For those with Nokia Nseries phones, you may have come across Nokia’s fantastic Sports Tracker application, which turns your phone into a tracking device for walking, running, cycling, skiing and whatever (with the aid of a GPS unit, either built in like on the N95 or an external Blue-tooth GPS). Essentially like those expensive GPS units you get for cycling but making using of your phone and GPS. Perhaps not as complex as the “real” ones, but does a good job anyway of tracking where you are, a reasonable speed estimate and also even altitude! (all just via GPS). I’ve used it a fair bit now for skiing and cycling, and it’s one of the killer apps for my N80, along with Nokia Maps with GPS navigation. iPhone may have some nice polo neck wearers eye candy, but with features like these and mostly for free (well Maps guided navigation costs a small amount, but otherwise free as is sports tracker)… why do I need an iPhone again?
Anyway, Sports Tracker goes a step further by allowing you to upload and share in true “social” networking fashion your tracks, and attach photos and video taken on your route! Very neat.
To aid the sharing, Nokia now have a widget for use on blogs and social networking sites…
Nokia Nseries Sports Tracker Widget
Just customise, attach to your Sports Tracker account, and you get some options to plug into various sites. Although it has a limited number of options, I did find the eBlogger option gives me some HTML to paste and that will work pretty much anywhere. Currently mine can be found on my Widgets page.
Be warned though, it’s JavaScript and Flash and I find it can hog the browser whilst it loads. Seems it wants to load up the last route and satellite images which strains it a bit. Though the Facebook plugin is slightly different as it has a button you have to click to activate it before it starts loading user content, which makes page rendering quicker.
Interestingly it also boasts the ability to attach playlists too (music I assume). Not seen that yet in the app. Not that I listen to music whilst cycling/skiing/etc, and I don’t listen to it on my N80 either (the drain on the battery, with the app running, and Bluetooth connection to the GPS would be too great!).