Informal Experiment #1: “TrailGuru vs. RunKeeper vs. Strands, part 3″
The next posting in our experiment will feature the RunKeeper iPhone app.
Late Breaking news…..yesterday Work It Training attended the Austin Marathon Expo at the Palmer Event Center. Work It Training ran into the Strands people. Strands (strands.com) is another iPhone app that is similar to TrailGuru and RunKeeper. After a quick demo of the Strands app, it looks interesting enough to add to our experiment. So a 3rd horse has entered the race. 
kyle said,
February 17, 2009 @ 8:18 am
So, I after the Austin Marathon Expo I went home and signed up to be a part of the Strands community. I entered my information and the website told me I would receive a welcome email with follow-up steps. The weekend came and went, no email. I was out running on the trail yesterday and ran into a group of people wearing Strands shirts (obviously representing the company). I told them the issue I had and they said they would have to look into it. It would appear as though they don’t have all the “bugs” worked out of the automated signup system yet. However, after my complaint I was sent an email personally with a verification code to signup.
After further investigation the iPhone application does not track via the GPS feature. This is disappointing to me. They have an option to download Garmin data but you must have a Garmin watch/GPS to do it. The web interface is similar to Twitter and actually interacts with Twitter if you are familiar with that social media website. Overall, the website was a little clunky, but I will continue to investigate and give feedback to the developers. So far, I have not been won over.
John Rogers said,
February 18, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
Thanks for the review! We are still in the very early stages at Strands, and over the next weeks we will be making many improvements and adding some nice features to both the website as well as the iPhone application. If you check back in mid-march, I think you’ll be more impressed
Cheers!
John