My iPod Nano 2nd Gen with Nike+

I was planning to wait a few more weeks until I won a weight-off with coworkers to buy my Nano.  One reason was to rid myself of my painful 20GB Samsung YH-95 which is only 1.5 years old and now has a 2-hour battery life (with no replacement option).  I think I’m the last person on earth to admit Apple knows what it’s doing with MP3 players and every other player I’ve bought has been junk very quickly.  I should point out this my first Apple product, something tells me it’s not my last.

So I got a Nano over an iPod with Video due to it’s size/weight and workout-ability.  I’ve been thinking about the Nike+ (Nike Plus) system for months and picked it up as well (I already had a pair of Nike+ Air Equalon’s).  I thought it would interesting to start getting some stats on my ever increasing runs as I get back into health after a 6-year break.  So far the results are nothing short of awesome.  Nikeplus.com couldn’t be cooler, with a slick Flash interface and seemly endless ways to look at your data of your runs, compete with others, and set goals for yourself in a fun and visual way.

I thought at first it might be a bit of a gimac (the site, not the sensor) but was blown away by the people using it.  Notice this interesting stat:

  Wow, yea um I think just a few people use it.  An interesting idea that I didn’t think about is that because the whole system (shoe sensor to iPod to iTunes to nikeplus.com) has a built in integrity to it, allowing it to be a much better online experience then “yea I ran 5 miles last night”… people are able to actually compete on the site in various ways (distance, speed, calories, etc.) with a reasonable amount of belief that others aren’t making it up.  CNBC (which I originally saw this product debuted on) claimed “this could really change the way people run”.

Anyway, one run down and I’m digging it.  Oh, and the sexy/confident female chiming up every so often (or push of a button) doesn’t hurt either.  I hope they do nothing but make this system better over time.  5 years from now the Nano could have a built in GPS (oh but it would also have to be smaller/lighter/brighter/etc) and you could slap your runs on a map.  That would be a bit more accurate then the auto-calibrated distance system in the shoe sensor.