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Nike Fuel: Workout Gamification

Running Hotspots in Punggol
Running Hotspots in Punggol

If you’ve been exercising (especially running), I urge you to get on Nike+. Its basically an online ecosystem that gamifies your workouts and rewards you with Nike Fuel for you to measure your athletic life. The easiest way to get started is to get the Nike+ Running App. Once you’ve signed up and started clocking a few runs, you can then login online and see your progress.

You can also see where other runs have happened. So for Punggol, you will realise lots of runs happen around the Punggol Promenade Riverside Walk area going across to Sengkang, the empty estate opposite Punggol Plaza, around the pond at Punggol Park and also near the Sengkang Sports and Recreation Centre.

My fave route in Punggol
My fave route in Punggol

Living in Punggol, I’m spoilt with choices on routes to run. I can safely run on the roads along Punggol Drive with relatively no traffic, pathways around estates, Punggol Promenade Riverside Walk, Punggol Waterway, etc. My fave route is above. Its a mix of the promenade, the waterway, then the 4th kilometer is actually some kind of redish gravel track. If live around the area, you should try it out. Its a perfect 5k route.

Nike+ Kinect
Nike+ Kinect

So now the Nike+ platform have been extended to the XBox360 Kinect with its latest Nike Kinect Training. Hence over the weekend, I’ve empowered our family with a new console addition to the household after finding out that Qishan have a $599 Xbox 360 Kinect bundle with 4 Games (SG Set) inclusive of the Nike Kinect Training game (this game had to be collected at Funan) which just launched about 2 weeks ago. They also gave a $40 voucher which worked out well for the 2nd wireless remote.

After my first Nike+ Kinect Workout
After my first Nike+ Kinect Workout

I tried out the my first session today and its was really fun. Had to first calibrate the whole thing and they did some tests to see which limbs were stronger/weaker, how flexible I am, then tailored drills that were suitable for me based on the goal I’ve set. So after my first workout, I’ve been made to commit myself to a 3 days a week program for 4 weeks and let’s see how I progress. I’m still gonna try and run 5k once a week on top of the Kinect Training, so hope in the near future, I’m gonna be a lot more fit.

You should go buy it NOW.

If you are on Nike+ and I know you, do add me. My screen name is “nickpansg”.

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FTW.sg Logo – Idea 1

FTW.sg Logo Idea 1

I’ve been cracking my head on designing a logo for FTW.sg for quite sometime now. I do feel it needs a symbol and one that can be played around. Have been going down the typographic route and pinning lots on Pinterest and even bought a calligraphy pen. Got kinda stuck.

This is what I came up with at 5am after taking flu medication and sleeping for 9hrs.

Comments pls. Thanks.

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Web literacy for our kids please

Clié, Clara and Cleo
Clié, Clara and Cleo

I used to learn about new songs from the radio, TV or from the cool friends I have in school, but nowadays I’m learning about them from my kids. “Price Tag” from Jessie J, “Super Bass” from Nicki Minaj, “1000 Years” from Christina Perri just to name a few. The best part is my 10 year old daughter Clié learnt about these popular songs from kids just like her doing covers on Youtube from another part of the world.

The future is arriving faster than we know it and the world is getting smaller, much smaller. This hyper connected world is the only world our kids know about. To my 2 year old Clara, Elmo lives in every smartphone, tablet, desktop, laptop and even our TV at home.

Sometimes I ask, are our kids ready for it? How do we go about teaching them web literacy? I still have friends believing scams online like the one where Starbucks is giving out $100 vouchers on Facebook. How will our kids be able to discern what is real and what is not. More importantly, how do we get them to stay away from the bad neighbourhood online.

We can’t wait for mainstream web literacy classes for kids to happen. It will be too late. As parents, I feel other then teaching them spelling on a weekly basis, we should also spend time teaching them how to access the rich source of information that is available online. It’s like knowing how to use a pen, how to read, how to count money.

My 8 year old daughter Cleo loves watching kids on Youtube play with their toys and making stories with them. Its just like how we used to play when we were young, but with the addition of undersea internet cables, videography skills, post production know how, etc.

So in the very near future, the skill sets our kids should have might not be the ones we currently think they need.

Right now for my kids, I think knowing how to use the internet is important and eventually I would want to teach them how to start creating digital content and sharing them online.