GPS and NAS: Updates On Recent Writeups

Shortly after ordering my own Garmin Forerunner 405 GPS watch, I remembered that my recently purchased (but not yet used) Nokia E71 cell phone had built-in GPS capabilities…and I briefly had buyer remorse. Per a recent Lifehacker writeup, I’d learned about Nokia’s free Sports Tracker system, which logs speed, distance and time to compatible handsets. And a free software add-on for an already-bought piece of hardware is fiscally more palatable than an incremental $250 piece of hardware.

But after pondering the situation for a while, my confidence in the Garmin acquisition was bolstered. For one thing, Sports Tracker is a web-only service. Nokia doesn’t provide client-side software that enables you to access a locally stored copy of your data off-line, and third-party programs like TrailRunner also aren’t (yet?) able to tap into your account on Nokia’s servers. Therefore, if Nokia ever decides to shut down the service (or, alternatively, to charge an unacceptable-to-you amount for it once it exits beta), your data archive is gone.

To wit, check out a few screenshots from the Mac OS X version of Garmin’s software. Here’s my 3 mile race from last Thursday night:

And here’s Saturday morning’s Firecracker Mile (can you find me in the first picture?):

Another limitation of a cell phone-centric GPS for exercise is the lack of heart rate monitor support. Long term, I suspect it’ll be amended by handsets’ embrace of Bluetooth Low Energy Technology (along with corresponding support by cardiac sensors). But in the short term, a watch-based approach seems to be the only way to go. As I mentioned in my late June piece:

Once I’ve done a particular route a few times, the standalone distance measurements become decreasingly valuable, but the distance-and-time-derived pace data remains indispensable, as does the pulse rate information (both in-the-moment and after-the-fact versus-time, versus-location and versus-pace). I’d never run with a cardiac monitoring device before, and it’s amazing what a few beats-per-minute difference makes in my running endurance…keeping me below, for example, my anaerobic threshold.

The earlier mentioned Lifehacker piece also showcases RunKeeper, an Apple-tailored functional equivalent to Nokia’s Sports Tracker which leverages the GPS capabilities built into my recently acquired, carrier-unlocked iPhone 3G (which I am regularly using). iPhone Life Magazine’s Spring 2009 issue includes an article, ‘A Portable Biking Computer’, which covers several other exercise-tailored GPS software packages; TrackThing Lite, Path Tracker, and Trailguru. And a September, 2008 piece by The Unofficial Apple Weblog covers (in addition to Trailguru) even more GPS-on-iPhone options; RunKeeper, The Running GyPSy, and iTrail.

The TUAW analysis compared the various software utilities against the accelerometer-based Nike+ kit, which is appended to an iPod nano by means of a dock connector-based adapter and for which built-in hardware support exists in the 2^nd-generation iPod touch and latest-and-greatest iPhone 3GS. I’d earlier mentioned that I initially didn’t think the Nike+ system would be sufficiently accurate for my needs, given my irregular stride caused by the terrain I typically run on. Even after learning via the Wired Magazine article that Nike+ doesn’t just count foot impacts but estimates the amount of time that the foot is on the ground, I had nagging doubts as to its accuracy robustness.

And in cleaning out my RSS archive the other day, I was re-acquainted with the source of this skepticism. Adam Engst from TidBITS is a serious off-hours runner, and his detailed review from March of 2007 revealed some fairly serious measurement flaws for all but the most recreational of runners. Like me, Adam doesn’t wear Nike shoes (I’ve run in ASICS for years), and it’s possible that the pouch adapter he therefore employed to mount the sensor to his foot was at least in part to blame for the resultant inaccuracy.

Ars Technica’s Jeff Smykil had somewhat more positive results with his Nike+ hardware; you can read his five-day critique via the following links:

• Get in shape with Nike+iPod: Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3 (coincidentally, I plan to run hill intervals tomorrow morning…)
• Day 4
• Day 5

And I thought I was having a serious case of déjà vu, considering my past RFID coverage (specifically its privacy-busting potential), when I learned that it was possible to dynamically track the unique Nike+ sensor on a specific person’s footwear from dozens of feet (pun intended) away, and that commercially available hardware even exists for this purpose.

Switching gears now to focus on my June 25^th cover story on network storage, you already know if you read it that I took a hands-on look at an open-source software package called FreeNAS. Prior online-only coverage from me had discussed several other open-source options; NASLite and NanoNAS, OpenFiler, and Sun’s Open Storage. And thanks to a recent writeup from Maximum PC Magazine, you’ve got even more candidates to consider; unRAID Server, ClarkConnect, Amahi Home Server, and Tonido.

I mentioned in my article that the only way to update the BIOS on the Via motherboard I used was by means of a DOS-based utility. A reader’s feedback suggested FreeDOS as an alternative to digging up a set of Microsoft DOS floppy disks; ironically the project recently turned 15 years old. And in addition to the HDD-inclusive routers that I mentioned in my piece, acting as alternatives to dedicated storage devices, D-Link recently introduced the digital photo frame function-inclusive DIR-685 which Engadget looked at last week.

My article mentioned DLNA as a potential industry-spanning protocol suite for enabling other LAN clients to find and access content stored on the NAS. Unfortunately, my personal experience with supposed DLNA-certified gear has been hit-and-miss, marred by incomplete and outright incorrect outcomes as I discussed (for example) last summer. And double-unfortunately, my experience isn’t unique. Check out this three-part series from The Register:

• DLNA compliance testing: It ain’t working
• Iomega muffs hard drive DLNA testing
• Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive

Best Buy doesn’t seem to be very happy with the notable gap between DLNA’s interoperability claims and reality, either.

In closing, I’ll pass along a few other relevant writeup links from my research archive stash:

• How To Choose the Best Network Storage for a Mac/PC Home
• VortexBox Turns Your Old Computer into a Music Server
• Best Home Server Software
• Hive Five Winner for Best Home Server Software: Ubuntu Server Edition
• Roll Your Own Streaming Media Server with Subsonic
• Is the future of Windows Media Center with Windows Home Server?

And check out what Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, thinks about the home NAS nexus concept.