training log for the uber-geek

This has been on my mind, but since I don't do mobile web applications, I wouldn't know how BT behaves on what platforms and the demand.  This is where you I need the users to chime in on what works well and what doesnt on what mobile devices.

But regardless, if we knock the rest of our list out this year, a web redesign would be in order and perhaps this would be a good time to offer a stripped-down version of the log and inbox...and anything else?

I don't have a Blackberry/Treo/etc and don't do mobile web apps so I have no practical knowledge or experience in this space.  Having said that, this is going to take some investigation. We're going to have to evaluate what resources this would take to create and maintain, considering that between the new hardware like iPhone and software like Opera Mini, the demand for mobile versions of web sites may be shrinking very quickly in the very near future.

I don't have any numbers on this yet, but will be investigating it.  The mobile web is going to become more and more prevalent so it's something we're going to address, it's just a matter of deciding when and how. We want to make sure we don't spend a lot of time and effort on something that would only be useful for a year or so.

Anyone from Forrester/IDG/Gartner etc. care to chime in on this one?

From what I've seen, there is a standard for mobile web pages in terms of page widths, image size, image quality, which elements are and are not supported.  From what I can tell, operamini should work with the current site, as it doesn't shrink the page, but rather acts as a small window that moves around the full size page.

You can test it here:

http://www.operamini.com/beta/simulator/

just throw the www.beginnertriathlete.com address in it and see how it handles it.

Other devices have similar emulators, so you can see how the site looks on the handheld without loading it on a handheld

The other thing you could do is just make an app.  I know blackberry apps are written in Java (J2EE i believe), so it would involve writing a small java applet to access the sql database of the site.  You actually might have most of the backend written, and would just have to engineer the gui.

The big things I would like to see would be viewing planned workouts for the day and access to private messages (handled like e-mail).  I don't think the ability to log workouts would be critical, but the more I think about it, at least being able to log nutrition would be pretty usefull, as well as have some sort of nutrition related table or graphs to track your nutrition throughout the day.

*bump* (now that I have an iPhone)

Maybe an iPhone app that syncs to the training log?

-ak-

Thanks, Ron.

-ak-