With your constant encouragement and support, we’ve been working very hard these past few months, and I wanted to share the results of our efforts with you.

Summary of this update:

1. CardioTrainer 1.0.1 and the “Race Against Yourself” Premium Feature for $2.99. Please try it out, it’s refundable within 24 hrs.

2. The first CardioTrainer User Survey. Take it here.

3. Future developments

Just a few weeks ago, we released a new version of CardioTrainer with many many new features. We also launched our first premium feature “Race Against Yourself” — it makes exercising a lot more fun by allowing you to race against your previously recorded tracks. Not only does it simulate a full virtual race, it also speaks to you and tells you exactly how far behind or ahead you are throughout the race. We’ve been running and biking with this feature for the past 2 months, and we have all improved our times a lot. It’s incredibly motivating — sometimes almost too much so, so please use it wisely!

To get the feature, you start CardioTrainer (version 1.0 or above), and then click on Start > Race Against Yourself. You will then see a screen that tells you about the feature and allows you to buy it for $2.99 (see the screenshots above). Once you click on the “Buy” button below, it will forward you to the Android Market, where you pay for it. Once you install the feature, you can go back to CardioTrainer and Race, Race, Race!

We would really appreciate it if you can try it out for $2.99 and then tell us if everything works for you, and how you like it. All purchases have a 24-hour refund policy, so feel free to refund it if you don’t like it — our main goal is always to have happy users and to experiment with this business model early on, before we commit to it. So we would appreciate any feedback. Is it too annoying or confusing to buy separate features? Would you prefer a single premium version instead? Or would you prefer some other business model entirely? Does it feel strange to spend the $2.99 for a feature inside the program? Any other feedback? Please write us and tell us (or tells us in the user survey below). And tell your friends to do the same. It will help make CardioTrainer even better.

Besides racing, we’ve also added:

• Calorie counting (based on weight  & activity type you can choose in the settings)
• Pace voice output
• Improved climb calculations
• Tons of other small fixes
• CardioTrainer website updates: elevation graph and information about your total mileage.

2. CardioTrainer User Survey

We receive many e-mails from users every day asking for new features, reporting bugs, or just simply telling us they love CardioTrainer. We absolutely love it, so keep it coming! As you can imagine, our to-do list is now full of hundreds of great ideas, and it’s getting a bit hard to prioritize them all. That’s why we have decided to do the first CardioTrainer user survey. Please help us by completing it — this is your chance to give us detailed feedback, and it will certainly determine the future direction of the product. In addition, if you have any friends who are current (or potential exercisers!), but don’t use CardioTrainer, please ask them to take this survey as well.

Take the survey!

3. Future Developments

We’re already hard at work on the next version of CardioTrainer (Yes, we do sleep. Sometimes.). In this version, we’re focusing on improving the tracking experience. As many of you have reported, the G1 GPS is really buggy,  and CardioTrainer is unfortunately at the mercy of the GPS signals and hardware. Google has acknowledged the problem, so we know we are not alone. But we don’t give up easily. We are taking some very innovative steps to best cope with these hardware glitches, as well as improve the tracking accuracy. We’re also working on adding new website features, so keep your eyes open for these.