the comments (as our anonymous friend “cee plus plus” has shown), but I have written the urls with comma in the text and they are encoded.
Also, why does it matter? %2C is the URI encoding of a comma, shouldn’t it work?