A few colleagues have been sharing their regular running exploits via a new iPhone app, Runmeter. In addition to using the iPhone GPS to monitor distance, rate, route, etc., Runmeter also includes a motivational social media function. Runmeter can update your Twitter or Facebook status at the beginning, breakpoints, and end of a run, letting your friends in on the details of your run. However, Runmeter also includes a from-the-web functionality in that it can read (through text-to-voice technology) your friends updates to you as you run. If you isolate the stream to your mentions alone, you can even have folks sent you messages of positive encouragement (“Run, Andy, Run!” and “Run like the wind, Andy!” being two from my initial experiments.
Now I should mention that I have used another similar app, RunKeeper, for some time now, and that I was drawn to try Runmeter, not for the route/rate monitoring, but for the voice feature. I should also admit that, to date, I have only used Runmeter in the car (“Andy, are you running down the middle of the 401?”) and while sitting at my desk. I’ve yet to discover an app that has as its sole purpose a text-to-voice AND voice-to-text update functionality, but I would imagine someone will develop one someday. I think there’s a market for that. Especially for hands-free, multi-tasking drivers.
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